But a time came when the light of Christ's true teaching which was in the Gospels, despite the fact that the Church, feeling its own falsity, tried to hide it (by forbidding translations of the Bible)— a time came when this light (through those who were called sectarians, and even through worldly freethinkers) made its way among the people and the falsity of the Church's teaching became evident to men, and they began to alter their way of life (which the Church had justified) to life on the basis of Christ's teaching, which had made its way to them independently of the Church.
THE DEAD CHURCH So people themselves, apart from the Church, abolished slavery, which the Church had justi- fied, and religious executions,1 and abolished the power (sanctified by the Church) of the Emperors and Popes, and have now begun the task which presents itself next in turn: the abolition of property and of the State.2 And the Church did not defend, and cannot defend, any of these things, because the abolition of these wrongs in life took place, and is now taking place, on the basis of that same Christian teaching which was preached and is preached by the Church, how- ever it tries to pervert it.
The guidance of the life of man has emanci- pated itself from the Church and established itself independently of the Church.
The Church retains an explanation, but an sxplanation of what? The metaphysical ex- planation of a teaching has significance when the beaching of life which it explains exists. But bhe Church has no teaching of life left. It had Duly an explanation of a life it instituted once ipon a time, and which no longer exists. If die Church still retains an explanation of that ife which used to exist (like the explanation in lie Catechism that officials ought to kill) no 1 Such as the autos-da-fe of the Inquisition.
2 This sentence is remarkable, not only because it ;7as written thirty-three years before the Bolshevik Revolution (which in theory, though not in practice, ontemplated the abolition of the State); but also >ecause it shows that in this (almost the first of his idactie works) Tolstoy went to the ultimate limit of is theory of Christian Anarchy, which he spent the re- naming twenty-six years of his life in elaborating.
WHAT I BELIEVE pn F lo one any longer believes it. And the Church ha? nothing left but cathedrals, icons, brocade vestments, and words.1 The Church carried the light of Christian teach ing of life through eighteen centuries, and wishing to hide it under its garments, has itself am been burnt up by that flame. The world, with! p its arrangements, sanctified by the Church, has repudiated the Church in the name of those very principles of Christianity which the Church has ft reluctantly borne; and the world now lives m without the Church. That fact is accomplished and to hide it is impossible. All that is really^ alive — and does not linger on in angry dejection, not really living but merely hindering others tai from doing so — all that really lives in our Euro pean world has rejected the Church, and all churches, and lives its own life independently of the Church. And let it not be said that this is so in ‘ rotten western Europe * 2; our Russia, with its millions of rationalist Christians, educated and uneducated, who have rejected Church teaching, proves beyond dispute that Russia, in regard to the repudiation of the Church, is, thank God, far more 4 rotten ' than the rest of Europe.
1 Before the generation had passed away to whom Tolstoy first issued thi3 book the Church in Russia had been disendowed and disestablished, and the words ‘ Religion is the people’s opium ’ were painted, by order of the authorities, in large letters on the walls of the churches.
2 A favourite phrase of the Slavophils, a Stephen- Graham-like folk, who regarded Russia and her insti- tutions as far superior to anything existing in the democratic West. ' fill A THE DEAD CHURCH All that is alive is independent of the Church.
The power of Government rests on tradition, on science, on popular election, on brute force, and on what you will, only not on the Church.
Wars and the relations of the Powers are arranged on the principle of race, balance of power, or what you will, but not on Church principles.
The State institutions plainly ignore the Church. The idea that the Church could, in our times, be the foundation of the law or of property is merely ridiculous.
Science not only does not co-operate with the Church teaching, but inadvertently, involun- tarily, in the course of its development is always hostile to the Church.
Art, which formerly served the Church ex- clusively, has now quite departed from it.
It is not enough that life has completely emancipated itself from the Church. Life has no relation to the Church; it feels merely con- tempt for her so long as she does not meddle in the affairs of life, and nothing but hatred as soon as she tries to remind it of her former rights. If the form which we call the Church still exists, it is only because people fear to smash a vessel which once held precious contents; only so is it possible to explain the existence in our cen- tury of the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the various Protestant Churches.
All the Churches — the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant — stand like sentinels labori- ously on guard over a prisoner who has long since escaped, and is now walking about among WHAT I BELIEVE the sentinels and even fighting them. Every thing that now really animates the world— Socialism, Communism, theories of political me economy, utilitarianism, the freedom anc fit equality of individuals, of classes, and of women la; all man's moral conceptions, the sanctity o: in labour, the sanctity of reason, of science and oi; dir art, all that moves the world, and that the far Church regards as inimical, all are parts of that! nil teaching which the Church herself has un- mi wittingly handed on together with the teaching i of Christ which she sought to conceal.
In our time the life of the world goes its own to way quite independently of the Church's teach-; an ing. That teaching has lagged so far behind! n that the men of the world no longer hear the! voices of church teachers. Nor is there any-! thing to hear, for the Church only offers ex- ij planations of an arrangement of life which the! oc world has already outgrown, and which has f already ceased to exist or is now being irresistibly b destroyed. ] pi People went rowing in a boat, and a helmsman ti< steered them. The people came to believe in ® their helmsman, and he guided them well; but re the time came when the good helmsman was ej replaced by another, -who did not steer. But: i ai the boat glided on quickly and easily. At first; |a it was not noticed that the new helmsman was i not steering, and the people were only pleased i e] that the boat moved quickly. But afterwards, 0; having realized that the new helmsman was ^ useless, they began to laugh at him, and dis- j 8, missed him. k THE DEAD CHURCH 349 This would not have mattered, but the ] trouble was that people, moved by their annoy- lance with the useless helmsman, forgot that without a helmsman one does not know which way one is going. That is what has happened in our Christian society. The Church does not direct, and it is easy to drift, and we have gone far; and all the successes of science that our nineteenth century is so proud of are but the mileage we have gone without a rudder. We advance, but know not whither. We live and get through our life, and positively do not know wdiy. But it does not do to drift and row not knowing one's direction, and one must not live and pass through life not know- ing why.
If men did nothing themselves but were placed by some external force in the position they occupy, they might, in reply to the question, c Why are you in this position? ’ quite reasonably reply, We do not know, but we find ourselves placed as we are. But people make their posi- tion for themselves, for others, and in parti- cular for their children; and therefore they must reply to the questions: Why do you enroll others, and have been yourselves enrolled, into armies of millions, with which you kill and muti- late one another? Why have you spent, and why are you spending, tremendous human energies, expressed* in milliards, on the building of towns unnecessary and harmful to you? Why do you arrange your absurd law-courts, and send people you consider criminals from France to Cayenne, from Russia to Siberia, and from WHAT I BELIEVE our England to Australia,1 knowing yourselves tha this is unreasonable? Why do you abandon th< itto field-work you love for work in factories anc P workshops which you yourselves dislike? WI13 ills do you educate your children so that they shoulcj continue this life of which you do not approve Why do you do all this?
These questions cannot be left unanswered. Even had all these things been pleasant things you like doing, you should have given a reason for doing them. But as they are terribly diffi- cult things, and you do them only with effort and with murmurs, it is impossible for you not to consider why you do them all. It is neces sary either to cease to do all this or else to explain why we do it. Without a reply to that question, people never have lived, and never can live. And such a reply people have never been without.
The Jews lived as they did — that is to say, fought, executed people, built the temple, and arranged their whole life in one way and not in another, because this was all prescribed by their law which, according to their conviction, had come down to them from God Himself. So it is with a Hindu or a Chinaman, and so it was with a Roman, and is with a Mohammedan; and the same was the case with a Christian till a hundred years ago; and so now it is for the 1 As a matter of fact, banishment to Australia had ceased some twenty years before Tolstoy wrote this, but the memory of legal barbarities committed in distant countries lingers long in men’s minds, as is illustrated by frequent references in England to the knout, the use of which was abolished generations ago.
THE DEAD CHURCH masses of ignorant Christians. To those ques- tions these ignorant Christians now reply that army-service, wars, law-courts and executions, all exist by God’s law, given to us by the Church. This world is a fallen world. All the evil that exists, exists by the will of God as a punishment for the sins of the world, and we therefore cannot remedy this evil.1 We can only save our souls by faith, sacraments, prayers, and by submission to the will of God, as taught us by the Church. The Church teaches us that every Christian should submit absolutely to the Tsar, the anointed of God, and to all officials, appointed by him, and should defend by vio- lence their own and other people’s property, and should fight, execute, and endure execution, at the will of those God-appointed authorities.
Whether such explanations be good or bad, they explained for a believing Christian — as was the case for a Jew, a Buddhist, or a Moham- medan— all the peculiarities of life; and a man did not renounce his reason when living ac- cording to the law he accepted as divine. But now a time has come when only the most ignorant people believe in these explanations, and the number of such people diminishes every day and every hour. It is quite impossible to 1 The amazing submission shown by the Russian I people to the misrule they suffered under the Tsars for centuries, and, stranger still, to the greater oppression they have endured for three years since the Bolsheviks seized power and organized the Extraordinary Com- imittee (which is a twentieth- century Inquisition), may be partly explained by the habit of submission deeply engrained in them, to which Tolstoy alludes.
WHAT I BELIEVE ref arrest this movement. All men irresistibly follow those who go in advance, and all wil reach the place where the advanced people nowj stand. But the advanced people are standing at the brink of a precipice. Those in front are; in a terrible position; they are shaping life |. tk for themselves and preparing life for all who follow them, and are completely ignorant of why they do what they do. Not one civilized and progressive man is now in a position to reply to the plain question, Why do you live the life you are living? Why are you doing all that you are doing? I have tried to ask about this, and have questioned hundreds of people, and have never received a direct reply. Always, instead of a direct reply to the personal question, Why do you live so, and do so?
I have received an answer, not to my question, but to one I had not put.
A believing Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox Churchman, in reply to the question why he lives as he is living — that is to say, in contra- diction to that teaching of the Christ-God which he professes, always, instead of a straight answer, begins to speak of the woful extent of incredu- lity in the present generation; about the bad people who promote infidelity, and of the signifi- cance and the future of the true Church. But why he himself does not do what his faith bids him do he does not say. Instead of replying about himself, he speaks about the general condition of humanity, and about the Church just as though his own life was of no importance to him at all, and he was concerned only with THE DEAD CHURCH 353 Vc^ipn of the whole of humanity and with what he calls the Church.
A philosopher, of whatever denomination — idealist, spiritualist, pessimist, or positivist — in reply to the question why he lives as he does, that is to say, not in accord with his philo- sophical teaching, will always, instead of replying to that question, speak about the progress of humanity, the historic law of that progress, which he has discovered and in accord with which mankind strives towards its welfare. But he never replies directly to the question why he himself, in his own life, does not do what he considers reasonable. The philosopher, like the believer, seems as though he were not con- cerned with his own life, but only with observing the general laws of humanity.
An average man, one of the immense majority of semi-believing, semi-sceptical civilized people, those who always without exception complain of their life and of the organization of our life, and anticipate the ruin of everything, this average man, in reply to the question why he himself lives this life he condemns and does nothing to improve it, will always, instead of a direct reply, begin to speak not of himself biit on some general question: the law, trade, the State, or civilization. If he is a policeman or a public prosecutor he will say: 4 But how will law and order get on if I, to improve my life, cease to take part in them? ’ 4 And how about trade? ’ says he, if he is a commercial man.
4 And how about civilization if I, to improve my own life, do not co-operate in it? ’ He always WHAT I BELIEVE speaks as though the aim of his liforwere not! to secure the good for which he always yearns, but to serve the State, or trade, or civilization.! r The average man replies exactly like the believers fr, and the philosopher. For the personal ques-j L tion he substitutes a general question, and, like! fj the believer and the philosopher, the average, g, man makes this substitution because he has, j 0j no reply to the question concerning his personal! life, since he possesses no real philosophy of life. L And he feels ashamed. h He is ashamed because he feels himself to i be in the humiliating position of one who has! no philosophy of life; whereas man never has lived, and cannot live, without a philosophy of! r life. Only in our Christian world, instead of\ a philosophy of life and an explanation why life j should be such and not other — that is to say, g instead of a religion, we have merely an explana- r tion of why life should be such as it once T used to be, and something is called religion j which is of no sort • of use to anybody; and!, life itself has become emancipated from any sorb of teaching — that is to say, it lacks any definition.
Nor is that all: as always occurs, science has, accepted this accidental, monstrous position our society is in, as a law for all humanity, j Tiele, Herbert Spencer, and others treat of religion quite seriously, understanding by it a metaphysical teaching concerning the origin of all things, and without suspecting that they are talking, not of the whole of religion, but of. only a part of it.
THE DEAD CHURCH THE DEAD CHURCH From^ this has arisen the amazing pheno- menon thar in our age we see wise and learned people most naively convinced that they are free from all religion, merely because they do not acknowledge the metaphysical explana- tions of the origin of things, which at some period and for some people served as an explanation of life. It does not enter their heads that they have got to live somehow and do live somehow, and that whatever it is that induces them to live so and not otherwise is their religion. These people imagine that they have very elevated convictions, but no faith. But, what- ever they may say, they have a faith if they perform any reasonable actions. For reason- able actions are always defined by one’s faith. And the actions of these people are defined solely by the faith that one must always do what one is ordered to do. The religion of these people who do not acknowledge religion, is the religion of submission to all that is done by the powerful majority, or, more briefly, it is the religion of submission to the existing authorities.
One may live according to the world’s teach- ing— that is to say, live an animal life, not acknowledging anything higher and more obliga- tory than the decrees of the powers that be. But he who lives so cannot assert that he is living rationally. Before asserting that we live rationally, one must answer the question, What teaching about life do we consider rational? And we unfortunates not merely have no such teaching, but have even lost the consciousness 356 WHAT I BELIEVE that any reasonable teaching about life is jj necessary.
Ask men of our day, believers or sceptics, j J( what teaching they follow in their lives. They j Q( will have to confess that they follow only one | t[ teaching, the laws which are written by officials in the Judicial Department or in the Legis- \$ )} lative Assemblies, and which are enforced by the e police. That is the only teaching our European people acknowledge. They know that that j f teaching has not come down from heaven, nor from the prophets, nor from sages; they I j( constantly condemn the regulations made by jj those officials or Legislative Assemblies, but all [ the same they acknowledge that teaching, and j e submit to its executors — the police; and they j F implicitly obey its most terrible demands. If the officials or the Assemblies have written c that every young man must be ready to be abused, to be killed, and to murder others —; all the fathers and mothers who have reared 1 sons submit to this law, written yesterday j J by a venal official and capable of alteration ( to-morrow., The conception of law indubitably rational j and made obligatory on every one by his inner, conviction has been so lost in our society that, the existence among the Jewish people of a law which defines their whole life, a law made obli- gatory not by compulsion but by the inner consciousness of every one — is considered an ex- ceptional characteristic of the Jewish race alone. That the Jews only obeyed what they in the depth of their souls considered to be the THE DEAD CHURCH undoubted truth received direct from God — that is to say, obeyed only what was accordant with their conscience — is considered to be a Jewish peculiarity. It is considered to be the normal condition, natural to an educated man, that he should obey what is notoriously written by contemptible people and put into operation by policemen armed with pistols — things which each of them, or at least the majority of them, consider to be wrong— that is to say discordant with their conscience.
Vainly have I sought in our civilized world for any clearly expressed moral principles for life. There are none. There is not even a recognition that they are needed. There is even a strange conviction that they are not needed, that religion consists only in certain words about a future life, about God, in certain ceremonies very useful in the opinion of some people for saving one’s soul, and of no sort of use at all in the opinion of others, and that life goes on of itself, and needs no principles or rules; only one must do what is ordered! Of what forms the essence of belief — the teaching about life and the explanation of its meaning — the first is considered as unimportant, and as not appertaining to belief; while the second, namely, the explanation of a life that used to be lived, or discussions and guesses at the historic course of life, is considered most important and serious. In all that forms the life of man — how to live; whether to go or not to go to kill people; to go or not to go to try people; whether to educate one’s children in this way or in that WHAT I BELIEVE — the people of our world submit absolutely to others, who are also in the position of not | themselves knowing why they live..and why T j they oblige others to live this way and not that.
And such a life people consider rational, and they do not feel ashamed of it.
The divergence between the explanation of the faith which we call faith, and faith itself, which is called social or political life, has now reached the utmost limit, and all the civilized majority of mankind are left with no guidance { for life, except a faith in the gendarme and the policeman.
The position would be terrible if it were quite like that. But fortunately there are, even in our day, men, the best men of our time, who are not satisfied with such a faith, and who have a belief of their own as to how men should live.
These people are considered the most harmful, I dangerous, and, above all, irreligious people; l yet they are the only faithful people of our time, and are not only believers in general, but be- lievers in the teaching of Christ, or if not in his whole teaching, at least in a small part of it.
These people often have no knowledge of Christ's teaching, do not accept it, and often, like their opponents, do not accept the chief groundwork of the Christian faith — non-resist- ance to him that is evil. They often even hate Christ; but their whole belief of what life should be like is drawn from the teaching of 1 THE DEAD CHURCH Christ.1 However much these people may be persecuted, however much they may be slan- dered, they are the only people who do not unmurmuringly submit to all that is decreed; and therefore they are the only people in our world who are living not an animal, but a rational life — they are the only believers.
The thread connecting the world with the Church that used to give the world a meaning has become ever weaker and weaker as the essence, the sap of life, has more and more flowed over to the world. And now, when the sap has all flowed over, the connecting cord has become a mere hindrance.
That is the mysterious process of birth,* which is being performed before our eyes. At one and the same time the last bond with the Church is being dissolved and the inde- pendent process of life is being established.
Church teaching (with its dogmas, councils, and hierarchy) is undoubtedly connected with Christ's teaching. That connection is as evi- 1 At the time Tolstoy was preparing this work, V. I. Alexeyev was his son’s tutor. Alexeyev had been an active Socialist agitator at the time when the movement was still new in Russia. He says: ‘ Some- times we ’ (Tolstoy and he) ‘ started a conversation on economics and social themes. I had a copy of the Gospels, left from the days of my Socialist propaganda among the people. Passages relating to social ques- tions were underlined in it, and I often pointed these out to Tolstoy.’ It is to the Socialist propaganda on behalf of the poor that Tolstoy refers in this passage. (See Maude’s Life of Tolstoy, vol. ii, pp. 5-6, Constable.)
WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE dent as the connection of a new-born babe with its mother's womb. But if the navel-cord and the after-birth become unnecessary bits of flesh, which (from respect for what they have preserved) must be carefully buried in the earth, so also the Church has become an un- necessary, obsolete organ, which, merely from respect for what it once was, should now be hidden away somewhere far off. Directly the breathing and the circulation of the blood has been established, the bond which was formerly the source of nourishment becomes a hindrance. And efforts to maintain that connection and compel the babe that has now come into the world to nourish itself through the navel-cord, tmd not to live by means of its own mouth and lungs, are irrational.
But the babe's emancipation from its mother's womb is not yet life. The life of the child depends on the setting up of a new connection with its mother for the supply of nutriment. And the same must be accomplished for our Christian world. Christ's teaching has borne our world and brought it to life. The Church — one of the organs of Christ's teaching — has done its part, and has become unnecessary and a hindrance. The world cannot be guided by the Church, but the emancipation of the world from the Church is not yet life. Its life will come when it realizes its impotence and feels the necessity of fresh nourishment. And this must occur with our Christian world: it must cry out with consciousness of its impotence. Only consciousness of its impotence, conscious- THE DEAD CHURCH ness of the impossibility of receiving nourishment as heretofore, and of the impossibility of obtain- ing any other nourishment than that of its mother's milk (Christ's teaching) will bring it to its mother's breasts, swollen as they are with milk.
In our European world, superficially self- confident, bold and resolute, but in the depth of its consciousness frightened and perplexed, the same thing is occurring as happens with a new-born babe: it flings itself about, fidgets, cries, pushes as though it were angry, and it does not understand what it has to do. It feels that its former source of nourishment has dried up, but it does not know where to seek fresh nourishment.
A new-born lambkin moves his eyes and his ears, shakes his tail, jumps, and kicks. To judge by his assurance it seems as though he knew everything > but he, poor little thing, knows nothing. All this confidence and energy is the result of his mother's juices, the transfer of which has now ceased and cannot be renewed. He is in a happy, but at the same time a des- perate, condition. He is full of freshness and strength; but he is lost unless he takes to his mother's teats.
The same is occurring with our European world. See what a complex, seemingly reason- able, energetic life is seething in the world. It is as if all these people knew what they were doing and why they were doing it all. See how resolutely, confidently, and briskly the men of our world undertake all that they do. Art, N* WHAT I BELIEVE science, industry, social and state activities — L all is full of life. But it lives only because it f Bi has been till recently nourished by its mother's juices through its navel-cord. There used to be a Church which transmitted Christ’s reason- 1 able teaching to the life of the world. All the J energies of the world were nourished by it, and grew and developed. But the Church has | played its part and dried up. All the organs j lei of the world are alive, the source of their former nourishment is exhausted, and they have not yet found a fresh one. They seek it everywhere, | only not from the mother from whom they have been released. They, like the lambkin, still | live by the former nourishment, but have not j t yet come to understand that only from their mother can food be had, but that it must be got in a different way than formerly.
The business that now awaits the world con- sists in understanding that the former process of unconscious feeding is done with, and that a new, conscious process is necessary.
That new process consists in conscious ac- ceptance of those truths of the Christian teaching which were formerly unconsciously imbibed by humanity through the instrumentality of the j Church, and by which humanity still lives. Men must raise once more that light by which they lived but which was hidden from them, and they must lift it high before themselves j and before others, and must consciously live by that light.
The teaching of Christ, as a religion defining life and explaining the life of man, stands now,!t THE DEAD CHURCH as it stood 1,800 years ago, before the world. But formerly the world had the Church's explanations, which, though they hid the teaching, nevertheless seemed to suffice for the world's former life; now, however, a time has come when the Church has been outlived and the world lacks explanation of its new life, and cannot but feel its impotence and therefore can no longer avoid accepting Christ's teaching.
Christ teaches, first of all, that men should believe in the light while the light is yet in them. Christ teaches that men should set that light of reason above all else, and should live in accord with it, not doing things they themselves consider irrational. If you consider it irrational to go to kill Turks or Germans — do not go 1; if you consider it unreasonable forcibly to take the labour of the poor in order to wear a silk hat or to tie yourself up in a corset, or to arrange a drawing-room that will incommode you — do not do it; if you consider it unreasonable to put men, corrupted by idle- ness and bad company, into prison, that is, into the very worst company and the completest idleness — do not do it; if you consider it 1 Tolstoy's anti-war teaching had a considerable effect in preparing the way for Lenin’s disintegration of the Russian army in 1917. Cheap reprints of Tolstoy’s works, liberally subsidized by the Soviet Government, were issued when they seized power. The fact that they were willing to make use of these works for propaganda purposes did not, however, prevent their enrolling a Red Army and energetically contesting a series of civil wars during the following years.
WHAT I BELIEVE 1