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The Kingdom of God is within you

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




This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian
society. He feels that all that he does himself and that is done
around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed
to his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and
more unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity.

It is not possible that we modern men, with the Christian sense of
human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body, with our
need for peaceful association and unity between nations, should
really go on living in such a way that every joy, every
gratification we have is bought by the sufferings, by the lives of
our brother men, and moreover, that we should be every instant
within a hair's-breadth of falling on one another, nation against
nation, like wild beasts, mercilessly destroying men's lives and
labor, only because some benighted diplomatist or ruler says or
writes some stupidity to another equally benighted diplomatist or
ruler.

It is impossible. Yet every man of our day sees that this is so
and awaits the calamity. And the situation becomes more and more
insupportable.

And as the man who is dreaming does not believe that what appears
to him can be truly the reality and tries to wake up to the actual
real world again, so the average man of modern days cannot in the
bottom of his heart believe that the awful position in which he is
placed and which is growing worse and worse can be the reality,
and tries to wake up to a true, real life, as it exists in his
conscience.

And just as the dreamer need only make a moral effort and ask
himself, "Isn't it a dream?" and the situation which seemed to him
so hopeless will instantly disappear, and he will wake up to
peaceful and happy reality, so the man of the modern world need
only make a moral effort to doubt the reality presented to him by
his own hypocrisy and the general hypocrisy around him, and to ask
himself, "Isn't it all a delusion?" and he will at once, like the
dreamer awakened, feel himself transported from an imaginary and
dreadful world to the true, calm, and happy reality.

And to do this a man need accomplish no great feats or exploits.
He need only make a moral effort.

But can a man make this effort?

According to the existing theory so essential to support
hypocrisy, man is not free and cannot change his life.

"Man cannot change his life, because he is not free. He is not
free, because all his actions are conditioned by previously
existing causes. And whatever the man may do there are always
some causes or other through which he does these or those acts,
and therefore man cannot be free and change his life," say the
champions of the metaphysics of hypocrisy. And they would be
perfectly right if man were a creature without conscience and
incapable of moving toward the truth; that is to say, if after
recognizing a new truth, man always remained at the same stage of
moral development. But man is a creature with a conscience and
capable of attaining a higher and higher degree of truth. And
therefore even if man is not free as regards performing these or
those acts because there exists a previous cause for every act,
the very causes of his acts, consisting as they do for the man of
conscience of the recognition of this or that truth, are within
his own control.

So that though man may not be free as regards the performance of
his actions, he is free as regards the foundation on which they
are performed. Just as the mechanician who is not free to modify
the movement of his locomotive when it is in motion, is free to
regulate the machine beforehand so as to determine what the
movement is to be.

Whatever the conscious man does, he acts just as he does, and not
otherwise, only because he recognizes that to act as he is acting
is in accord with the truth, or because he has recognized it at
some previous time, and is now only through inertia, through
habit, acting in accordance with his previous recognition of
truth.

In any case, the cause of his action is not to be found in any
given previous fact, but in the consciousness of a given relation
to truth, and the consequent recognition of this or that fact as a
sufficient basis for action.

Whether a man eats or does not eat, works or rests, runs risks or
avoids them, if he has a conscience he acts thus only because he
considers it right and rational, because he considers that to act
thus is in harmony with truth, or else because he has made this
reflection in the past.

The recognition or non-recognition of a certain truth depends not
on external causes, but on certain other causes within the man
himself. So that at times under external conditions apparently
very favorable for the recognition of truth, one man will not
recognize it, and another, on the contrary, under the most
unfavorable conditions will, without apparent cause, recognize it.
As it is said in the Gospel, "No man can come unto me, except the
Father which hath sent me draw him." That is to say, the
recognition of truth, which is the cause of all the manifestations
of human life, does not depend on external phenomena, but on
certain inner spiritual characteristics of the man which escape
our observation.

And therefore man, though not free in his acts, always feels
himself free in what is the motive of his acts--the recognition or
non-recognition of truth. And he feels himself independent not
only of facts external to his own personality, but even of his own
actions.

Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act
contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to
recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing
to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and
justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as
wrong and censure himself for it.

Thus a gambler or a drunkard who does not resist temptation and
yields to his passion is still free to recognize gambling and
drunkenness as wrong or to regard them as a harmless pastime. In
the first case even if he does not at once get over his passion,
he gets the more free from it the more sincerely he recognizes the
truth about it; in the second case he will be strengthened in his
vice and will deprive himself of every possibility of shaking it
off.

In the same way a man who has made his escape alone from a house
on fire, not having had the courage to save his friend, remains
free, recognizing the truth that a man ought to save the life of
another even at the risk of his own, to regard his action as bad
and to censure himself for it, or, not recognizing this truth, to
regard his action as natural and necessary and to justify it to
himself. In the first case, if he recognizes the truth in spite
of his departure from it, he prepares for himself in the future a
whole series of acts of self-sacrifice necessarily flowing from
this recognition of the truth; in the second case, a whole series
of egoistic acts.

Not that a man is always free to recognize or to refuse to
recognize every truth. There are truths which he has recognized
long before or which have been handed down to him by education and
tradition and accepted by him on faith, and to follow these truths
has become a habit, a second nature with him; and there are
truths, only vaguely, as it were distantly, apprehended by him.
The man is not free to refuse to recognize the first, nor to
recognize the second class of truths. But there are truths of a
third kind, which have not yet become an unconscious motive of
action, but yet have been revealed so clearly to him that he
cannot pass them by, and is inevitably obliged to do one thing or
the other, to recognize or not to recognize them. And it is in
regard to these truths that the man's freedom manifests itself.

Every man during his life finds himself in regard to truth in the
position of a man walking in the darkness with light thrown before
him by the lantern he carries. He does not see what is not yet
lighted up by the lantern; he does not see what he has passed
which is hidden in the darkness; but at every stage of his journey
he sees what is lighted up by the lantern, and he can always
choose one side or the other of the road.

There are always unseen truths not yet revealed to the man's
intellectual vision, and there are other truths outlived,
forgotten, and assimilated by him, and there are also certain
truths that rise up before the light of his reason and require his
recognition. And it is in the recognition or non-recognition of
these truths that what we call his freedom is manifested.

All the difficulty and seeming insolubility of the question of the
freedom of man results from those who tried to solve the question
imagining man as stationary in his relation to the truth.

Man is certainly not free if we imagine him stationary, and if we
forget that the life of a man and of humanity is nothing but a
continual movement from darkness into light, from a lower stage of
truth to a higher, from a truth more alloyed with errors to a
truth more purified from them.

Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all, and in the same
way he would not be free and would not even have any idea of
freedom if the whole truth which was to guide him in life had been
revealed once for all to him in all its purity without any
admixture of error.

But man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual
man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same
way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree
of truth, and growing more and more free from error.

And therefore men are in a threefold relation to truth. Some
truths have been so assimilated by them that they have become the
unconscious basis of action, others are only just on the point of
being revealed to him, and a third class, though not yet
assimilated by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient
clearness to force him to decide either to recognize them or to
refuse to recognize them.

These, then, are the truths which man is free to recognize or to
refuse to recognize.

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting
independently of the progress of life and the influences arising
from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the
truth revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful
participator in the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of
the world; or on the other hand for refusing to recognize the
truth, and so being a miserable and reluctant slave dragged
whither he has no desire to go.

Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to
move, but reveals also the only way along which it can move. And
therefore all men must willingly or unwillingly move along the way
of truth, some spontaneously accomplishing the task set them in
life, others submitting involuntarily to the law of life. Man's
freedom lies in the power of this choice.

This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to
men that they do not notice it. Some--the determinists--consider
this amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it
at all. Others--the champions of complete free will--keep their
eyes fixed on their hypothetical free will and neglect this which
seemed to them such a trivial degree of freedom.

This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance of
the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems hardly
freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing or
unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be
inevitably forced to carry it out in life.

A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain
from moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will
knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or
not. But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be
dragged with it. And so it is with man.

Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison
with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only
freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness
attainable by man.

And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of
accomplishing the divine work of the life of the world.

According to Christ's doctrine, the man who sees the significance
of life in the domain in which it is not free, in the domain of
effects, that is, of acts, has not the true life. According to
the Christian doctrine, that man is living in the truth who has
transported his life to the domain in which it is free--the domain
of causes, that is, the knowledge and recognition, the profession
and realization in life of revealed truth.

Devoting his life to works of the flesh, a man busies himself with
actions depending on temporary causes outside himself. He himself
does nothing really, he merely seems to be doing something. In
reality all the acts which seem to be his are the work of a higher
power, and he is not the creator of his own life, but the slave of
it. Devoting his life to the recognition and fulfillment of the
truth revealed to him, he identifies himself with the source of
universal life and accomplishes acts not personal, and dependent
on conditions of space and time, but acts unconditioned by
previous causes, acts which constitute the causes of everything
else, and have an infinite, unlimited significance.

"The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it
by force." (Matt. xi. 12.)

It is this violent effort to rise above external conditions to the
recognition and realization of truth by which the kingdom of
heaven is taken, and it is this effort of violence which must and
can be made in our times.

Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble
themselves about the general external conditions in which they are
not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste
on those material things to that in which they are free, to the
recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and
to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and
hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end
at once of the false organization of life which makes men
miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future.
And then the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that
first stage of it for which men are ready now by the degree of
development of their conscience.

Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is
saturated with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a
slight effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth
already revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds,
thousands, millions of men, that a public opinion consistent with
conscience may be established, and through this change of public
opinion the whole order of life may be transformed. And it
depends upon us to make this effort.

Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian
truth which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and
forces itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending
that we do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in
what it demands from us above all else; only let us accept and
boldly profess the truth to which we are called, and we should
find at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the
same position as we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread
as we do to stand alone in recognizing it, and like us are only
waiting for others to recognize it also.

Only let men cease to be hypocrites, and they would at once see
that this cruel social organization, which holds them in bondage,
and is represented to them as something stable, necessary, and
ordained of God, is already tottering and is only propped up by
the falsehood of hypocrisy, with which we, and others like us,
support it.

But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to break
down the existing organization of life, have we the right to
destroy it, without knowing clearly what we shall set up in its
place? What will become of human society when the existing order
of things is at an end?

"What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we
are abandoning?

"Fear will come upon us--a void, a vast emptiness, freedom--how
are we to go forward not knowing whither, how face loss, not
seeing hope of gain? . . . If Columbus had reasoned thus he
would never have weighed anchor. It was madness to set off
upon the ocean, not knowing the route, on the ocean on which no
one had sailed, to sail toward a land whose existence was
doubtful. By this madness he discovered a new world.
Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply transfer
themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better
one--it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no
one to get humanity's new dwelling ready for it. The future is
even worse than the ocean--there is nothing there--it will be
what men and circumstances make it.

"If you are content with the old world, try to preserve it, it
is very sick and cannot hold out much longer. But if you
cannot bear to live in everlasting dissonance between your
beliefs and your life, thinking one thing and doing another,
get out of the mediaeval whited sepulchers, and face your
fears. I know very well it is not easy.

"It is not a little thing to cut one's self off from all to
which a man has been accustomed from his birth, with which he
has grown up to maturity. Men are ready for tremendous
sacrifices, but not for those which life demands of them. Are
they ready to sacrifice modern civilization, their manner of
life, their religion, the received conventional morality?

"Are we ready to give up all the results we have attained with
such effort, results of which we have been boasting for three
centuries; to give up every convenience and charm of our
existence, to prefer savage youth to the senile decay of
civilization, to pull down the palace raised for us by our
ancestors only for the pleasure of having a hand in the
founding of a new house, which will doubtless be built long
after we are gone?" (Herzen, vol. v. p. 55.)

Thus wrote almost half a century ago the Russian writer, who with
prophetic insight saw clearly then, what even the most
unreflecting man sees to-day, the impossibility, that is, of life
continuing on its old basis, and the necessity of establishing new
forms of life.

It is clear now from the very simplest, most commonplace point of
view, that it is madness to remain under the roof of a building
which cannot support its weight, and that we must leave it. And
indeed it is difficult to imagine a position more wretched than
that of the Christian world to-day, with its nations armed against
one another, with its constantly increasing taxation to maintain
its armies, with the hatred of the working class for the rich ever
growing more intense, with the Damocles sword of war forever
hanging over the heads of all, ready every instant to fall,
certain to fall sooner or later.

Hardly could any revolution be more disastrous for the great mass
of the population than the present order or rather disorder of our
life, with its daily sacrifices to exhausting and unnatural toil,
to poverty, drunkenness, and profligacy, with all the horrors of
the war that is at hand, which will swallow up in one year more
victims than all the revolutions of the century.

What will become of humanity if each of us performs the duty God
demands of us through the conscience implanted within us? Will
not harm come if, being wholly in the power of a master, I carry
out, in the workshop erected and directed by him, the orders he
gives me, strange though they may seem to me who do not know the
Master's final aims?

But it is not even this question "What will happen?" that agitates
men when they hesitate to fulfill the Master's will. They are
troubled by the question how to live without those habitual
conditions of life which we call civilization, culture, art, and
science. We feel ourselves all the burdensomeness of life as it
is; we see also that this organization of life must inevitably be
our ruin, if it continues. At the same time we want the
conditions of our life which arise out of this organization--our
civilization, culture, art, and science--to remain intact. It is
as though a man, living in an old house and suffering from cold
and all sorts of inconvenience in it, knowing, too, that it is on
the point of falling to pieces, should consent to its being
rebuilt, but only on the condition that he should not be required
to leave it: a condition which is equivalent to refusing to have
it rebuilt at all.

"But what if I leave the house and give up every convenience for a
time, and the new house is not built, or is built on a different
plan so that I do not find in it the comforts to which I am
accustomed?" But seeing that the materials and the builders are
here, there is every likelihood that the new house will on the
contrary be better built than the old one. And at the same time,
there is not only the likelihood but the certainty that the old
house will fall down and crush those who remain within it.
Whether the old habitual conditions of life are supported, or
whether they are abolished and altogether new and better
conditions arise; in any case, there is no doubt we shall be
forced to leave the old forms of life which have become impossible
and fatal, and must go forward to meet the future.

"Civilization, art, science, culture, will disappear!"

Yes, but all these we know are only various manifestations of
truth, and the change that is before us is only to be made for the
sake of a closer attainment and realization of truth. How then
can the manifestations of truth disappear through our realizing
it? These manifestations will be different, higher, better, but
they will not cease to be. Only what is false in them will be
destroyed; all the truth there was in them will only be stronger
and more flourishing.

Take thought, oh, men, and have faith in the Gospel, in whose
teaching is your happiness. If you do not take thought, you will
perish just as the men perished, slain by Pilate, or crushed by
the tower of Siloam; as millions of men have perished, slayers and
slain, executing and executed, torturers and tortured alike, and
as the man foolishly perished, who filled his granaries full and
made ready for a long life and died the very night that he planned
to begin his life. Take thought and have faith in the Gospel,
Christ said eighteen hundred years ago, and he says it with even
greater force now that the calamities foretold by him have come to
pass, and the senselessness of our life has reached the furthest
point of suffering and madness.

Nowadays, after so many centuries of fruitless efforts to make our
life secure by the pagan organization of life, it must be evident
to everyone that all efforts in that direction only introduce
fresh dangers into personal and social life, and do not render it
more secure in any way.

Whatever names we dignify ourselves with, whatever uniforms we
wear, whatever priests we anoint ourselves before, however many
millions we possess, however many guards are stationed along our
road, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-
called criminals, revolutionists, and anarchists we punish,
whatever exploits we have performed, whatever states we may have
founded, fortresses and towers we may have erected--from Babel to
the Eiffel Tower--there are two inevitable conditions of life,
confronting all of us, which destroy its whole meaning; (1) death,
which may at any moment pounce upon each of us; and (2) the
transitoriness of all our works, which so soon pass away and leave
no trace. Whatever we may do--found companies, build palaces and
monuments, write songs and poems--it is all not for long time.
Soon it passes away, leaving no trace. And therefore, however we
may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the
significance of our life cannot lie in our personal fleshly
existence, the prey of incurable suffering and inevitable death,
nor in any social institution or organization. Whoever you may be
who are reading these lines, think of your position and of your
duties--not of your position as landowner, merchant, judge,
emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which has been
temporarily allotted you by men, and not of the imaginary duties
laid on you by those positions, but of your real positions in
eternity as a creature who at the will of Someone has been called
out of unconsciousness after an eternity of non-existence to which
you may return at any moment at his will. Think of your duties--
not your supposed duties as a landowner to your estate, as a
merchant to your business, as emperor, minister, or official to
the state, but of your real duties, the duties that follow from
your real position as a being called into life and endowed with
reason and love.

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