When the truth has become sufficiently widely diffused, men at a lower stage of development accept it all at once simply through confidence in those who have reached it by the inner spiritual way, and are applying it to life.
 Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894). copy citation

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Author Leo Tolstoy
Source The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Topic confidence truth
Date 1894
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Constance Garnett
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4602/pg4602-images.html

Context

“For in that argument they do not take into account any other means, besides the inward spiritual one, by which men assimilate a new truth and pass from one order of life to another. Men do not only assimilate a truth through recognizing it by prophetic insight, or by experience of life. When the truth has become sufficiently widely diffused, men at a lower stage of development accept it all at once simply through confidence in those who have reached it by the inner spiritual way, and are applying it to life. Every new truth, by which the order of human life is changed and humanity is advanced, is at first accepted by only a very small number of men who understand it through inner spiritual intuition. The remainder of mankind who accepted on trust the preceding truth on which the existing order is based, are always opposed to the diffusion of the new truth.” source