John C. Kenworthy

“ To them, Socialism is today's craze of the unavoidable percentage of fanatics in society, Communism is folly, Anarchism is crime, Tolstoy is a dim vague figure of genius, very noble (no doubt) , but not to be taken seriously, a little mad; they do not, they cannot, know that they themselves are the dullards, the deadweights of humanity; that the Social Movement is of men, better and wiser than they, whose foremost prophet is Tolstoy, a prophet of the ages. ”

“ That a man's past affects his present is a truism. But is John Banyan less true in his Puritan Evangel, because of his bitterly-repented evil youth? Is Francis of Assisi less holy in life because of his bitterly-repented first manhood? Is Paul less a Christian because he first murdered Christians? And, in any case, it is not to his own personal worth that Tolstoy calls our attention; but to solid reasons, actual experiences, verifiable truths, which, once discovered, are, and must be, the same for all human perception, whatever the individual's past may be. ”

“ The peasants are free from the pessimism which rules the cultured; they display a satisfaction in following their seemingly intolerable toils, and they meet death with an ease and confidence, which are not felt by the rich, the comfortable, the cultured. They find something to live for; a current of life that carries them along. Not as an excuse for keeping the labouring poor in labour and poverty, but as a fact of experience, Tolstoy, the deep observer, announces this. ”

“ Tolstoy is the furthest from those story-tellers whose automata are only interesting because of the adventures that whirl about and alternately humiliate and glorify their bodies; he has no part with those who give us superior persons, heroines and heroes; his faculty is for divining the deep motives of our own hearts; his people are interesting because we know ourselves in them. Not in the motives we give out to the world, not even in the motives we proclaim to ourselves, but in the real motives, the great currents of desire that sweep us on in these Tolstoy deals. ”

“ Opposite the house are the sloping fields, dotted with black figures of men and women, old people and little children, who come out to work with the morning sun, and cease with the sunset. All day long, having only black bread to eat and kvass to drink, they sweat and toil, getting in the hay. And see, the hay of last year is being trodden into the earth of the road under the feet of the horses at the door of the great house! So it is, says Tolstoy to the rich, that the starved and slavish toil of these poor is wasted upon your idle luxury. ”

“ Yes, Tolstoy is logical.
He shows how, if men really had faith in God the Father, they would not try to secure their lives by taking part in the present competitive and warlike organization of society, “the kingdom of this world"; but they would “come out of Babylon," live rightly, usefully, and trust God. He shows how, if men really loved their neighbours as themselves, no man could keep his wealth and rest in ease and comfort while another man suffered; there could be no kingship, power, privilege, riches, poverty, among men who loved each other. Love would make a last end of these evils. ”

“ Few people read books, or so many would not have missed the teaching of this one. No doubt the strong, tragic incidents of the story of jealousy and murder overshadow the reasoned statements and conclusion it conveys, and leave superficial minds with an impression of horror, as though all that is holy had been dragged in the mud, rather than with the conclusion that only one way of escape from the temptations and disasters of sex is open to mankind: the way, namely, of purity of thought and life. This, chastity as an ideal, is the substance and the sum of Tolstoy's mind on the sex-relation. ”

“ Tolstoy answers, "I know of no necessity for me to live, but I do know of a necessity for me to utter the truth I perceive, and to give it freely to all men. Its value I do not know, and I am content to do useful (and healthy) work with my hands for my living, and in return, take what men freely give me." “Ah, but," people say again, "that is easy for a man of genius, but we cannot do that." I would again refer to the Russian Government, as a standing threat against the life of any such reformer as Tolstoy. ”

“ The discovery, the prophecy of Tolstoy is, then, that men who would follow the truth revealed by Jesus, must wholly accept and live by the basic principles of Jesus; which are: that there is a God, "Who is our Father, giving us life because He loves us; Whose will is that men should love and care for their fellowmen equally with themselves. Believe and do this, and you are a Christian, says Tolstoy; reject this, or equivocate upon it, and you are no Christian. He is logical. If we trust God, we must trust Him wholly, and do nothing that is contrary to His love and truth ”

“ Then, looking upon the social struggle that is rending civilisation through its foundations, we may detect the general and ancient movement towards Equality, growing and spreading under its present-day name of Socialism.
"Equality of opportunity" is the conscious demand of millions of people, revolted by experience of the inequality which gives the power of property, with leisure and luxury, to the rich, and slavery, overwork, and want to the poor.
Within this wide range of Socialism is a less wide but deeper movement, which has for its hope Fraternity. ”

“ There is in Tolstoy's writing, from first to last, one clear purpose of truth telling.
No improbable romance, no artificial situations; only ordinary people, ordinary affairs, ordinary feelings, but all made strong, absorbing as “life itself," by this depth of truth. He is a discoverer of reality. ”

“ The “living faith “in a God, the Father of all, and the duty of loving and serving all men, our brothers, as ourselves, he detached from the mass of Church accretions, finding this to be the pure, essential Christian doctrine. The Churches Greek, Romish, Protestant, Dissenting oppose each other; that is not unity. They countenance war of Christians against Christians; that is not love. He could not be of the Church. And he perceived that all the good he had seen in the life of men, while associated with the simple faith of the Gospel, is yet outside, indeed opposed by, the Churches. ”

“ Precisely that, answers Tolstoy. And he bids these people to take themselves at the valuation put on them by the mass of men, the workers; not at their own deceitful valuation. The whole of their "cultured" society might go, for all the working-people care. If brute-force or want of employment did not compel, would any labouring men give their lives as soldiers and police to preserve the precious “State “we live under? Not a man, it is to be believed. And if there were no soldiers and police to compel, would the people pay taxes? ”

“ The whole bearing of the teaching is to show men the error of attempting to bring about good order in society by force, by other means than goodwill, reason, truth. So Jesus, point by point, contrasts the present method of laws, enforced by punishments, with His own, the ideal method. His followers are not to follow the old fallacy of law, and use compulsion, but to live rightly themselves, from the inward spirit. For instance, where the law says, Thou shalt not kill, for fear of judgment and punishment, Jesus says, Thou shalt not feel anger, which is the root of murder. ”

“ This is only to say that the Life which gives us our Life, the Reason, reflected in our Reason, the Love that inspires our Love, is a cheat, a mocker. Indeed, we are Devil-worshippers; believing that the most dangerous thing in life is Love, and the most unreasonable, Truth. So we say of Tolstoy, who surrenders to these, “Very fine and heroic; the man is a saint, a prophet; but a little mad, and not for us." We ask for his proof of what he teaches, just as Jesus was asked for His authority. ”

“ Peace, goodwill, truth spoken in love, these must draw those who have the spirit of Christ into true social relations, drawing them out of their present relations in society. In doing this there is a necrosis for Englishmen not less than for Russians.
The faith of Tolstoy reasons thus. Either our life proceeds from Nothing, or from a Power of Evil, or from a Power of Good. It is inconceivable that Something has come from Nothing; but for the man who so thinks, there is only, for him, to eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow he dies. ”

“ Men ask, “What restrains us from Equality and Fraternity?“ And the answer is given, “An evil principle, accepted as right in theory, and applied ruthlessly in social practice; the principle, namely, that it is right and necessary for some men to rule others by force, by law which rests on armed violence, military power.” ”

“ Sutaieff would not approve, and when pressed for his own remedy, told Tolstoy to take into his house two destitute men he himself would take one and with these they should live as brothers, eating, working and speaking together. Tolstoy says he at once saw the truth that same truth expressed thus by John Ruskin: "The mistake of the best men, through generation after generation, has been that great one of thinking to help the poor by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope, and by every other means, emollient or consolatory, except the one thing which God orders for them, justice." ”

“ It is hard to persuade the mass of people, to whom the foreigner remains so very foreign, of the identity of life, in all but some superficial aspects, in all civilized countries. The slight dissimilarities between English and Russian habits must be understood and seen in their proper proportions to the whole of life, and Tolstoy will then be read in England as a man appealing equally to all men. ”

“ Notwithstanding all he has written and done, all these years, in all civilization there has not yet appeared a serious opposing critic of Tolstoy. Why is this? Cannot our European Churches and Universities provide us a man who will truly state and truly refute the teaching which is turning from them the minds of the most spiritual and most intelligent men everywhere? "Why are we given only the feeble “magazines“ of such men as Canon Farrar or a casual secularist? It is, one must believe, that each profounder mind feels that there is no effective refutation. ”

“ Turning from the prevalent state of war open war of the battle-field, veiled war of armed peace, and trade war called competition, the conscience of man desires even more than equality of opportunity, namely, co-operation, brotherly treatment of man by man. ”

“ Those who give this answer are called Anarchists, and their movement, Anarchy or Anarchism. The complete Anarchist is the perfect idealist; the man whose goal is entire freedom of action for all, knowing this to be the only possible condition in which equality and fraternity can exist. ”

“ And Tolstoy, bidding men return to, and have faith in, the Spirit of Love which works by Truth, is again proclaiming our civilization to be the prophetic Babylon, from which we must come out, and enter into newness of life. ”

“ At last he reflected that the philosophers and men of culture people of that circle to which he himself belonged, who assumed (as he himself had done) that all possibility of understanding life lay with their own superior intelligence and learning were, after all, a very small fraction of humanity. Outside them lay the vast mass of mankind, the labouring folk, "the common people." With a renewed interest in those whom he had loved and studied all his life, Tolstoy again examined the life of the mass, the Russian people. ”

“ Not mere emotion, but the illumination of emotion by reason, is our need; and Tolstoy's power is to fulfil this need. And yet one of these stories, Work While Ye Have the Light, is most effective both in wakening emotion and in directing it by reason. It is a tale of the second century, and in its incidents and discussions, gives an account of primitive Christian life and thought which powerfully impresses one as necessarily true in spirit and form. ”

“ He who tells us that the world's ice is breaking, for the Sun of Righteousness is gathering power, as does the sun in spring; he who waits his end in peace and tranquillity, though become an alien to his former friends and condition, deprived by exile of his spiritual friends, and wholly obnoxious to a terrorist government and a church whose pretensions and deeds he has exposed to the utmost. ”

“ If all the kings, statesmen, priests, preachers, organizers of industry, writers, artists, men of science, soldiers, doctors, were swept out of existence to-morrow, we perfectly well know that the ploughing, grinding, brick-making, building, weaving, tailoring, would go on just as before only with this enormous advantage, that the labourers would be relieved of the burden of supporting in their present colossal luxury all those lives of non-producers. ”