Leo Tolstoy

“ The only objection, or rather the only question, that can be put to M. Dumas is : If love of our neighbor is possible to, and inherent in, human nature, why have so many thousand years passed (for the command to love God and one's neighbor is not a command of Christ, but dates back to Moses) during which men have known this means of happiness and yet have not practised it ? What cause prevents the manifestation of a sentiment so natural and so beneficent to humanity? ”

“ The greater part of what is called religion is but the superstition of the past ; the greater part of what is called science is no more than the superstition of the present day. The proportion of error and of truth is, I suspect, about the same in the one as in the other. Hence to work in the name of any belief, be it religious or scientific, is not only a doubtful means of ameliorat- ing the life of mankind, but it is a dangerous proceeding which may produce more harm than good. ”

“ These extracts did indeed interest me profoundly, both on account of their seasonableness and the renown of their authors, and because it would be difficult to find in current literature in a more succinct, vigorous, and brilliant form, an expression of the two fundamental forces, the resultant of which impels humanity along. I mean on the one hand the force of routine which tends to keep humanity in its present course, and on the other that of reason and love which impels it toward the light. ”

“ I will even say that if the priests of old, amenable to no control save that of their colleagues, permitted them- selves sometimes to digress from the truth merely for the pleasure of astonishing and mystifying their public, the priests of modern science have done as much, with equal effrontery. ”

“ The men of to-day continue to live as they have always lived, and do not leave off doing what must inevitably lead to their ruin. Moreover, the men of our Christian society acknowledge, if not the religious law of love, at least the moral obligation of the Christian principle, " not to do to others what they would not that others do to them," but they do not act upon it. ”

“ If man only employed the hundredth part of his energy, now spent entirely contrary to his conscience in material occupations, to elucidate as much as possible the data of his conscience, to express these as clearly as possible, to make them known, and above all to practise them, the change foretold by M. Dumas and by all the prophets would be accomplished much more quickly and easily than we think, and man would acquire that good which Jesus proclaimed in His good news : " Seek the Kingdom of Heaven and all other things will be added unto you." ”

“ If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say : In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you, con- sider what you are and what you ought to be, think of the ideal. ”

“ THERE is a great difference between the letter of M. Dumas and the speech of M. Zola, without mentioning the external difference, namely, that the speech of M. Zola seems to court the approbation of the young men to whom it is addressed ; whilst the letter of M. Dumas does not flatter young men, does not tell them that they are important persons and that everything depends on them (a notion which they ought never to cherish if they wish to be good for anything) , but, on the contrary, points out to them their habitual faults, their presumption, and their levity. ”

“ The meaning of your life cannot consist in the pursuit of your personal well-being, or in that of your family or your nation, be- cause that well-being can be attained only by detriment of that of your neighbor. ”

“ If they acted according to their conscience, men would live as Christians ; but it is only necessary to watch them to see that they live like wild beasts. So that for the great majority of men in the Christian world, the organization of their life is not the result of their way of seeing and feeling, but of certain forms which were once necessary, but which now only survive by reason of the inertia of social life. ”

“ To consecrate one's life to the fulfilment of the duties imposed by religion, prayers, communion, almsgiving; or, following the advice of M. Zola, to devote it to some scientific work, is to run too great a risk, for one may find on the eve of one's death that the religious or scien- tific principle, in whose service one has spent one's whole life, is nothing but an absurd mistake ! ”

“ Men of our Christian society resemble people who, desiring to pull down some object which annoys them, drag at it in opposite directions, and have no time to agree as to the direction in which they ought to pull. It is only neces- sary that a man of our day should cease his activity for a moment and reflect, comparing the demands of his reason and of his heart with the actual conditions of his life, in order to perceive that his whole life and his every action are in incessant and outrageous contra- diction to his reason and his heart. ”

“ If you were to inquire separately of every civilized human being what are the most moral bases of his conduct, nearly every man would tell you that they are the Christian principles, or at any rate those of justice. ”

“ It is a generally received opinion that religion and science are opposed to each other. And such is really the case, but only with reference to any given time. That is to say, what has been regarded by the people of one time as science very often becomes religion for their descendants. What is usually connoted by the term religion is generally the science of the past, while that which is called science is to a large extent the religion of the present. ”

“ I have the army to organize, the Eiffel Tower to build, the Chicago Exhibition to arrange, to cut through the Isthmus of Panama, to make investiga- tions on the subject of heredity, telepathy, or to find out the number of times such and such a word occurs in the works of such and such a classic author."
The most cruel of men, the Neros and the Peter the Greats, have been constantly active, never pausing or giving themselves a moment free from occupation or distraction.
Even if work is not a vice, it can from no point of view be looked upon as a merit. ”

“ While those savants who favor a spiritual explanation of life, look upon jurisprudence, philosophy, and even theology as the most necessary and important of sciences, the Posi- tivists consider these very sciences as childish twaddle devoid of scientific value ; and, vice versa, sociology, which the Positivists look upon as the science of sciences, is considered by the theologians, philosophers, and spiritualists as an arbitrary and useless collection of observations and assertions. ”

“ Can it be that this force, which has produced me with my reason and my desire to love and be loved, has operated only in order to deceive me ; so that, having imagined the aim of my life to be my personal well-being, that my life belongs to me and that I have the right to dispose of it and the lives of other beings as I please, I should arrive at the conviction that this personal, family, or national well-being cannot be attained ”

“ Work for science ? But the word science is a term so vague and ill-defined that what some people consider to be science is considered by others to be utterly futile, and this is the case not only with outsiders but even with the priests of science themselves. ”

“ We say that the statements of the Hebrews that the world was created in six days, that children are punished for the sins of their fathers, that certain maladies can be cured by the sight of a serpent, are the data of religion ; while we call data of science the statements of our con- temporaries that the world created itself while turning around a center which is everywhere, that all the vari- ous species arose from the struggle for existence, that criminals are the product of heredity, that there exist micro-organisms in the shape of commas which cause certain diseases. ”

“ Are we to conclude that love applied to life is a chimera ? If so, how is it that for so many centuries men have allowed themselves to be deluded by this unrealizable dream ? It must be high time to recog- nize its futility. But mankind can neither resolve to fol- low the law of love in their lives nor to give up the idea. ”

“ Once that perdvoia has taken place in the thought of man, a pagan and egoistic conception of life replaced by the Christian conception, the love of one's neighbor will become more natural than strife and egoism are at present. ”

“ What is the reason of this contradic- tion, enduring so many centuries ? It is not because men of our day lack either the desire or the possibility to do what is dictated to them, both by their common sense and by the danger of their position, and above all, by the law of that which they speak of as God and their con- science. But it is just because they are doing what M. Zola advises them to do : they are so busy, they are all so engrossed in work commenced long ago, and it is impossible for them to pause to collect their thoughts ”

“ In my opinion, not only is work not a virtue, but in our defectively organized society it is more often a means of moral anaesthesia, just as are tobacco, wine, and other means of drowning thought and hiding from ourselves the disorder and emptiness of our lives ; and it is pre- cisely as such that M. Zola recommends work for young people. ”

“ Evidently some secret but overwhelming reason prevents them from doing what is to their advantage what would save them from the dangers that menace them, and what the law of their God and their conscience alike dictate to them. ”

“ It is commonly said that reality is that which exists, or in other words, only that which exists is real. The contrary is, however, the case ; the true reality, that which we truly know, is that which never existed. ”

“ And just as it was not exactly in the creation of the world in six days, the wound-curing serpent, etc., that the Hebrew believed, but rather in the infallibility of his priests, and hence in the truth of their assertions ; even so the great majority of the cultured people of our time believe neither in the formation of the world by rotation, nor in heredity, nor in comma-like bacilli, but in the infallibility of their lay priests who are called scientists, who affirm whatever they pretend to know, with the same assurance as did the Hebrew priests. ”

“ Work, the exercise of our organs, cannot be meritori- ous, for it is simply a physical necessity of man in com- mon with all other animals, as is shown by a tethered calf galloping round and round, or, among ourselves, by the silly exercises to which rich and well-fed people of the leisured classes betake themselves, finding no better use for their mental faculties than reading novels and newspapers, or playing chess and cards, or for their muscles than gymnastics, fencing, lawn tennis, and horse-racing. ”

“ Every one knows also that the preparations for war made by the different nations lead on to terrible massacres, to the ruin and degenera- tion of all the peoples who participate in this circle of armaments. No one doubts but that if the present order of things be prolonged for some dozens of years, the result will be ruin, imminent and general. We have only to open our eyes to see the abyss toward which we are advancing. ”

“ With- out considering selfish work, which is always bad, the object of which is the well-being or aggrandizement of the worker, even " work for its own sake," the pride of the worker, renders both ants and men cruel. ”

“ The more men believe that they can be moved to a better state of things without effort of their own, by some external force acting of itself, whether religion or science, and that they have only to work on in the existing order, with the more difficulty will this change be accomplished ; and it is in this, above all, that the speech of M. Zola errs. ”

“ For eighteen centuries the feast has been ready ; but one man does not come because he has bought a piece of ground, another because he has married a wife, a third because he must go and try his oxen, a fourth because he is constructing a railway, a factory, doing missionary work, working in Parliament, in a bank, or at some scientific, artistic, or literary production. ”

“ And when once the love of one's neighbor has become natural to man, the new conditions of the Chris- tian life will come about spontaneously, just as in a liquid saturated with salt the crystals commence to form the moment one ceases to stir it.
And in order that such a result should come about and that men should organize in conformity with their conscience, no positive effort is necessary ; on the con- trary, we have only to stop in the efforts we are now making. ”

“ In order that men should change their way of living and feeling, they must first of all change their way of thinking ; and in order that such a change should come about, men must stop and give their attention to what they ought to understand. ”

“ Which of us does not know these men, untouched by considera- tions of truth and kindliness, who are always so busy that they not only never have time to do good, but can- not even ask themselves whether their work is not harm- ful ? ”

“ IF in past times, when the evils produced by the pagan way of life were not so evident as now, and, more important still, the Christian principles were not so generally accepted, men could consciously uphold the bondage of the workers, the oppression of man by man, penal law, and, above all, war, it has become com- pletely impossible at the present time to explain the raison d'etre of all these institutions. ”

“ That has been said for three thousand years; it has been continually repeated in all tones, from all platforms, religious and even secular, but men continue none the less to exterminate instead of love one an- other. In the present day no one can doubt that if men, instead of tearing one another to pieces, each seeking his own happiness, that of his family, or that of his country, would but help one another ”