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The Kingdom of God is within you

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




These three views of life are as follows: First, embracing the
individual, or the animal view of life; second, embracing the
society, or the pagan view of life; third, embracing the whole
world, or the divine view of life.

In the first theory of life a man's life is limited to his one
individuality; the aim of life is the satisfaction of the will of
this individuality. In the second theory of life a man's life is
limited not to his own individuality, but to certain societies and
classes of individuals: to the tribe, the family, the clan, the
nation; the aim of life is limited to the satisfaction of the will
of those associations of individuals. In the third theory of life
a man's life is limited not to societies and classes of
individuals, but extends to the principle and source of life--to
God.

These three conceptions of life form the foundation of all the
religious that exist or have existed.

The savage recognizes life only in himself and his personal
desires. His interest in life is concentrated on himself alone.
The highest happiness for him is the fullest satisfaction of his
desires. The motive power of his life is personal enjoyment. His
religion consists in propitiating his deity and in worshiping his
gods, whom he imagines as persons living only for their personal
aims.

The civilized pagan recognizes life not in himself alone, but in
societies of men--in the tribe, the clan, the family, the kingdom
--and sacrifices his personal good for these societies. The
motive power of his life is glory. His religion consists in the
exaltation of the glory of those who are allied to him--the
founders of his family, his ancestors, his rulers--and in
worshiping gods who are exclusively protectors of his clan, his
family, his nation, his government [see Footnote].

[Footnote: The fact that so many varied forms of
existence, as the life of the family, of the tribe,
of the clan, of the state, and even the life of
humanity theoretically conceived by the Positivists,
are founded on this social or pagan theory of life,
does not destroy the unity of this theory of life.
All these varied forms of life are founded on the
same conception, that the life of the individual is
not a sufficient aim of life--that the meaning of
life can be found only in societies of individuals.

The man who holds the divine theory of life recognizes life not in
his own individuality, and not in societies of individualities (in
the family, the clan, the nation, the tribe, or the government),
but in the eternal undying source of life--in God; and to fulfill
the will of God he is ready to sacrifice his individual and family
and social welfare. The motor power of his life is love. And his
religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the principle of
the whole--God.

The whole historic existence of mankind is nothing else than the
gradual transition from the personal, animal conception of life to
the social conception of life, and from the social conception of
life to the divine conception of life. The whole history of the
ancient peoples, lasting through thousands of years and ending
with the history of Rome, is the history of the transition from
the animal, personal view of life to the social view of life. The
whole of history from the time of the Roman Empire and the
appearance of Christianity is the history of the transition,
through which we are still passing now, from the social view of
life to the divine view of life.

This view of life is the last, and founded upon it is the
Christian teaching, which is a guide for the whole of our life and
lies at the root of all our activity, practical and theoretic.
Yet men of what is falsely called science, pseudo-scientific men,
looking at it only in its externals, regard it as something
outgrown and having no value for us.

Reducing it to its dogmatic side only--to the doctrines of the
Trinity, the redemption, the miracles, the Church, the sacraments,
and so on--men of science regard it as only one of an immense
number of religions which have arisen among mankind, and now, they
say, having played out its part in history, it is outliving its
own age and fading away before the light of science and of true
enlightenment.

We come here upon what, in a large proportion of case, forms the
source of the grossest errors of mankind. Men on a lower level of
understanding, when brought into contact with phenomena of a
higher order, instead of making efforts to understand them, to
raise themselves up to the point of view from which they must look
at the subject, judge it from their lower standpoint, and the less
they understand what they are talking about, the more confidently
and unhesitatingly they pass judgment on it.

To the majority of learned then, looking at the living, moral
teaching of Christ from the lower standpoint of the conception of
life, this doctrine appears as nothing but very indefinite and
incongruous combination of Indian asceticism, Stoic and
Neoplatonic philosophy, and insubstantial anti-social visions,
which have no serious significance for our times. Its whole
meaning is concentrated for them in its external manifestations--
in Catholicism, Protestantism, in certain dogmas, or in the
conflict with the temporal power. Estimating the value of
Christianity by these phenomena is like a deaf man's judging of
the character and quality of music by seeing the movements of the
musicians.

The result of this is that all these scientific men, from Kant,
Strauss, Spencer, and Renan down, do not understand the meaning of
Christ's sayings, do not understand the significance, the object,
or the reason of their utterance, do not understand even the
question to which they form the answer. Yet, without even taking
the pains to enter into their meaning, they refuse, if unfavorably
disposed, to recognize any reasonableness in his doctrines; or if
they want to treat them indulgently, they condescend, from the
height of their superiority, to correct them, on the supposition
that Christ meant to express precisely their own ideas, but did
not succeed in doing so. They behave to his teaching much as
self-assertive people talk to those whom they consider beneath
them, often supplying their companions' words: "Yes, you mean to
say this and that." This correction is always with the aim of
reducing the teaching of the higher, divine conception of life to
the level of the lower, state conception of life.

They usually say that the moral teaching of Christianity is very
fine, but overexaggerated; that to make it quite right we must
reject all in it that is superfluous and unnecessary to our manner
of life. "And the doctrine that asks too much, and requires what
cannot he performed, is worse than that which requires of men what
is possible and consistent with their powers," these learned
interpreters of Christianity maintain, repeating what was long ago
asserted, and could not but be asserted, by those who crucified
the Teacher because they did not understand him--the Jews.

It seems that in the judgment of the learned men of our
time the Hebrew law--a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for
an eye--is a law of just retaliation, known to mankind five
thousand years before the law of holiness which Christ
taught in its place.

It seems that all that has been done by those men who understood
Christ's teaching literally and lived in accordance with such an
understanding of it, all that has been said and done by all true
Christians, by all the Christian saints, all that is now reforming
the world in the shape of socialism and communism--is simply
exaggeration, not worth talking about.

After eighteen hundred years of education in Christianity the
civilized world, as represented by its most advanced thinkers,
holds the conviction that the Christian religion is a religion of
dogmas; that its teaching in relation to life is unreasonable, and
is an exaggeration, subversive of the real lawful obligations of
morality consistent with the nature of man; and that very doctrine
of retribution which Christ rejected, and in place of which he put
his teaching, is more practically useful for us.

To learned men the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force is
exaggerated and even irrational. Christianity is much better
without it, they think, not observing closely what Christianity,
as represented by them, amounts to.

They do not see that to say that the doctrine of nonresistance to
evil is an exaggeration in Christ's teaching is just like saying
that the statement of the equality of the radii of a circle is an
exaggeration in the definition of a circle. And those who speak
thus are acting precisely like a man who, having no idea of what a
circle is, should declare that this requirement, that every point
of the circumference should be an equal distance from the center,
is exaggerated. To advocate the rejection of Christ's command of
non-resistance to evil, or its adaptation to the needs of life,
implies a misunderstanding of the teaching of Christ.

And those who do so certainly do not understand it. They do not
understand that this teaching is the institution of a new theory
of life, corresponding to the new conditions on which men have
entered now for eighteen hundred years, and also the definition of
the new conduct of life which results from it. They do not
believe that Christ meant to say what he said; or he seems to them
to have said what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other
places accidentally, or through his lack of intelligence or of
cultivation.

[Footnote: Here, for example, is a characteristic
view of that kind from the American journal the ARENA
(October, 1890): "New Basis of Church Life." Treating
of the significance of the Sermon on the Mount and
non-resistance to evil in particular, the author,
being under no necessity, like the Churchmen, to
hide its significance, says:

"Christ in fact preached complete communism and
anarchy; but one must learn to regard Christ always
in his historical and psychological significance.
Like every advocate of the love of humanity, Christ
went to the furthest extreme in his teaching. Every
step forward toward the moral perfection of humanity
is always guided by men who see nothing but their
vocation. Christ, in no disparaging sense be it
said, had the typical temperament of such a reformer.
And therefore we must remember that his precepts
cannot be understood literally as a complete
philosophy of life. We ought to analyze his words
with respect for them, but in the spirit of criticism,
accepting what is true," etc.

Christ would have been happy to say what he ought, but
he was not able to express himself as exactly and
clearly as we can in the spirit of criticism, and
therefore let us correct him. All that he said about
meekness, sacrifice, lowliness, not caring for the
morrow, was said by accident, through lack of knowing
how to express himself scientifically.]

Matt. vi. 25-34: "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat,
and the body than rainment? Behold the fouls of the air; for they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit onto his stature?
And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the
field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet
I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the
field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take
no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink?
or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things
do the Gentiles seek), for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of
God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added
unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof." Luke xii. 33-34: "Sell that ye
have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a
treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief
approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also." Sell all thou hast and follow me;
and he who will not leave father, or mother, or children, or
brothers, or fields, or house, he cannot be my disciple. Deny
thyself, take up thy cross each day and follow me. My meat is to
do the will of him that sent me, and to perform his works. Not my
will, but thine be done; not what I will, but as thou wilt. Life
is to do not one's will, but the will of God.

All these principles appear to men who regard them from the
standpoint of a lower conception of life as the expression of an
impulsive enthusiasm, having no direct application to life. These
principles, however, follow from the Christian theory of life,
just as logically as the principles of paying a part of one's
private gains to the commonwealth and of sacrificing one's life in
defense of one's country follow from the state theory of life.

As the man of the stale conception of life said to the savage:
Reflect, bethink yourself! The life of your individuality cannot
be true life, because that life is pitiful and passing. But the
life of a society and succession of individuals, family, clan,
tribe, or state, goes on living, and therefore a man must
sacrifice his own individuality for the life of the family or the
state. In exactly the same way the Christian doctrine says to the
man of the social, state conception of life, Repent ye--[GREEK
WORD]-i. e., bethink yourself, or you will be ruined. Understand
that this casual, personal life which now comes into being and to-
morrow is no more can have no permanence, that no external means,
no construction of it can give it consecutiveness and permanence.
Take thought and understand that the life you are living is not
real life--the life of the family, of society, of the state will
not save you from annihilation. The true, the rational life is
only possible for man according to the measure in which he can
participate, not in the family or the state, but in the source of
life--the Father; according to the measure in which he can merge
his life in the life of the Father. Such is undoubtedly the
Christian conception of life, visible in every utterance of the
Gospel.

[TRANSCRIBIST'S NOTE: The GREEK WORD above used Greek letters,
spelled: mu-epsilon-tau-alpha-nu-omicron-zeta-epsilon-tau-
epsilon]

One may not share this view of life, one may reject it, one may
show its inaccuracy and its erroneousness, but we cannot judge of
the Christian teaching without mastering this view of life. Still
less can one criticise a subject on a higher plane from a lower
point of view. From the basement one cannot judge of the effect
of the spire. But this is just what the learned critics of the
day try to do. For they share the erroneous idea of the orthodox
believers that they are in possession of certain infallible means
for investigating a subject. They fancy if they apply their so-
called scientific methods of criticism, there can be no doubt of
their conclusion being correct.

This testing the subject by the fancied infallible method of
science is the principal obstacle to understanding the Christian
religion for unbelievers, for so-called educated people. From
this follow all the mistakes made by scientific men about the
Christian religion, and especially two strange misconceptions
which, more than everything else, hinder them from a correct
understanding of it. One of these misconceptions is that the
Christian moral teaching cannot be carried out, and that therefore
it has either no force at all--that is, it should not be accepted
as the rule of conduct--or it must be transformed, adapted to the
limits within which its fulfillment is possible in our society.
Another misconception is that the Christian doctrine of love of
God, and therefore of his service, is an obscure, mystic
principle, which gives no definite object for love, and should
therefore be replaced by the more exact and comprehensible
principles of love for men and the service of humanity.

The first misconception in regard to the impossibility of
following the principle is the result of men of the state
conception of life unconsciously taking that conception as the
standard by which the Christian religion directs men, and taking
the Christian principle of perfection as the rule by which that
life is to be ordered; they think and say that to follow Christ's
teaching is impossible, because the complete fulfillment of all
that is required by this teaching would put an end to life. "If a
man were to carry out all that Christ teaches, he would destroy
his own life; and if all men carried it out, then the human race
would come to an end," they say.

"If we take no thought for the morrow, what we shall eat and what
we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, do not defend
our life, nor resist evil by force, lay down our life for others,
and observe perfect chastity, the human race cannot exist," they
say.

And they are perfectly right if they take the principle of
perfection given by Christ's teaching as a rule which everyone is
bound to fulfill, just as in the state principles of life everyone
is bound to carry out the rule of paying taxes, supporting the
law, and so on.

The misconception is based precisely on the fact that the teaching
of Christ guides men differently from the way in which the
precepts founded on the lower conception of life guide men. The
precepts of the state conception of life only guide men by
requiring of them an exact fulfillment of rules or laws. Christ's
teaching guides men by pointing them to the infinite perfection of
their heavenly Father, to which every man independently and
voluntarily struggles, whatever the degree of his imperfection in
the present.

The misunderstanding of men who judge of the Christian principle
from the point of view of the state principle, consists in the
fact that on the supposition that the perfection which Christ
points to, can be fully attained, they ask themselves (just as
they ask the same question on the supposition that state laws will
be carried out) what will be the result of all this being carried
out? This supposition cannot be made, because the perfection held
up to Christians is infinite and can never be attained; and Christ
lays down his principle, having in view the fact that absolute
perfection can never be attained, but that striving toward
absolute, infinite perfection will continually increase the
blessedness of men, and that this blessedness may be increased to
infinity thereby.

Christ is teaching not angels, but men, living and moving in the
animal life. And so to this animal force of movement Christ, as it
were, applies the new force-the recognition of Divide perfection-
and thereby directs the movement by the resultant of these two
forces..

To suppose that human life is going in the direction to which
Christ pointed it, is just like supposing that a little boat
afloat on a rabid river, and directing its course almost exactly
against the current, will progress in that direction.

Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the
parallelogram, of both eternal indestructible forces of which the
life of man is compounded: the force of his animal nature and the
force of the consciousness of Kinship to God. Saying nothing of
the animal force which asserts itself, remains always the same,
and is therefore independent of human will, Christ speaks only of
the Divine force, calling upon a man to know it more closely, to
set it more free from all that retards it, and to carry it to a
higher degree of intensity.

In the process of liberating, of strengthening this force, the
true life of man, according to Christ's teaching, consists. The
true life, according to preceding religions, consists in carrying
out rules, the law; according to Christ's teaching it consists in
an ever closer approximation to the divine perfection hell up
before every man, and recognized within himself by every man, in
an ever closer and closer approach to the perfect fusion of his
will in the will of God, that fusion toward which man strives, and
the attainment of which would be the destruction of the life me
know.

The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it
is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be
reached in infinity.

The Christian religion seems to exclude the possibility life only
when men mistake the pointing to an ideal as the laying down of a
rule. It is only then that the principles presented in Christ's
teaching appear to be destructive of life. These principles, on
the contrary, are the only ones that make true life possible.
Without these principles true life could not be possible.

"One ought not to expect so much," is what people usually say in
discussing the requirements of the Christian religion. "One
cannot expect to take absolutely no thought for the morrow, as is
said in the Gospel, but only not to take too much thought for it;
one cannot give away all to the poor, but one must give away a
certain definite part; one need not aim at virginity, but one must
avoid debauchery; one need not forsake wife and children, but one
must not give too great a place to them in one's heart," and so
on.

But to speak like this is just like telling a man who is
struggling on a swift river and is directing his course against
the current, that it is impossible to cross the river rowing
against the current, and that to cross it he must float in the
direction of the point he wants to reach.

In reality, in order to reach the place to which he wants to go,
he must row with all his strength toward a point
much higher up.

To let go the requirements of the ideal means not only to diminish
the possibility of perfection, but to make an end of the ideal
itself. The ideal that has power over men is not an ideal
invented by someone, but the ideal that every man carries within
his soul. Only this ideal of complete infinite perfection has
power over men, and stimulates them to action. A moderate
perfection loses its power of influencing men's hearts.

Christ's teaching only has power when it demands absolute
perfection--that is, the fusion of the divine nature which exists
in every man's soul with the will of God--the union of the Son
with the Father. Life according to Christ's teaching consists of
nothing but this setting free of the Son of God, existing in every
man, from the animal, and in bringing him closer to the Father.

The animal existence of a man does not constitute human life
alone. Life, according to the will of God only, is also not
human life. Human life is a combination of the animal life and
the divine life. And the more this combination approaches to the
divine life, the more life there is in it.

Life, according to the Christian religion, is a progress toward
the divine perfection. No one condition, according to this
doctrine, can be higher or lower than another. Every condition,
according to this doctrine, is only a particular stage, of no
consequence in itself, on the way toward unattainable perfection,
and therefore in itself it does not imply a greater or lesser
degree of life. Increase of life, according to this, consists in
nothing but the quickening of the progress toward perfection. And
therefore the progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus,
of the woman that was a sinner, and of the robber on the cross,
implies a higher degree of life than the stagnant righteousness of
the Pharisee. And therefore for this religion there cannot be
rules which it is obligatory to obey. The man who is at a lower
level but is moving onward toward perfection is living a more
moral, a better life, is more fully carrying out Christ's
teaching, than the man on a much higher level of morality who is
not moving onward toward perfection.

It is in this sense that the lost sheep is dearer to the Father
than those that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of
money lost and found again, were more precious than those that
were not lost.

The fulfillment of Christ's teaching consists in moving away from
self toward God. It is obvious that there cannot be definite laws
and rules for this fulfillment of the teaching. Every degree of
perfection and every degree of imperfection are equal in it; no
obedience to laws constitutes a fulfillment of this doctrine, and
therefore for it there can be no binding rules and laws.

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