Then I inquired about the word KaraStKa£w coupled to KpCvix), the word of many meanings i — evidently on purpose to define the sense in which the writer was using that word. In the general dictionary I found that the word never has any other meaning than to condemn in court to punishment or execution. I looked in the New Testament dictionary, and found that the word is used in the Epistle of James v. 6, 4 Ye have condemned and killed the just ’; the word ‘ condemned - is this same word Karaou<d£a}, used in reference to Christ, who was condemned, j And in no other way is this word ever used in the j whole of the New Testament, or in any Greek dialect. I What does this all mean? What absurdity have I arrived at? I, and every one in our society, if we have ever considered the fate of mankind, have been horrified at the sufferings and the evil introduced into man’s life by man’s criminal law — an evil both for the judged and for those who judge: from the executions of i LAW OF GOD AND LAW OF MAN 145 j Genghiz Khan to the executions of the French Revolution and those of our day.
No one with a heart can have escaped an impression of horror and doubt in goodness at even hearing, not to say seeing, the execution 1 of men by other men: the floggings to death with rods,2 guillotines, and scaffolds.
In the Gospels, each word of which we con- sider holy, it is directly and clearly said: You have had a criminal law — 4 An eye for an eye/ — • but I give you a new law, 4 Resist not him that is evil.’ Obey this law, all of you: do not inflict evil for evil, but do good always and to all men, forgive all men.
Further, it is clearly said: 4 Do not go to law / And, that doubt about the meaning of the words may be impossible, it is added, 4 Do not condemn to punishment in the courts’ My heart says clearly and distinctly: do not execute. Science says, do not execute; the more you execute the more evil will there be * Reason says, do not execute, evil cannot be cut off by evil. The word of God, in which I believe, says the same. And I, reading the whole teaching, and reading the words: 4 Judge not that ye be not judged, condemn not that ye be not condemned, forgive and ye shall be forgiven / admit that this is the word of God, say that it means that I must not go about talking scandal 2 A method of punishment frequently practised in I the army under Nicholas I. The sentence was so many thousand strokes, and the prisoner had to run the gauntlet between ranks of soldiers, the result often being death from collapse.
WHAT I BELIEVE and maligning people, and continue to consider j the law-court to be a Christian institution, and 4 to consider myself both a judge1 and a Christian. And I was horrified at the grossness of the deception in which I was involved, 1 Tolstoy was an Arbiter of the Peace for about a year in 1862, after the emancipation of the serfs, his duties being to adjust differences between the landed proprietors and the newly emancipated serfs.
CHAPTER IV MISUNDERSTANDING OF CHRIST’S TEACHING I now understand what Christ meant when he uttered the words: 4 It was said to you: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you: resist not him that is evil, but bear with him.’ Christ said: It has been instilled into you, and you are accustomed to think that it is good and reasonable to resist evil by force and to tear out an eye for an eye, to institute criminal courts, police, an army, and to defend yourselves from foes; but I say, Do not use violence, do not take part in violence, a do no harm to any one,1 not even to those whom you call ‘ enemies.’
I now understand that Christ, in the position he takes up of non-resistance to the evil man, is speaking not only of what will result directly for each man from non-resistance to him that 1 Tolstoy intended no sophistry, but there is uncon- Iscious sophistry in the suggestion that the purpose of the Criminal Courts is to injure certain people. He leaves unnoticed the benefit those Courts confer by making it plain what we must not do to one another. One of the greatest benefits conferred by law is that it supplies a degree of definiteness to human relations, which renders co-operation possible even among j people whose opinions differ. It diminishes the amount of strife and friction that would otherwise exist.
■ WHAT I BELIEVE is evil but, in contradiction to the principle under which mankind lived in his time, under ° the law of Moses and under the Roman law, and now lives under various legal codes, he sets up the principle of non-resistance to the evil man, which principle according to his teaching should be the basis of man’s social life, and should free mankind from an evil they < inflict on themselves. He says: You think that your laws correct evil — they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil — by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction. For thousands of years you have tried your principle; now try my contrary one.’ « I have recently spoken to people of most divergent opinions about this law of Christ’s — non-resistance to the evil man. It did occur, though rarely, that I met some who agreed with me. But, strange to say, two kinds of people never, even in principle, tolerated a straightforward understanding of the law, but always warmly defended the justice of resistance to the evil-doer. These are people who belong to the two extreme poles: patriotic Conservative Christians, who consider their Church to be the only true one, and Revo- lutionary Atheists. Neither these nor those wish to abandon the right to resist by violence what they consider evil. And the wisest and most learned of them are quite unwilling to see the simple and obvious truth that if one 1 admits that one man may use violence to oppose what he considers evil, another may do the same to resist what he, in turn, considers evil.
CHRIST’S TEACHING A correspondence lately passed through my i hands between an Orthodox Slavophil and a Christian-Revolutionary, which was instructive in this respect. The one advocated the violence of war on behalf of our oppressed brother- Slavs; the other, a revolutionary violence on behalf of our oppressed brethren, the Russian peasants. Both demanded violence, and both relied on the teaching of Christ.
People in general understand Christ’s teaching in very various ways, but not in the direct, simple meaning which inevitably flows from Ihis words.
We have arranged our whole life on the very foundations he denies. We do not wish to understand his teaching in its simple, direct meaning, and we assure ourselves and others either that we do not acknowledge his teaching or that it is unsuited to us. The so-called believers believe that Christ is God, the Second * Person of the Trinity, who descended to earth to show us how to live, and they arrange most elaborate ceremonies necessary for the administration of the sacraments, for erecting churches, for sending out missionaries, for ordaining priests, for the direction of their 3 flocks, for amending the creeds, but one little thing they forget — namely, to do what he told us to do. The unbelievers try to arrange their lives in all sorts of ways, only not according I to the law of Christ, having decided in advance that that law will not do. But no one wishes ; to try doing as he bids us. Moreover, before even trying to do it, both the believers and the 150 WHAT I BELIEVE non-believers decide in advance that it is impossible.
He says simply and clearly: the law of resistance by violence to him that is evil, which you have made the basis of your lives, is false and unnatural; and he gives another basis — non-resistance — which in his opinion can alone deliver mankind from evil. He says: You think your laws of violence correct evil; they only increase it. You have tried for thousands of years to destroy evil by evil, but instead of destroying it you have increased it. Do what I do, and you will know whether it is true.
He not only says this but in his whole life, and by his death, he carries out his teaching of non-resistance to the evil man.
Believers hear all this, they read it in their churches, they say the words are divine and that he who spoke them was God, but they say: It is all very well, but it is impossible with our arrangement of life — it would upset the whole way of life to which we are accustomed and which we like. Therefore we believe all this only as being an ideal towards which hu- manity must strive — an ideal to be attained by prayer and by faith in the sacraments and the redemption, and in the resurrection from the dead. Others, the unbelievers, the free-thinking investigators of Christ's teaching — Strauss, Renan, and others — who follow the historic method, having thoroughly imbibed the Church's explanation that Christ's teaching has no direct reference to life but is a visionary doctrine consoling to feeble-minded people, say i CHRIST'S TEACHING most seriously that Christ's teaching was only fit to be preached to the savage inhabitants of 1 the wilds of Galilee; but that for us, with our culture, it appears merely a sweet dream — ‘ du charmant docteur,' as Renan says. In their opinion Christ could not rise high enough to understand all the wisdom of our civilization and culture. Had he stood on the height of educa- tion on which these learned people stand he would not have talked such charming rubbish about the birds of the air, about turning one's cheek, and about not being troubled for to morrow. These learned historians judge of Christianity by the Christianity they see in our society. The Christianity of our society I and day regards our present life as true and sacred, with its organizations, prisons, solitary confinements, Ciros,1 factories, newspapers, brothels and parliaments, and from the teaching of Christ it selects only what does not infringe that life.2 But, as Christ's teaching is the nega- tion of all that life, nothing is accepted of it except mere words. The learned historians see 1 The translator finds himself in a difficulty when he has to devise an equivalent for the most improper type of Moscow restaurant.
2 This passage is an excellent example of Tolstoy’s power of sarcasm. The scorn he pours both on those who wish Christianity to be a mere epicurean consola- tion, and on those who, while criticizing Christianity, see it through the eyes of the others, is effective; but one should note how, urged by his moral and intel- lectual indignation against these people, he slips in a juxtaposition of brothels and parliaments, which is the first word of an argument later pushed to far- reaching and very questionable conclusions.
WHAT I BELIEVE this, and, as they are under no necessity to hideJt, as it is hidden by the pseudo-believers, < > this version of Christ’s teaching deprived of all substance is subjected to profound criticism and very rightly repudiated. The deduction is clear that there never was anything in Chris- tianity except dreamy ideals.
It would seem as though, before judging Christ’s teaching, one should understand what it consists of, and to decide whether his teaching is reasonable or not one should first of ail admit that he said what he said; but that is just what is not done either by the Church or by the free- thinking expositors. And we know very well why they do not do it.
We know very well that Christ’s teaching always included and includes the denial of all those human illusions, those 4 vain things,’ empty idols, which we, by calling them Church, State, culture, science, art and civilization, thinkwe can separate from the ranks of delusions. But it is just against them that Christ speaks, without excluding any 4 empty idols.’
Not Christ only, but all the Hebrew prophets, John the Baptist, and all the world’s true sages, have spoken of that same State, culture, and civilization, as an evil, ruinous to mankind.
Suppose a builder says to a man, ‘ Your house is bad, it must be entirely rebuilt,’ and then gives details as to what beams should be cut, and how it should be done and where they should be stored. The man does not listen to the words about the house being bad and being rebuilt, but with a pretence of respect listens CHRIST S TEACHING CHRIST S TEACHING to the builder's further instructions and arrange- ments in the house. Obviously, all the advice given by the builder will appear inapplicable, and any disrespectful person will say plainly that his advice is stupid. This is what happens with regard to Christ's teaching.
Not finding a better comparison, I made use of the above. And then I remembered that Christ, when preaching his doctrine, used that same comparison. He said: I will destroy your temple and in three days will build a new one. For that he was crucified; and it is for that very thing that his teaching is now crucified.
The least one can demand of people who judge any doctrine is that they should judge of it in the sense in which the teacher himself under- stood it. And he understood his teaching not as a distant ideal for humanity, obedience to which is impossible, nor as a mystical poetic fantasy wherewith he captivated the simple- minded inhabitants of Galilee. He understood his teaching as a real thing, and a thing which would save mankind. And he did not dream on the cross, but died for his teaching, and many others are dying and will yet die. Of such a teaching one cannot say that it is a dream!
Every true doctrine is a dream to those in error. We have come to this, that there are many people (of whom I was one) who say that 0 this teaching is visionary because it is not s natural to man. It is not in accord, they say, 5 with man's nature to turn the other cheek when WHAT I BELIEVE one cheek is struck; it is not natural to give what is one's own to another; it is unnatural ^! to work for others instead of for oneself. It is natural to man, they say, to defend his safety, and the safety of his family and his property: in other words, it is natural for man j to struggle for his own existence. The learned jurists prove scientifically that man's most i sacred duty is to defend his rights, that is — to struggle.
But it is sufficient to free oneself for a moment from the thought that the order which exists and has been arranged by men is the best and is sacrosanct, for the objection that Christ's i teaching is not accordant with man's nature to turn against the objector. Who will deny that to murder or torture, I will not say a man, but to torture a dog or kill a hen or calf is contrary and distressing to man's nature •?
(I know people who live by tilling the land, and who have given up eating meat merely because they had themselves to kill their own animals.) Yet the whole structure of our lives is such that each man's personal advantage is only obtained by inflicting suffering on others, j which is contrary to human nature. The whole order of our life, the whole complex mechanism of our institutions, designed for the infliction of violence, witness to the extent to which violence is contrary to human nature. Not a single judge would decide to strangle with j a rope the man he condemns to death from j the bench. Not a single magistrate would f make up his mind himself to take a peasant I s CHRIST'S TEACHING from his weeping family and shut him up in prison. None of our generals or soldiers, were it not for discipline, oaths of allegiance, and declarations of war, would, I will not say kill hundreds of Turks and Germans, and destroy their villages, but would even decide to wound a single man. All this is only done thanks to I a very complex state and social machinery the purpose of which is so to distribute the responsibility for the evil deeds that are done that no one should feel the unnaturalness of those deeds. Some men write the laws; others f 1 apply them; a third set drill men and habituate them to discipline, that is to say, to senseless and implicit obedience; a fourth set — the people who are disciplined — commit all sorts of deeds of violence, even killing people, without knowing why or wherefore. But a man need only, even for a moment, free himself mentally I from this net of worldly organization in which he is involved to understand what is really unnatural to him.
As soon as we cease to affirm that the cus- tomary evil we employ is an immutable divine truth it becomes obvious which of the two is natural and accordant to man: violence, * or the law of Christ. Is it to know that my tranquillity and safety and that of my family, and all my pleasures, are purchased by the destitution, corruption, and misery of millions; by hangings every year, by hundreds of thou- j sands of suffering prisoners, by millions torn from their homes and stupefied by discipline — soldiers, policemen, and gendarmes who, armed WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE with pistols against hungry people, safeguard my amusements; to purchase every sweet 1 morsel I put into my mouth or into the mouths of my children, with the sufferings to humanity that are unavoidable for the procuring of these morsels? Or to know that, be the morsel what it may, it is mine only when no one else needs it and when no one has to suffer on account It is only necessary once to understand that this is so, and that every pleasure of mine, every moment of tranquillity under our organi- zation of life, is purchased by the deprivations and sufferings of thousands who are restrained by violence; one need but once understand that fact, to understand what is natural to man's entire nature — that is to say, not merely to his animal nature, but to his reasonable and animal nature. One need but understand the law of Christ in its full meaning, with all its consequences, in order to understand that Christ's teaching is not contrary to man's nature, but that it really consists in rejecting what is unnatural to man's nature, namely, 1 This passage, which occurs here incidentally, forms the keynote of some of Tolstoy’s later economic treatises. He says, and means, that no one has a right to keep anything any one else wishes to take.
A man who wishes to get needful work efficiently done and requires accustomed tools for the purpose, will not find himself able to agree with the thesis. One consideration clashes with another, and in the experience of life we have to deal with comparative values more often than with absolute and abstract principles.
CHRIST'S TEACHING the visionary human doctrine of resistance to evil which now makes life unhappy.
Christ's doctrine of non-resistance to him that is evil is a dream! But that the life of men, in whose souls pity and love for one another is implanted, has been passed, and is now being passed, by some in organizing executions at the stake, knouts, and breakings on the wheel, lashes, the splitting of nostrils, tortures, hand- cuffs, penal servitude, gallows, shootings, soli- tary confinements, prisons for women and children, in arranging the slaughter of tens of thousands in wars, in organizing periodic revo- lutions and Pugachev1 revolts, and the life of others in carrying out all these horrors, and the life of a third set in evading these sufferings and avenging themselves for them — is this not a dreadful dream?
One has but to understand Christ's teaching to understand that the world, not that which God gave for man’s delight, but the world men have devised for their own destruction, is a dream, and a very wild and terrible dream — the raving of a maniac from which one need but awake in order never to return to that terrible nightmare.
God descended to earth; the Son of God — one of the Persons of the Trinity — became flesh and redeemed Adam’s sin; this God, we were taught to think, must have said something secret, mystical, difficult to understand, and only to be understood by the aid of faith and 1 Pugachev was the Cossack leader of a very serious peasant revolt in the time of Catherine II.
WHAT I BELIEVE the sacraments; and suddenly it appears that the word of God is so simple, so clear, so reason- <4 able. God says simply: Do not do evil to one j another — and there will be no evil. Is it possible that God’s revelation is so simple? Can it be that God only said that? It seems to us that we all knew that: it is so simple.
Elijah, the prophet, fleeing from men, hid in | a cave, and it was revealed to him that God would appear to him at the entrance to the cave.
A storm arose that broke the trees. Elijah thought this was God, and looked; but God was not there. Then came thunder; the thunder and lightning were terrible. Elijah went out to look whether God was not there; but God was not there either. Then there came an earth- quake; fire arose from the earth, the rocks were rent, and the mountains quaked. Elijah looked, i but God was still not there. Then a light, quiet ( breeze arose, bringing the refreshing scent of ( the fields. Elijah looked — and God was there! Such, too, are these simple words of God: 4 Resist not him that is evil.’
They are very simple, but in them is expressed the law of God and man, one and eternal. The law is to such an extent eternal that if there is in history a movement forward towards the elimination of evil, it is thanks only to those men who have so understood Christ’s teaching, j and have endured evil and not resisted it by j violence. Progress towards the welfare of man- j kind is made not by the persecutors but by the persecuted.,i-A.s fire does not extinguish fire, sol j evil cannot extinguish evil. Only goodness, CHRIST'S TEACHING CHRIST'S TEACHING meeting evil and not infected by it, conquers h evil. That this is so is in man’s spiritual world an immutable law comparable to the law of Galileo, but even more immutable, clearer and more complete. People may deviate from it and hide it from others, but nevertheless the progress of humanity towards what is good can only be accomplished by that path. Every step forward is made solely in the path of non- resistance to evil. And in the face of all possible temptations and threats, the disciples of Christ may with more assurance than Galileo, declare: ‘ And yet, not by violence, but by goodness alone can you destroy evil.’ If that advance I is slow, this is thanks solely to the fact that the clearness, simplicity, reasonableness, inevit- ability and necessity of Christ’s teaching is hidden from the majority of men in the most cunning and dangerous way, hidden under a different doctrine falsely called his.
CHAPTER V JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 4 Everything confirmed the fact that the meaning of Christ’s teaching that had disclosed itself to me was true. But it was long before I could accustom myself to the strange idea that | after Christ’s law had been professed by millions * of people for 1800 years, and after thousands of men had devoted their lives to the study of that law, it had now been my fate to rediscover it as a novelty. But, strange as it might be, such was the case; Christ’s teaching of non-resistance to evil arose before me as a total novelty of which I had not had the slightest conception. And I asked myself: How could this come about? I must have had some false conception of the meaning of the teaching to cause me so to misunderstand it. And such a false con- ception really existed.
When approaching the Gospel doctrine, I was ' not in the position of one who, never having.: heard anything of Christ’s teaching, suddenly hears it for the first time; but X already pos- sessed a whole ready-made theory of how I j > ought to understand it. Christ did not appear j to me as a prophet who was revealing a divine '] law; but as one who completed and explained s JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 161 a divine law already known to me and indubit- able. I already possessed a complete, definite, and very complex teaching about God, the creation of the world and of man, and about His commandments given to man through Moses.
In the Gospels I encountered the words, 4 Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil.’ The words, £ an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth/ were the law of Moses. The words, ‘ Resist not evil, or him that is evil/ were the new law, which repealed the first.
Had I approached Christ’s teaching without that theological theory imbibed with my mother’s milk, I should have understood the simple meaning of his words. I should have understood that Christ denies the old law, and gives a new law of his own. But it had been instilled into me that Christ did not deny the law of Moses, but on the contrary confirmed it all to the last jot and tittle and completed it. Verses 17 and 18 of Matt, v., in which this is affirmed, had always, when I read the Gospels, struck me as obscure, and had evoked doubts. From what I then knew of the Old Testament, especially the last books of Moses, in which such minute, meaningless, and often cruel, rules are laid down, each preceded by the words: 6 And the Lord said unto Moses/ it seemed to me strange that Christ could confirm the whole of that law, and incomprehensible why he did so. But I then left the question undecided: I accepted unverified the interpretation instilled WHAT I BELIEVE into me from childhood, that both these laws are productions of the Holy Ghost, that they agree, and that Christ confirms the law of Moses, supplements it, and completes it.
How that completion was effected, how the contradictions are solved which strike one’s eye in the Gospels themselves, both in these verses and in the words, ‘ But I say unto you,’ I never clearly explained to myself. But now, having recognized the simple and direct meaning of Christ’s teaching, I understood that these two laws are contradictory, and that there can be no talk of their agreement, or of completing the one by the other, but that we must accept one or the other, and that the common explanation of verses 17 and 18 in Matt. v. (which had formerly struck me by their obscurity) must be incorrect.
And on re-reading those verses (the ones which had always seemed to me so obscure) I was amazed by the simple and clear meaning in them, which suddenly revealed itself to me.
That meaning revealed itself to me not be- cause I devised or transposed anything, but simply because I rejected the artificial inter- pretation which has been attached to that passage.
Christ says (Matt. v. 17-19): ‘ Think not that I came to destroy the law or the teaching of the prophets; I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished.’
And verse 20 adds: ‘ Except your righteousi i i A JESUS AND THE MOSAIC LAW 163 ness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes- and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’
Christ says: I have not come to destroy the eternal law, for the fulfilment of which youi Scriptures and prophecies were written, but I have come to teach you to fulfil the eternal law; and I speak not of that law of yours which your scribes and Pharisees call the Law of God, but of that eternal law which is less changeable than the heavens and the earth.
I express the thought in fresh words merely to tear the meaning away from the customary false interpretation. Were it not for that false interpretation it would be impossible to express this thought better or more exactly than it is expressed in those verses.
The interpretation that Christ does not deny the law is based on the fact that to the word 4 law 5 in this passage — thanks to the comparison made with the iota (jot) of the written law — is attributed the meaning of the 4 written law 1 instead of the 4 eternal law ’ — though this is quite gratuitous, and in contradiction to the- meaning of the words. But Christ is not speak- ing of the written law. If he had spoken of the written law he would have used the customary expression, the law and the prophets, as he always does when speaking of the written law. But he employs a different expression: the law or the prophets. If he were speaking of the written law he would also in the next verse, which supplies a continuation of the thought, have used the words ‘ the law and the prophets,’" WHAT I BELIEVE