Christ could not imagine that, and therefore could not forbid Christians to go to war, any more than a father, when giving his son instruc- tions to live honestly, to wrong no one, and to give to others, could bid him abstain from highway robbery. No one of the apostles or disciples of Christ during the first centuries of Christianity could imagine that it was necessary to forbid Christians to commit the murders that 1 Or, if that Russian expression sounds strange in English, we might call it ‘ a Christian army.’
THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS 217 are called war. This, for instance, is what Origen says in his reply to Celsus ( The Writings of Origen: Origen contra Celsum, Lib. viii. c. 73. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xviii.).
He says: ‘ And in the next place Celsus urges us to help the King with all our might, and to labour with him in the maintenance of justice, to fight for him; and, if he requires it, to fight under him, or lead an army along with him. To this our answer is, that we do, when occasion requires, give help to Kings, and that, so to say, a divine help, “ putting on the whole armour of God/' And this we do in obedience to the injunction of the Apostle, “ I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks, be made for all men; for Kings and all that are in authority/' and the more any one excels in piety, the more effective help does he render to Kings, even more than is given by soldiers, who go forth to fight and slay as many of the enemy as they can. And to those enemies of our faith who require us to bear arms for the commonwealth, and to slay men, we repty: “ Do not those who are priests at certain shrines, and those who attend on certain gods, as you account them, # keep their hands free from blood that they may I with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your I gods? 5 And, finishing this chapter with an explan a- tion that Christians are of more use by their * peaceful life than are soldiers, Origen says: ‘ And none fight better for the King than we do.
218 WHAT I BELIEVE We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it/ Such was the attitude of the Christians of the first centuries towards war, and so did their teachers speak when addressing those powerful in the world; and they spoke so when hundreds and thousands of martyrs were perishing for professing the Christian faith.
And now? Now no question is asked as to whether a Christian can take part in war. All young men, educated in the teaching of the Church which is called Christian, when the time comes each autumn, present themselves at the Army Office and, with the assistance of Church pastors, violate the law of Christ. Only recently one peasant turned up who on Gospel grounds refused military service. The teachers of the Church expounded to him his error; but, as the peasant believed not them but Christ, he was put into prison and kept there till he renounced Christ. And all this is done 1,800 years after a quite clear and definite commandment was announced to Christians by our God: Do not consider the people of other nations to be ene- mies, but account all men as brothers, and treat them as you treat people of your own nation: and therefore, not only do not kill those whom you call your enemies, but love them and do good to them.
And having so understood these very simple, definite commands of Christ, not subjected to any interpretation, I asked myself: How would it be if the Christian world believed in these commandments, not in the sense that they must THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS 219 be sung or read for the propitiation of God, but that they must be obeyed for the welfare of man? How would it be if people believed in the duty of keeping these commandments as firmly as they believe, for instance, that one must say one's prayers every day, go to Church every Sunday, avoid flesh food on Fridays, and fast every Lent? How would it be if people believed these commandments even as much as they believe in the demands made by the Church? And I pictured to myself the whole of Christendom living and educating the young according to these commandments. I pictured * to myself that it was inculcated to us all and to our children from childhood upwards, by word and by example, not as now, that a man must maintain his dignity and preserve his rights against others (which can only be done by humiliating and offending others), but it was inculcated that no man has any rights, or can be superior or inferior to another; and that he only is inferior to all and most ignoble who desires to set himself above others; that them is no more humiliating condition for a man than that of being angry with another; and that my conviction that someone is insignificant or mad * cannot justify my anger against him, or my strife with him. Instead of all the arrangements of our life, from the shop -windows to the theatres, novels, and women's dresses, which excite sexual desire, I imagined to myself that it was suggested to us and to our children, by I word and deed, that to amuse oneself with voluptuous books, theatres and balls is the basest WHAT I BELIEVE kind of amusement, and that every act which has for its aim to adorn or show off the body is the very basest and most shameful of acts. Instead of the organization of our life, in which it is considered necessary and good that a young man should be dissolute until he marries, and instead of a way of life that separates married couples being considered most natural; instead of the legalization of a class of women set apart for the service of depravity; instead of the ad- mission of, and the sanctification of, divorce,— instead of all this, I imagined to myself that it was instilled into us by word and deed that the condition of a man who has reached the age for sexual relations and has not renounced them, but yet remains single and unmarried, is an abnormity and a shame, and that a man's desertion of her with whom he has come to- gether and the exchanging of her for another, is not only an unnatural action, like incest, but is a cruel, inhuman action. Instead of our whole life being founded on violence, instead of each of us being punished or punishing from childhood to advanced old age, I imagined to myself that it was instilled into us all by word and deed that revenge is a most degrading animal feeling, and that violence is not merely a shameful thing but one which deprives a man of true happiness, and that the only happiness of life is such as need not be defended by vio- lence, and that the highest respect is deserved, not by him who takes or retains what is his from others, but by him who gives up the most and serves others most. Instead of it being con- THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS 221 isidered admirable and right that each man should be sworn in, and should surrender all that he holds most valuable — that is to say, his whole life — to the will of he knows not whom, I imagined that it was instilled into all, that man’s reasonable will is that highest sanctuary which he may yield to no one else, and that to bind oneself by oath to any one, and about [anything, is a repudiation of one’s rational being and a defilement of that highest sanctuary. I pictured to myself that, instead of these national j enmities which are instilled into us under the guise of love of one’s country, and instead of those applauded slaughters called war, which from childhood are represented to us as the most heroic deeds— I imagined that we were imbued with horror at, and contempt for, all those activities, political, diplomatic, and military, which promote the separation of peoples; and that it was suggested to us that the recog- nition of any kingdoms, exclusive laws, frontiers, or territories is an indication of most savage ignorance; and that to go to war— that is to say, to kill people, people personally unknown to us, without any grounds — is the most horrible villany, to which only a lost and perverted man, degraded to the level of a beast, can descend. I pictured to myself that all men believed this, and I asked: What would be the result 1 Formerly I had asked myself what would result from putting Christ’s teaching, as I then understood it, into practice, and had involuntarily replied: Nothing. We shall all pray, receive WHAT I BELIEVE the blessings of the sacraments, believe in the i( redemption and in salvation for ourselves and 0 for the whole world through Christ, and never- theless that salvation will come about, not from (J what we do, but because the end of the world will j arrive. Christ will come in his own time, in gi glory, to judge the living and the dead and n establish the kingdom of God, independently of our life. Now Christ’s teaching, as it had re- g vealed itself to me, had another meaning, and h the establishment of the kingdom of God on 1 earth depended on us also. The fulfilment of il Christ’s teaching, expressed in the five command- j s ments, would establish the kingdom of God. i The kingdom of God on earth is the peace of all i men one with another. Peace among men is the highest blessing attainable by man on earth, i So did the kingdom of God present itself to all j the Hebrew prophets. And so has it presented 1 itself, and does present itself, to the heart of i every man. All the prophecies promise peace to < mankind.
The whole of Christ’s teaching consists in giving the kingdom of God, that is peace, to man. In the Sermon on the Mount, in the talk with Nicodemus, in his charge to his disciples, and in all his sermons, Christ speaks only of the things that divide men and hinder them from being at peace and entering the kingdom of God. All the parables are but a description of what the kingdom of God is, and an explanation that only by loving one’s brother-men and being at peace with them can one enter it. John the Baptist, Christ’s forerunner, said that the king- THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS 223 dom of God was drawing near, and that Jesus Christ would give it to the world.
Christ says that he brought peace on earth (John xiv. 27): ‘ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled* neither let it be fearful.5 And those five commandments of his really give man this peace. All five commandments have but that one aim — peace among men. Men need only trust Christ’s teaching, and obey it, and there will be peace on earth; and not such a peace as men devise, temporary, acci- dental, and partial, but a general peace, in- violable and eternal.
The first commandment says: Be at peace with all men; do not allow yourself to consider any man insignificant or senseless (Matt. v. 22). If peace be infringed, employ all your strength to restore it. The service of God is the abolition of enmity (Matt. v. 23, 24). Be reconciled after the least difference, in order not to lose the true life. In this commandment everything is said; but Christ foresees the snares of the world which disturb peace among men, and he gives the second commandment, against the snare of sexual relations, which disturb peace. Do not regard the beauty of the flesh as an amusement; avoid this snare in advance (verses 28-30); let ja man take one wife, and a woman one husband, and on no account abandon one another (32). Another snare is the oath, which leads men into sin. Know in advance that this is evil, and take no vows (34—37). The third snare is revenge* WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE calling itself human justice. Do not avenge yourself, and do not excuse yourself on the ground that you are wronged; bear with wrongs, and do not return evil for evil (38-42). The fourth snare is the difference of nationalities — the enmity of tribes and states. Know that all men are brothers, sons of one God; and do not infringe peace with any one for the sake of national aims (43-48). If people do not fulfil my one of those commandments, peace will be listurbed. If people fulfil all these command- ments, the kingdom of peace will have come on earth. The commandments exclude all evil from the life of man.
With the fulfilment of these commandments the life of men will be such as every human heart seeks and desires. All men will be brothers, and everyone will be at peace with others, enjoying all the blessings of the world during the term of life appointed him by God. Men will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. Then the kingdom of God will have come: that kingdom of peace promised by all the prophets, which drew nigh in the days of John the Baptist, and which Christ foretold and proclaimed in the words of Isaiah: 4 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap- tives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised; to pro- claim the acceptable year of the Lord ’ (Luke THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS 225 The commandments of peace, given by Christ, are simple and clear; they foresee all causes of strife and, by averting it, they throw open the kingdom of God on earth. Therefore Christ is actually the Messiah. He has fulfilled that which was promised. It is we who do not carry out what all men have always desired, though it is that for which we have prayed and still pray.
I CHAPTER VII I CHAPTER VII Christ’s teaching — false doctrine— man IS A SON OF GOD Why do people not act as Christ told them to, and in the way that gives them the greatest bliss attainable by man, such as they have ever longed for and still long for? From all sides I hear one and the same reply, differently ex- pressed: 4 The teaching of Christ is very good, and it is true that were it fulfilled the kingdom of God w^ould be established on earth: but it is difficult, and therefore impracticable.5 Christ’s teaching of how men should live is divinely true, and gives men blessedness; but it is hard for them to obey it. We so often repeat this, and hear it, that the contradiction con- tained in the words no longer strikes us.
It is accordant with human nature to seek for what is best, and every teaching for the guid- ance of man’s life is a teaching of what is best. If men are shown what is best for them, how can they say that they desire to do what is best, but cannot? Man’s rational activity, since man- kind existed, has been directed to finding out what is best among the contradictions that fill the individual life and the life of humanity in general.
CHRIST’S TEACHING CHRIST’S TEACHING Men fight for land, for things they desire, and then divide everything up and call it pro- perty; they consider that though this is difficult to institute, yet it is better so, and they hold on to property; men fight for wives and abandon children, and then conclude that it is better that* each man should have his own family; and, though it is very difficult to provide for a family, people retain property and family and much else. And as soon as people considered that it was better so, then, however difficult it might be, they did it. What then do we mean when we* say, The teaching of Christ is admirable, life- according to Christ’s teaching is better than the life we live, but we cannot live in the better wa y because it is difficult?
If one understands difficult to mean that it is difficult to sacrifice the momentary satis- faction of desire for the sake of a great good, then why do we not say that it is difficult tcp plough in order to obtain grain for bread, or to plant apple-trees in order to get apples? That i it is necessary to overcome difficulties to gain a ' great advantage is known to every being en- dowed with the rudiments of reason. And yet i we say that Christ’s teaching is admirable, but 1 impracticable, because it is difficult. Difficult j because, following it, we must deny ourselves something we had till then. It is as if we had never heard that it is sometimes better to endure: ; and forgo than to suffer nothing and always satisfy our lusts.
Man may be an apimal, and no one need re- proach him for that; but a man cannot arguo WHAT I BELIEVE that he wishes to be merely an animal. As soon as he argues he acknowledges that he is a rational being, and, admitting that, he cannot but acknowledge what is reasonable and un- reasonable. Reason enforces nothing; it only sheds light.
In the dark I hurt my hand and my knee seeking the door. A man enters with a light, and I see the door. I need then, when I see the door, no longer knock myself against the wall, and still less is it reasonably possible to assert that I see the door and consider it better to pass through the door, but that it is difficult to do so, and I therefore wish to continue to knock my knee against the wall.
In this extraordinary argument that the Christian teaching is desirable for and beneficial to the world, but that men are weak, men are bad, and continue to do worse though they wish to do better, and that they can therefore not do better, there is an obvious misunderstanding.
It is evidently not a mere error in argument, but something else. There must here be some false perception. Only a false opinion that that is which is not, and that that is not which is, could bring people to such a strange denial of the practicability of that which they admit gives them blessedness. The false perception which has led to this is what is called the dogmatic Christian faith — the very thing that all who profess the Christian faith according to the Church learn from childhood in the various Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Catechisms.
ini jft ai A .as ti b ■P e t c CHRIST'S TEACHING That faith, as defined by believers, is ‘the giv- ing substance to things hoped for 9 (this is said by Paul, and repeated in all the theological works and catechisms, as the best definition of faith). And it is this acknowledgement of the unreal as real that has led people to the strange asser- tion that Christ's teaching is good for men, 1 but does not suit men.
The teaching of this faith, in its exact ex- pression, is as follows: A personal God, ever existing, One in Three Persons, suddenly decided to create a world of spirits. The good God created this world of spirits for their good; but it happened that one of the spirits became bad of himself and therefore unhappy. Much time passed, and God created another world, a material world, and in it man, also for man's own benefit. God created man blessed, immortal, and sinless. The blessed- ness of man consisted in enjoying the good of life without labour; his immortality consisted in this, that he should always so live; his ^inlessness consisted in his not knowing evil.
This man was tempted in paradise by that spirit of the first creation who had made him- self bad, and from that time man fell, and bore similar fallen children; and from that time j: people began to work, bear sickness, suffer, die, and struggle physically and spiritually; that is to say, this imaginary man became real, such as we lmow him, and such alone as we have any right or reason to imagine him to be. Man's condition, labouring, suffering, choos- ing good, and avoiding evil, and dying — that WHAT I BELIEVE condition which exists, and other than which we cannot imagine — according to the teaching! of of this faith, is not man's real position, but an i p unnatural, accidental, and temporary position. | n Although this condition continued for every- j body, as this teaching tells us, from the banish- | ment of Adam from paradise — that is to say, from the commencement of the world, till the ' f birth of Christ, and continues in just the same way for everybody since then, yet believers have to suppose this to be only an accidental, tem- porary condition. According to this teaching, the Son of God, being himself God, the Second Person of the Trinity, was sent by God to earth in human form to save men from that condition which was for them accidental and temporary, and to free them from all the curses which that same God had put upon them for Adam's sin, and in order to reinstate them in their former natural condition of blessedness — that is to say, in freedom from disease and in immortality, sinlessness, and idleness. The Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, by the fact that people executed him, according to this teaching, redeemed Adam's sin and ter- minated man's unnatural condition, which had i lasted since the beginning of the world. And I since then a man who believes in Christ has again become such as he was in paradise — that is to say, immortal, free from disease, sinless, and idle.
fj|0n that part of the accomplishment of the redemption in consequence of which, since; Christ, the earth has everywhere brought forth j CHRIST'S TEACHING its fruits without labour, by which sickness has ceased, and children have been born without pain to their mothers— the teaching does not much insist; for, however much they may believe, it is difficult to instil into people who find it hard to toil and painful to suffer a perception that it is not hard to work nor pain- ful to suffer. But that part of the teaching according to which death and sin are annulled is most strongly insisted on.
It is stated that the dead continue to live. And as the dead are quite unable to affirm that they have died or that they are alive, just as a stone cannot affirm that it can or cannot speak, the absence of a denial is accepted as a proof; and it is asserted that those who have died have not died. With yet greater solemnity and confidence is it asserted that, since Christ came, man, by faith in him, is freed from sin — that is to say, that since Christ's time a man need no longer shed the light of reason on his path through life, and choose what is best. He only need believe that Christ has redeemed him from sin, and then he is always sinless — that is to say, completely good. According to this teaching people should imagine that reason in them is powerless, and that therefore they are sinless — that is to say, cannot make a mistake.
A true believer should imagine that, since the time of Christ, the earth yields her produce without labour, children are bom painlessly, there are no diseases, no death, and no sins — that is to say, no mistakes — in other words, 232 WHAT I BELIEVE that that which is, is not, and that which is not, is.
That is what is said by strictly logical theo- i 1 logical theory. $ That teaching, taken by itself, seems harm- fc less. But divergence from the truth never ® is harmless, but produces consequences that d are the more important, the more important ti is the subject misrepresented. In this case tl the subject of the falsehood is the whole life 1 of humanity.
What in this teaching is called true life is li personal, blissful, sinless, and eternal — that is t to say, life such as no one has ever known s and such as does not exist. Life as it exists, c such as alone we know, the life we live and all * humanity has lived and is living, is according to this teaching a fallen, bad life, merely a simulacrum of the good life proper to us.
The struggle between the inclination towards an animal life and a rational life, which lies in the soul of each man and forms the essence of each life, is completely set aside by this teaching. That struggle is relegated to an event which happened to Adam in paradise j at the time of the creation. And the question! whether I should eat or should not eat those apples which tempt me does not exist for us, according to this teaching. The question was decided once and for all by Adam in paradise in a negative sense. Adam sinned for me — that is to say, he made a mistake, and all men, all of us, fell irreparably, and all our attempts to live rationally are useless and even irreligious.
CHRIST'S TEACHING I am incorrigibly bad, and ought to know it. And my salvation does not depend on the fact that I can enlighten my life by reason and, recog- nizing good and evil, can choose the better path. No; Adam has once and for all done for me what was bad, and Christ has, once and for all, corrected that evil done by Adam, and therefore I, as a spectator, should grieve for the fall of Adam and rejoice in the redemption by Christ.
All the love of goodness and truth which lies in the soul of man, all his efforts, by reason, to shed light on life's phenomena, all man's spiritual life, is not merely unimportant, ac- cording to this teaching, but is a snare or an arrogance.
Life such as we have on earth, with all its joys and beauties, with all its struggles of reason against darkness — the life of all who have lived before me, and my whole life with its inner strivings and victories of reason, is not a true life, but a fallen, hopelessly perverted life; while the true, sinless life, is in faith — that is in imagination, that is to say, in insanity.
Let a man, setting aside the habit he has retained from childhood of accepting all this, try to look simply and straight at this teaching; let him transform himself mentally into a new man, educated outside the range of this teaching, and let him imagine what it would appear like to such a man. Surely, it is utter insanity.1 1 Tolstoy’s statement of Church doctrines is not one that Churchmen will readily accept, but it should be borne in mind that he had primarily in view the WHAT I BELIEVE And, strange and terrible as it was to think j so, I could not but admit that it is so; for this alone explained to me the amazing, contra- dictory, senseless objection which I hear from all j sides as to the practicability of Christ's teaching: 1 It is good, and would bring happiness to men, but \ men cannot fulfil it.
Only the representation as existent of that! which does not exist, and as non-existent of that which does exist, could lead to this aston- ishing contradiction. And such a false repre- sentation I found in the pseudo-Christian faith, which has been preached for 1,500 years.1