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The Kingdom of God is within you

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




William is ruling over the Germans, Stambouloff over the
Bulgarians, the Russian officials over the Russian people. The
Germans have dominated the Italians, now they dominate the
Hungarians and Slavonians; the Turks have dominated and still
dominate the Slavonians and Greeks; the English dominate the
Hindoos, the Mongolians dominate the Chinese.

So that whether governmental violence is suppressed or not, the
position of good men, in being oppressed by the wicked, will be
unchanged.

To terrify men with the prospect of the wicked dominating the good
is impossible, for that is just what has always been, and is now,
and cannot but be.

The whole history of pagan times is nothing but a recital of the
incidents and means by which the more wicked gained possession of
power over the less wicked, and retained it by cruelties and
deceptions, ruling over the good under the pretense of guarding
the right and protecting the good from the wicked. All the
revolutions in history are only examples of the more wicked
seizing power and oppressing the good. In declaring that if their
authority did not exist the more wicked would oppress the good,
the ruling authorities only show their disinclination to let other
oppressors come to power who would like to snatch it from them.

But in asserting this they only accuse themselves, say that their
power, i. e., violence, is needed to defend men from other
possible oppressors in the present or the future [see footnote].

[Footnote: I may quote in this connection the amazingly
naive and comic declaration of the Russian authorities,
the oppressors of other nationalities--the Poles, the
Germans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews. The
Russian Government has oppressed its subjects for
centuries, and has never troubled itself about the
Little Russians of Poland, or the Letts of the Baltic
provinces, or the Russian peasants, exploited by everyone.
And now it has all of a sudden become the champion of
the oppressed--the very oppressed whom it is itself
oppressing.]

The weakness of the use of violence lies in the fact that all the
arguments brought forward by oppressors in their own defense can
with even better reason be advanced against them. They plead the
danger of violence--most often imagined in the future--but they
are all the while continuing to practice actual violence
themselves. "You say that men used to pillage and murder in the
past, and that you are afraid that they will pillage and murder
one another if your power were no more. That may happen--or it
may not happen. But the fact that you ruin thousands of men in
prisons, fortresses, galleys, and exile, break up millions of
families and ruin millions of men, physically as well as morally,
in the army, that fact is not an imaginary but a real act of
violence, which, according to your own argument, one ought to
oppose by violence. And so you are yourselves these wicked men
against whom, according to your own argument, it is absolutely
necessary to use violence," the oppressed are sure to say to their
oppressors. And non-Christian men always do say, and think and
act on this reasoning. If the oppressed are more wicked than
their oppressors, they attack them and try to overthrow them; and
in favorable circumstances they succeed in overthrowing them, or
what is more common, they rise into the ranks of the oppressors
and assist in their acts of violence.

So that the very violence which the champions of government hold
up as a terror--pretending that except for its oppressive power
the wicked would oppress the good--has really always existed and
will exist in human society. And therefore the suppression of
state violence cannot in any case be the cause of increased
oppression of the good by the wicked.

If state violence ceased, there would be acts of violence perhaps
on the part of different people, other than those who had done
deeds of violence before. But the total amount of violence could
not in any case be increased by the mere fact of power passing
from one set of men to another.

"State violence can only cease when there are no more wicked men
in society," say the champions of the existing order of things,
assuming in this of course that since there will always be wicked
men, it can never cease. And that would be right enough if it
were the case, as they assume, that the oppressors are always the
best of men, and that the sole means of saving men from evil is by
violence. Then, indeed, violence could never cease. But since
this is not the case, but quite the contrary, that it is not the
better oppress the worse, but the worse oppress the better, and
since violence will never put an end to evil, and there is,
moreover, another means of putting an end to it, the assertion
that violence will never cease is incorrect. The use of violence
grows less and less and evidently must disappear. But this will
not come to pass, as some champions of the existing order imagine,
through the oppressed becoming better and better under the
influence of government (on the contrary, its influence causes
their continual degradation), but through the fact that all men
are constantly growing better and better of themselves, so that
even the most wicked, who are in power, will become less and less
wicked, till at last they are so good as to be incapable of using
violence.

The progressive movement of humanity does not proceed from the
better elements in society seizing power and making those who are
subject to them better, by forcible means, as both conservatives
and revolutionists imagine. It proceeds first and principally
from the fact that all men in general are advancing steadily and
undeviatingly toward a more and more conscious assimilation of the
Christian theory of life; and secondly, from the fact that, even
apart from conscious spiritual life, men are unconsciously brought
into a more Christian attitude to life by the very process of one
set of men grasping the power, and again being replaced by others.

The worse elements of society, gaining possession of power, under
the sobering influence which always accompanies power, grow less
and less cruel, and become incapable of using cruel forms of
violence. Consequently others are able to seize their place, and
the same process of softening and, so to say, unconscious
Christianizing goes on with them. It is something like the
process of ebullition. The majority of men, having the non-
Christian view of life, always strive for power and struggle to
obtain it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest, the
least Christian elements of society overpower the most gentle,
well-disposed, and Christian, and rise by means of their violence
to the upper ranks of society. And in them is Christ's prophecy
fulfilled: "Woe to you that are rich! woe unto you that are full!
woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!" For the men
who are in possession of power and all that results from it--glory
and wealth--and have attained the various aims they set before
themselves, recognize the vanity of it all and return to the
position from which they came. Charles V., John IV., Alexander I.,
recognizing the emptiness and the evil of power, renounced it
because they were incapable of using violence for their own
benefit as they had done.

But they are not the solitary examples of this recognition of the
emptiness and evil of power. Everyone who gains a position of
power he has striven for, every general, every minister, every
millionaire, every petty official who has gained the place he has
coveted for ten years, every rich peasant who has laid by some
hundred rubles, passes through this unconscious process of
softening.

And not only individual men, but societies of men, whole nations,
pass through this process.

The seductions of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it
gives, seem a sufficient aim for men's efforts only so long as
they are unattained. Directly a man reaches them he sees all
their vanity, and they gradually lose all their power of
attraction. They are like clouds which have form and beauty only
from the distance; directly one ascends into them, all their
splendor vanishes.

Men who are in possession of power and wealth, sometimes even
those who have gained for themselves their power and wealth, but
more often their heirs, cease to be so eager for power, and so
cruel in their efforts to obtain it.

Having learnt by experience, under the operation of Christian
influence, the vanity of all that is gained by violence, men
sometimes in one, sometimes in several generations lose the vices
which are generated by the passion for power and wealth. They
become less cruel and so cannot maintain their position, and are
expelled from power by others less Christian and more wicked.
Thus they return to a rank of society lower in position, but
higher in morality, raising thereby the average level of Christian
consciousness in men. But directly after them again the worst,
coarsest, least Christian elements of society rise to the top, and
are subjected to the same process as their predecessors, and again
in a generation or so, seeing the vanity of what is gained by
violence, and having imbibed Christianity, they come down again
among the oppressed, and their place is again filled by new
oppressors, less brutal than former oppressors, though more so
than those they oppress. So that, although power remains
externally the same as it was, with every change of the men in
power there is a constant increase of the number of men who have
been brought by experience to the necessity of assimilating the
Christian conception of life, and with every change--though it is
the coarsest, crudest, and least Christian who come into
possession of power, they are less coarse and cruel and more
Christian than their predecessors when they gained possession of
power.

Power selects and attracts the worst elements of society,
transforms them, improves and softens them, and returns them to
society.

"Such is the process by means of which Christianity, in spite of
the hindrances to human progress resulting from the violence of
power, gains more and more hold of men. Christianity penetrates
to the consciousness of men, not only in spite of the violence of
power, but also by means of it.

And therefore the assertion of the champions of the state, that if
the power of government were suppressed the wicked would oppress
the good, not only fails to show that that is to be dreaded, since
it is just what happens now, but proves, on the contrary, that it
is governmental power which enables the wicked to oppress the
good, and is the evil most desirable to suppress, and that it is
being gradually suppressed in the natural course of things.

"But if it be true that governmental power will disappear when
those in power become so Christian that they renounce power of
their own accord, and there are no men found willing to take their
place, and even if this process is already going on," say the
champions of the existing order, "when will that come to pass?
If, after eighteen hundred years, there are still so many eager
for power, and so few anxious to obey, there seems no likelihood
of its happening very soon--or indeed of its ever happening at
all.

"Even if there are, as there have always been, some men who prefer
renouncing power to enjoying it, the mass of men in reserve, who
prefer dominion to subjection, is so great that it is difficult to
imagine a time when the number will be exhausted.

"Before this Christianizing process could so affect all men one
after another that they would pass from the heathen to the
Christian conception of life, and would voluntarily abandon power
and wealth, it would be necessary that all the coarse, half-savage
men, completely incapable of appreciating Christianity or acting
upon it, of whom there are always a great many in every Christian
society, should be converted to Christianity. More than this, all
the savage and absolutely non-Christian peoples, who are so
numerous outside the Christian world, must also be converted. And
therefore, even if we admit that this Christianizing process will
some day affect everyone, still, judging by the amount of progress
it has made in eighteen hundred years, it will be many times
eighteen centuries before it will do so. And it is therefore
impossible and unprofitable to think at present of anything so
impracticable as the suppression of authority. We ought only to
try to put authority into the best hands."

And this criticism would be perfectly just, if the transition from
one conception of life to another were only accomplished by the
single process of all men, separately and successively, realizing,
each for himself, the emptiness of power, and reaching Christian
truth by the inner spiritual path. That process goes on
unceasingly, and men are passing over to Christianity one after
another by this inner way.

But there is also another external means by which men reach
Christianity and by which the transition is less gradual.

This transition from one organization of life to another is not
accomplished by degrees like the sand running through the
hourglass grain after grain. It is more like the water filling a
vessel floating on water. At first the water only runs in slowly
on one side, but as the vessel grows heavier it suddenly begins to
sink, and almost instantaneously fills with water.

It is just the same with the transitions of mankind from one
conception--and so from one organization of life--to another. At
first only gradually and slowly, one after another, men attain to
the new truth by the inner spiritual way, and follow it out in
life. But when a certain point in the diffusion of the truth has
been reached, it is suddenly assimilated by everyone, not by the
inner way, but, as it were, involuntarily.

That is why the champions of the existing order are wrong in
arguing that, since only a small section of mankind has passed
over to Christianity in eighteen centuries, it must be many times
eighteen centuries before all the remainder do the same. 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.

But seeing that, to begin with, men do not stand still, but are
steadily advancing to a greater recognition of the truth and a
closer adaptation of their life to it, and secondly, all men in
varying degrees according to their age, their education, and their
race are capable of understanding the new truths, at first those
who are nearest to the men who have attained the new truth by
spiritual intuition, slowly and one by one, but afterward more and
more quickly, pass over to the new truth. Thus the number of men
who accept the new truth becomes greater and greater, and the
truth becomes more and more comprehensible.

And thus more confidence is aroused in the remainder, who are at a
less advanced stage of capacity for understanding the truth. And
it becomes easier for them to grasp it, and an increasing number
accept it.

And so the movement goes on more and more quickly, and on an ever-
increasing scale, like a snowball, till at last a public opinion
in harmony with the new truth is created, and then the whole mass
of men is carried over all at once by its momentum to the new
truth and establishes a new social order in accordance with it.

Those men who accept a new truth when it has gained a certain
degree of acceptance, always pass over all at once in masses.
They are like the ballast with which every ship is always loaded,
at once to keep it upright and enable it to sail properly. If
there were no ballast, the ship would not be low enough in the
water, and would shift its position at the slightest change in its
conditions. This ballast, which strikes one at first as
superfluous and even as hindering the progress of the vessel, is
really indispensable to its good navigation.

It is the same with the mass of mankind, who not individually, but
always in a mass, under the influence of a new social idea pass
all at once from one organization of life to another. This mass
always hinders, by its inertia, frequent and rapid revolutions in
the social order which have not been sufficiently proved by human
experience. And it delays every truth a long while till it has
stood the test of prolonged struggles, and has thoroughly
permeated the consciousness of humanity.

And that is why it is a mistake to say that because only a very
small minority of men has assimilated Christianity in eighteen
centuries, it must take many times as many centuries for all
mankind to assimilate it, and that since that time is so far off
we who live in the present need not even think about it. It is a
mistake, because the men at a lower stage of culture, the, men and
the nations who are represented as the obstacle to the realization
of the Christian order of life, are the very people who always
pass over in masses all at once to any truth that has once been
recognized by public opinion.

And therefore the transformation of human life, through which men
in power will renounce it, and there will be none anxious to take
their place, will not come only by all men consciously and
separately assimilating the Christian conception of life. It will
come when a Christian public opinion has arisen, so definite and
easily comprehensible as to reach the whole of the inert mass,
which is not able to attain truth by its own intuition, and
therefore is always under the sway of public opinion.

Public opinion arises spontaneously and spreads for hundreds and
thousands of years, but it has the power of working on men by
infection, and with great rapidity gains a hold on great numbers
of men.

"But," say the champions of the existing order, "even if it is
true that public opinion, when it has attained a certain degree of
definiteness and precision, can convert the inert mass of men
outside the Christian world--the non-Christian races--as well as
the coarse and depraved who are living in its midst, what proofs
have we that this Christian public opinion has arisen and is able
to replace force and render it unnecessary.

"We must not give up force, by which the existing order is
maintained, and by relying on the vague and impalpable influence
of public opinion expose Christians to the risk of being pillaged,
murdered, and outraged in every way by the savages inside and
outside of civilized society.

"Since, even supported by the use of force, we can hardly control
the non-Christian elements which are always ready to pour down on
us and to destroy all that has been gained by civilization, is it
likely that public opinion could take the place of force and
render us secure? And besides, how are we to find the moment when
public opinion has become strong enough to be able to replace the
use of force? To reject the use of force and trust to public
opinion to defend us would be as insane as to remove all weapons
of defense in a menagerie, and then to let loose all the lions and
tigers, relying on the fact that the animals seemed peaceable when
kept in their cages and held in check by red-hot irons. And
therefore people in power, who have been put in positions of
authority by fate or by God, have not the right to run the risk,
ruining all that has been gained by civilization, just because
they want to try an experiment to see whether public opinion is or
is not able to replace the protection given by authority."

A French writer, forgotten now, Alphonse Karr, said somewhere,
trying to show the impossibility of doing away with the death
penalty: "Que messieurs les assassins commencent par nous donner
l'exemple." Often have I heard this BON MOT repeated by men who
thought that these words were a witty and convincing argument
against the abolition of capital punishment. And yet all the
erroneousness of the argument of those who consider that
governments cannot give up the use of force till all people are
capable of doing the same, could not be more clearly expressed
than it is in that epigram.

"Let the murderers," say the champions of state violence, "set us
the example by giving up murder and then we will give it up." But
the murderers say just the same, only with much more right. They
say: "Let those who have undertaken to teach us and guide us set
us the example of giving up legal murder, and then we will imitate
them." And they say this, not as a jest, but seriously, because
it is the actual state of the case.

"We cannot give up the use of violence, because we are surrounded
by violent ruffians." Nothing in our days hinders the progress of
humanity and the establishment of the organization corresponding
to its present development more than this false reasoning. Those
in authority are convinced that men are only guided and only
progress through the use of force, and therefore they confidently
make use of it to support the existing organization. The existing
order is maintained, not by force, but by public opinion, the
action of which is disturbed by the use of force. So that the
effect of using force is to disturb and to weaken the very thing
it tries to maintain.

Violence, even in the most favorable case, when it is not used
simply for some personal aims of those in power, always punishes
under the one inelastic formula of the law what has long before
been condemned by public opinion. But there is this difference,
that while public opinion censures and condemns all the acts
opposed to the moral law, including the most varied cases in its
reprobation, the law which rests on violence only condemns and
punishes a certain very limited range of acts, and by so doing
seems to justify all other acts of the same kind which do not come
under its scope.

Public opinion ever since the time of Moses has regarded
covetousness, profligacy, and cruelty as wrong, and censured them
accordingly. And it condemns every kind of manifestation of
covetousness, not only the appropriation of the property of others
by force or fraud or trickery, but even the cruel abuse of wealth;
it condemns every form of profligacy, whether with concubine,
slave, divorced woman, or even one's own wife; it condemns every
kind of cruelty, whether shown in blows, in ill-treatment, or in
murder, not only of men, but even of animals. The law resting on
force only punishes certain forms of covetousness, such as robbery
and swindling, certain forms of profligacy and cruelty, such as
conjugal infidelity, murder, and wounding. And in this way it
seems to countenance all the manifestations of covetousness,
profligacy, and cruelty which do not come under its narrow
definition.

But besides corrupting public opinion, the use of force leads men
to the fatal conviction that they progress, not through the
spiritual impulse which impels them to the attainment of truth and
its realization in life, and which constitutes the only source of
every progressive movement of humanity, but by means of violence,
the very force which, far from leading men to truth, always
carries them further away from it. This is a fatal error, because
it leads men to neglect the chief force underlying their life--
their spiritual activity--and to turn all their attention and
energy to the use of violence, which is superficial, sluggish, and
most generally pernicious in its action.

They make the same mistake as men who, trying to set a steam
engine in motion, should turn its wheels round with their hands,
not suspecting that the underlying cause of its movement was the
expansion of the steam, and not the motion of the wheels. By
turning the wheels by hand and by levers they could only produce a
semblance of movement, and meantime they would be wrenching the
wheels and so preventing their being fit for real movement.

That is just what people are doing who think to make men advance
by means of external force.

They say that the Christian life cannot be established without the
use of violence, because there are savage races outside the pale
of Christian societies in Africa and in Asia (there are some who
even represent the Chinese as a danger to civilization), and that
in the midst of Christian societies there are savage, corrupt,
and, according to the new theory of heredity, congenital
criminals. And violence, they say, is necessary to keep savages
and criminals from annihilating our civilization.

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