A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Kingdom of God is within you

L >> Leo Tolstoy >> The Kingdom of God is within you




"That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous
materialism.

"Going into a country, cutting the man's throat who defends his
house because he wears a blouse and has not a military cap on
his head, burning the dwellings of wretched beings who have
nothing to eat, breaking furniture and stealing goods, drinking
the wine found in the cellars, violating the women in the
streets, burning thousands of francs' worth of powder, and
leaving misery and cholera in one's track--

"That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous
materialism.

"What have they done, those warriors, that proves the least
intelligence? Nothing. What have they invented? Cannons and
muskets. That is all.

"What remains to us from Greece? Books and statues. Is Greece
great from her conquests or her creations?

"Was it the invasions of the Persians which saved Greece from
falling into the most hideous materialism?

"Were the invasions of the barbarians what saved and
regenerated Rome?

"Was it Napoleon I. who carried forward the great intellectual
movement started by the philosophers of the end of last
century?

"Yes, indeed, since government assumes the right of
annihilating peoples thus, there is nothing surprising in the
fact that the peoples assume the right of annihilating
governments.

"They defend themselves. They are right. No one has an
absolute right to govern others. It ought only to be done for
the benefit of those who are governed. And it is as much the
duty of anyone who governs to avoid war as it is the duty of a
captain of a ship to avoid shipwreck.

"When a captain has let his ship come to ruin, he is judged and
condemned, if he is found guilty of negligence or even
incapacity.

"Why should not the government be put on its trial after every
declaration of war? IF THE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD THAT, IF THEY
THEMSELVES PASSED JUDGMENT ON MURDEROUS GOVERNMENTS, IF THEY
REFUSED TO LET THEMSELVES BE KILLED FOR NOTHING, IF THEY WOULD
ONLY TURN THEIR ARMS AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE GIVEN THEM TO THEM
FOR MASSACRE, ON THAT DAY WAR WOULD BE NO MORE. BUT THAT DAY
WILL NEVER COME" [Footnote: "Sur l'Eau," pp. 71-80].

The author sees all the horror of war. He sees that it is caused
by governments forcing men by deception to go out to slaughter and
be slain without any advantage to themselves. And he sees, too,
that the men who make up the armies could turn their arms against
the governments and bring them to judgment. But he thinks that
that will never come to pass, and that there is, therefore, no
escape from the present position.

"I think war is terrible, but that it is inevitable; that
compulsory military service is as inevitable as death, and that
since government will always desire it, war will always exist."

So writes this talented and sincere writer, who is endowed with
that power of penetrating to the innermost core of the subjects
which is the essence of the poetic faculty. He brings before us
all the cruelty of the inconsistency between men's moral sense and
their actions, but without trying to remove it; seems to admit
that this inconsistency must exist and that it is the poetic
tragedy of life.

Another no less gifted writer, Edouard Rod, paints in still more
vivid colors the cruelty and madness of the present state of
things. He too only aims at presenting its tragic features,
without suggesting or forseeing any issue from the position.

"What is the good of doing anything? What is the good of
undertaking any enterprise? And how are we to love men in
these troubled times when every fresh day is a menace of
danger?...All we have begun, the plans we are developing, our
schemes of work, the little good we may have been able to do,
will it not all be swept away by the tempest that is in
preparation?...Everywhere the earth is shaking under our feet
and storm-clouds are gathering on our horizon which will have
no pity on us.

"Ah! if all we had to dread were the revolution which is held
up as a specter to terrify us! Since I cannot imagine a
society more detestable than ours, I feel more skeptical than
alarmed in regard to that which will replace it. If I should
have to suffer from the change, I should be consoled by
thinking that the executioners of that day were the victims of
the previous time, and the hope of something better would help
us to endure the worst. But it is not that remote peril which
frightens me. I see another danger, nearer and far more cruel;
more cruel because there is no excuse for it, because it is
absurd, because it can lead to no good. Every day one balances
the chances of war on the morrow, every day they become more
merciless.

"The imagination revolts before the catastrophe which is coming
at the end of our century as the goal of the progress of our
era, and yet we must get used to facing it. For twenty years
past every resource of science has been exhausted in the
invention of engines of destruction, and soon a few charges of
cannon will suffice to annihilate a whole army. No longer a
few thousands of poor devils, who were paid a price for their
blood, are kept under arms, but whole nations are under arms to
cut each other's throats. They are robbed of their time now
(by compulsory service) that they may be robbed of their lives
later. To prepare them for the work of massacre, their hatred
is kindled by persuading them that they are hated. And
peaceable men let themselves be played on thus and go and fall
on one another with the ferocity of wild beasts; furious troops
of peaceful citizens taking up arms at an empty word of
command, for some ridiculous question of frontiers or colonial
trade interests--Heaven only knows what...They will go like
sheep to the slaughter, knowing all the while where they are
going, knowing that they are leaving their wives, knowing
that their children will want for food, full of misgivings, yet
intoxicated by the fine-sounding lies that are dinned into
their ears. THEY WILL MARCH WITHOUT REVOLT, PASSIVE,
RESIGNED--THOUGH THE NUMBERS AND THE STRENGTH ARE THEIRS, AND
THEY MIGHT, IF THEY KNEW HOW TO CO-OPERATE TOGETHER, ESTABLISH
THE REIGN OF GOOD SENSE AND FRATERNITY, instead of the
barbarous trickery of diplomacy. They will march to battle so
deluded, so duped, that they will believe slaughter to be a
duty, and will ask the benediction of God on their lust for
blood. They will march to battle trampling underfoot the
harvests they have sown, burning the towns they have built--
with songs of triumph, festive music, and cries of jubilation.
And their sons will raise statues to those who have done most
in their slaughter.

"The destiny of a whole generation depends on the hour in which
some ill-fated politician may give the signal that will be
followed. We know that the best of us will be cut down and our
work will be destroyed in embryo. WE KNOW IT AND TREMBLE WITH
RAGE, BUT WE CAN DO NOTHING. We are held fast in the toils of
officialdom and red tape, and too rude a shock would be needed
to set us free. We are enslaved by the laws we set up for our
protection, which have become our oppression. WE ARE BUT THE
TOOLS OF THAT AUTOCRATIC ABSTRACTION THE STATE, WHICH ENSLAVES
EACH INDIVIDUAL IN THE NAME OF THE WILL OF ALL, WHO WOULD ALL,
TAKEN INDIVIDUALLY, DESIRE EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY
WILL BE MADE TO DO.

"And if it were only a generation that must be sacrificed! But
there are graver interests at stake.

"The paid politicians, the ambitious statesmen, who exploit the
evil passions of the populace, and the imbeciles who are
deluded by fine-sounding phrases, have so embittered national
feuds that the existence of a whole race will be at stake in
the war of the morrow. One of the elements that constitute the
modern world is threatened, the conquered people will be wiped
out of existence, and whichever it may be, we shall see a moral
force annihilated, as if there were too many forces to work for
good--we shall have a new Europe formed on foundations so
unjust, so brutal, so sanguinary, stained with so monstrous a
crime, that it cannot but be worse than the Europe of to-day--
more iniquitous, more barbarous, more violent.

"Thus one feels crushed under the weight of an immense
discouragement. We are struggling in a CUL DE SAC with muskets
aimed at us from the housetops. Our labor is like that of
sailors executing their last task as the ship begins to sink.
Our pleasures are those of the condemned victim, who is
offered his choice of dainties a quarter of an hour before his
execution. Thought is paralyzed by anguish, and the most it is
capable of is to calculate--interpreting the vague phrases of
ministers, spelling out the sense of the speeches of
sovereigns, and ruminating on the words attributed to
diplomatists reported on the uncertain authority of the
newspapers--whether it is to be to-morrow or the day after,
this year or the next, that we are to be murdered. So that one
might seek in vain in history an epoch more insecure, more
crushed under the weight of suffering" [footnote: "Le Sens de
la Vie," pp.208-13].

Here it is pointed out that the force is in the hands of those who
work their own destruction, in the hands of the individual men who
make up the masses; it is pointed out that the source of the evil
is the government. It would seem evident that the contradiction
between life and conscience had reached the limit beyond which it
cannot go, and after reaching this limit some solution of it must
be found.

But the author does not think so. He sees in this the tragedy of
human life, and after depicting all the horror of the position he
concludes that human life must be spent in the midst of this
horror.

So much for the attitude to war of those who regard it as
something tragic and fated by destiny.

The third category consists of men who have lost all conscience
and, consequently, all common sense and feeling of humanity.

To this category belongs Moltke, whose opinion has been quoted
above by Maupassant, and the majority of military men, who have
been educated in this cruel superstition, live by it, and
consequently are often in all simplicity convinced that war is not
only an inevitable, but even a necessary and beneficial thing.
This is also the view of some civilians, so-called educated and
cultivated people.

Here is what the celebrated academician Camille Doucet writes in
reply to the editor of the REVUE DES REVUES, where several letters
on war were published together:

"Dear Sir: When you ask the least warlike of academicians
whether he is a partisan of war, his answer is known
beforehand.

"Alas! sir, you yourself speak of the pacific ideal inspiring
your generous compatriots as a dream.

"During my life I have heard a great many good people protest
against this frightful custom of international butchery, which
all admit and deplore; but how is it to be remedied?

"Often, too, there have been attempts to suppress dueling; one
would fancy that seemed an easy task: but not at all! All that
has been done hitherto with that noble object has never been
and never will be of use.

"All the congresses of both hemispheres may vote against war,
and against dueling too, but above all arbitrations,
conventions, and legislations there will always be the personal
honor of individual men, which has always demanded dueling, and
the interests of nations, which will always demand war.

"I wish none the less from the depths of my heart that the
Congress of Universal Peace may succeed at last in its very
honorable and difficult enterprise.

"I am, dear sir, etc.,
"CAMILLE DOUCET."

The upshot of this is that personal honor requires men to fight,
and the interests of nations require them to ruin and exterminate
each other. As for the efforts to abolish war, they call for
nothing but a smile.

The opinion of another well-known academician, Jules Claretie, is
of the same kind.

"Dear Sir [he writes]: For a man of sense there can be but one
opinion on the subject of peace and war.

"Humanity is created to live, to live free, to perfect and
ameliorate its fate by peaceful labor. The general harmony
preached by the Universal Peace Congress is but a dream
perhaps, but at least it is the fairest of all dreams. Man is
always looking toward the Promised Land, and there the harvests
are to ripen with no fear of their being torn up by shells or
crushed by cannon wheels...But! Ah! but----since philosophers
and philanthropists are not the controlling powers, it is well
for our soldiers to guard our frontier and homes, and their
arms, skillfully used, are perhaps the surest guarantee of the
peace we all love.

"Peace is a gift only granted to the strong and the resolute.

"I am, dear sir, etc.,
"JULES CLARETIE."

The upshot of this letter is that there is no harm in talking
about what no one intends or feels obliged to do. But when it
comes to practice, we must fight.

And here now is the view lately expressed by the most popular
novelist in Europe, Émile Zola:

"I regard war as a fatal necessity, which appears inevitable
for us from its close connection with human nature and the
whole constitution of the world. I should wish that war could
be put off for the longest possible time. Nevertheless, the
moment will come when we shall be forced to go to war. I am
considering it at this moment from the standpoint of universal
humanity, and making no reference to our misunderstanding with
Germany--a most trivial incident in the history of mankind. I
say that war is necessary and beneficial, since it seems one of
the conditions of existence for humanity. War confronts us
everywhere, not only war between different races and peoples,
but war too, in private and family life. It seems one of the
principal elements of progress, and every step in advance that
humanity has taken hitherto has been attended by bloodshed.

"Men have talked, and still talk, of disarmament, while
disarmament is something impossible, to which, even if it were
possible, we ought not to consent. I am convinced that a
general disarmament throughout the world would involve
something like a moral decadence, which would show itself in
general feebleness, and would hinder the progressive
advancement of humanity. A warlike nation has always been
strong and flourishing. The art of war has led to the
development of all the other arts. History bears witness to
it. So in Athens and in Rome, commerce, manufactures, and
literature never attained so high a point of development as
when those cities were masters of the whole world by force of
arms. To take an example from times nearer our own, we may
recall the age of Louis XIV. The wars of the Grand Monarque
were not only no hindrance to the progress of the arts and
sciences, but even, on the contrary, seem to have promoted and
favored their development."

So war is a beneficial thing!

But the best expression of this attitude is the view of the most
gifted of the writers of this school, the academician de Vogüé.
This is what he writes in an article on the Military Section of
the Exhibition of 1889:

"On the Esplanade des Invalides, among the exotic and colonial
encampments, a building in a more severe style overawes the
picturesque bazaar; all these fragments of the globe have come
to gather round the Palace of War, and in turn our guests mount
guard submissively before the mother building, but for whom
they would not be here. Fine subject for the antithesis of
rhetoric, of humanitarians who could not fail to whimper over
this juxtaposition, and to say that 'CECI TUERA CELA,'
[footnote: Phrase quoted from Victor-Hugo, "Notre-Dame de
Paris."] that the union of the nations through science and
labor will overcome the instinct of war. Let us leave them to
cherish the chimera of a golden age, which would soon become,
if it could be realized, an age of mud. All history teaches us
that the one is created for the other, that blood is needed to
hasten and cement the union of the nations. Natural science
has ratified in our day the mysterious law revealed to Joseph
de Maistre by the intuition of his genius and by meditation on
fundamental truths; he saw the world redeeming itself from
hereditary degenerations by sacrifice; science shows it
advancing to perfection through struggle and violent selection;
there is the statement of the same law in both, expressed in
different formulas. The statement is disagreeable, no doubt;
but the laws of the world are not made for our pleasure, they
are made for our progress. Let us enter this inevitable,
necessary palace of war; we shall be able to observe there how
the most tenacious of our instincts, without losing any of its
vigor, is transformed and adapted to the varying exigencies of
historical epochs."

M. de Vogüé finds the necessity for war, according to his views,
well expressed by the two great writers, Joseph de Maistre and
Darwin, whose statements he likes so much that he quotes them
again.

"Dear Sir [he writes to the editor of the REVUE DES REVUES]:
You ask me my view as to the possible success of the Universal
Congress of Peace. I hold with Darwin that violent struggle is
a law of nature which overrules all other laws; I hold with
Joseph de Maistre that it is a divine law; two different ways
of describing the same thing. If by some impossible chance a
fraction of human society--all the civilized West, let us
suppose--were to succeed in suspending the action of this law,
some races of stronger instincts would undertake the task of
putting it into action against us: those races would vindicate
nature's reasoning against human reason; they would be
successful, because the certainty of peace--I do not say PEACE,
I say the CERTAINTY OF PEACE--would, in half a century,
engender a corruption and a decadence more destructive for
mankind than the worst of wars. I believe that we must do with
war--the criminal law of humanity--as with all our criminal
laws, that is, soften them, put them in force as rarely as
possible; use every effort to make their application
unnecessary. But all the experience of history teaches us that
they cannot be altogether suppressed so long as two men are
left on earth, with bread, money, and a woman between them.

"I should be very happy if the Congress would prove me in
error. But I doubt if it can prove history, nature, and God in
error also.

"I am, dear sir, etc.
"E. M. DE VOGÜÉ."

This amounts to saying that history, human nature, and God show us
that so long as there are two men, and bread, money and a woman--
there will be war. That is to say that no progress will lead men
to rise above the savage conception of life, which regards no
participation of bread, money (money is good in this context) and
woman possible without fighting.

They are strange people, these men who assemble in Congresses, and
make speeches to show us how to catch birds by putting salt on
their tails, though they must know it is impossible to do it. And
amazing are they too, who, like Maupassant, Rod, and many others,
see clearly all the horror of war, all the inconsistency of men
not doing what is needful, right, and beneficial for them to do;
who lament over the tragedy of life, and do not see that the whole
tragedy is at an end directly men, ceasing to take account of any
unnecessary considerations, refuse to do what is hateful and
disastrous to them. They are amazing people truly, but those who,
like De Vogüé and others, who, professing the doctrine of
evolution, regard war as not only inevitable, but beneficial and
therefore desirable--they are terrible, hideous, in their moral
perversion. The others, at least, say that they hate evil, and
love good, but these openly declare that good and evil do not
exist.

All discussion of the possibility of re-establishing peace instead
of everlasting war--is the pernicious sentimentality of
phrasemongers. There is a law of evolution by which it follows
that I must live and act in an evil way; what is to be done? I am
an educated man, I know the law of evolution, and therefore I will
act in an evil way. "ENTRONS AU PALAIS DE LA GUERRE." There is
the law of evolution, and therefore there is neither good nor
evil, and one must live for the sake of one's personal existence,
leaving the rest to the action of the law of evolution. This is
the last word of refined culture, and with it, of that
overshadowing of conscience which has come upon the educated
classes of our times. The desire of the educated classes to
support the ideas they prefer, and the order of existence based on
them, has attained its furthest limits. They lie, and delude
themselves, and one another, with the subtlest forms of deception,
simply to obscure, to deaden conscience.

Instead of transforming their life into harmony with their
conscience, they try by every means to stifle its voice. But
it is in darkness that the light begins to shine, and so the
light is rising upon our epoch.




CHAPTER VII.

SIGNIFICANCE OF COMPULSORY SERVICE.

Universal Compulsory Service is not a Political Accident, but the
Furthest Limit of the Contradiction Inherent in the Social
Conception of Life--Origin of Authority in Society--Basis of
Authority is Physical Violence--To be Able to Perform its Acts
of Violence Authority Needs a Special Organization--The Army--
Authority, that is, Violence, is the Principle which is
Destroying the Social Conception of Life--Attitude of Authority
to the Masses, that is, Attitude of Government to Working
Oppressed Classes--Governments Try to Foster in Working Classes
the Idea that State Force is Necessary to Defend Them from
External Enemies--But the Army is Principally Needed to Preserve
Government from its own Subjects--The Working Classes--Speech of
M. de Caprivi--All Privileges of Ruling Classes Based on
Violence--The Increase of Armies up to Point of Universal
Service--Universal Compulsory Service Destroys all the
Advantages of Social Life, which Government is Intended to
Preserve--Compulsory Service is the Furthest Limit of
Submission, since in Name of the State it Requires Sacrifice of
all that can be Precious to a Man--Is Government Necessary?--The
Sacrifices Demanded by Government in Compulsory Service have No
Longer any Reasonable Basis--And there is More Advantage to be
Gained by not Submitting to the Demands of the State than by
Submitting to Them.


Educated people of the upper classes are trying to stifle the
ever-growing sense of the necessity of transforming the existing
social order. But life, which goes on growing more complex, and
developing in the same direction, and increases the
inconsistencies and the sufferings of men, brings them to the
limit beyond which they cannot go. This furthest limit of
inconsistency is universal compulsory military service.

It is usually supposed that universal military service and the
increased armaments connected with it, as well as the resulting
increase of taxes and national debts, are a passing phenomenon,
produced by the particular political situation of Europe, and that
it may be removed by certain political combinations without any
modification of the inner order of life.

This is absolutely incorrect. Universal military service is only
the internal inconsistency inherent in the social conception of
life, carried to its furthest limits, and becoming evident when a
certain stage of material development is reached.

The social conception of life, we have seen, consists in the
transfer of the aim of life from the individual to groups and
their maintenance--to the tribe, family, race, or state.

In the social conception of life it is supposed that since the aim
of life is found in groups of individuals, individuals will
voluntarily sacrifice their own interests for the interests of the
group. And so it has been, and still is, in fact, in certain
groups, the distinction being that they are the most primitive
forms of association in the family or tribe or race, or even in
the patriarchal state. Through tradition handed down by education
and supported by religious sentiment, individuals without
compulsion merged their interests in the interest of the group and
sacrificed their own good for the general welfare.

But the more complex and the larger societies become, and
especially the more often conquest becomes the cause of the
amalgamation of people into a state, the more often individuals
strive to attain their own aims at the public expense, and the
more often it becomes necessary to restrain these insubordinate
individuals by recourse to authority, that is, to violence. The
champions of the social conception of life usually try to connect
the idea of authority, that is, of violence, with the idea of
moral influence, but this connection is quite impossible.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.