What Men Live By, and Other TalesTolstoy, Leo, graf
General
What Men Live By, and Other Tales
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Peasants -- Russia -- Fiction; Russia -- Fiction
"There is no country," he said "where people know so much about the
sun's movements as in England. The sun, as every one in England knows,
rises nowhere and sets nowhere. It is always moving round the earth. We
can be sure of this for we have just been round the world ourselves,
and nowhere knocked up against the sun. Wherever we went, the sun showed
itself in the morning and hid itself at night, just as it does here."
And the Englishman took a stick and, drawing circles on the sand, tried
to explain how the sun moves in the heavens and goes round the world.
But he was unable to explain it clearly, and pointing to the ship's
pilot said:
"This man knows more about it than I do. He can explain it properly."
The pilot, who was an intelligent man, had listened in silence to the
talk till he was asked to speak. Now every one turned to him, and he
said:
"You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The
sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun,
revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and Sumatra
where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands
besides. The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one
island, or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but for other
planets as well as our earth. If you would only look up at the heavens,
instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand
this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or
for your country alone."
Thus spoke the wise pilot, who had voyaged much about the world, and had
gazed much upon the heavens above.
"So on matters of faith," continued the Chinaman, the student of
Confucius, "it is pride that causes error and discord among men. As with
the sun, so it is with God. Each man wants to have a special God of his
own, or at least a special God for his native land. Each nation wishes
to confine in its own temples Him, whom the world cannot contain.
"Can any temple compare with that which God Himself has built to unite
all men in one faith and one religion?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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