The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (readera ebook reader txt) 📕

as a terror—pretending that except for its oppressive power

the wicked would oppress the good—has really always existed and

will exist in human society. And therefore the suppression of

state violence cannot in any case be the cause of increased

oppression of the good by the wicked.

 

If state violence ceased, there would be acts of violence perhaps

on the part of different people, other than those who had done

deeds of violence before. But the total amount of violence could

not in any case be increased by the mere fact of power passing

from one set of men to another.

 

“State violence can only cease when there are no more wicked men

in society,” say the champions of the existing order of things,

assuming in this of course that since there will always be wicked

men, it can never cease. And that would be right enough if it

were the case, as they assume, that the oppressors are always the

best of men, and that the sole means of saving men from evil is by

violence. Then, indeed, violence could never cease. But since

this is not the case, but quite the contrary, that it is not the

better oppress the worse, but the worse oppress the better, and

since violence will never put an end to evil, and there is,

moreover, another means of putting an end to it, the assertion

that violence will never cease is incorrect. The use of violence

grows less and less and evidently must disappear. But this will

not come to pass, as some champions of the existing order imagine,

through the oppressed becoming better and better under the

influence of government (on the contrary, its influence causes

their continual degradation), but through the fact that all men

are constantly growing better and better of themselves, so that

even the most wicked, who are in power, will become less and less

wicked, till at last they are so good as to be incapable of using

violence.

 

The progressive movement of humanity does not proceed from the

better elements in society seizing power and making those who are

subject to them better, by forcible means, as both conservatives

and revolutionists imagine. It proceeds first and principally

from the fact that all men in general are advancing steadily and

undeviatingly toward a more and more conscious assimilation of the

Christian theory of life; and secondly, from the fact that, even

apart from conscious spiritual life, men are unconsciously brought

into a more Christian attitude to life by the very process of one

set of men grasping the power, and again being replaced by others.

 

The worse elements of society, gaining possession of power, under

the sobering influence which always accompanies power, grow less

and less cruel, and become incapable of using cruel forms of

violence. Consequently others are able to seize their place, and

the same process of softening and, so to say, unconscious

Christianizing goes on with them. It is something like the

process of ebullition. The majority of men, having the non-Christian view of life, always strive for power and struggle to

obtain it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest, the

least Christian elements of society overpower the most gentle,

well-disposed, and Christian, and rise by means of their violence

to the upper ranks of society. And in them is Christ’s prophecy

fulfilled: “Woe to you that are rich! woe unto you that are full!

woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!” For the men

who are in possession of power and all that results from it—glory

and wealth—and have attained the various aims they set before

themselves, recognize the vanity of it all and return to the

position from which they came. Charles V., John IV., Alexander I.,

recognizing the emptiness and the evil of power, renounced it

because they were incapable of using violence for their own

benefit as they had done.

 

But they are not the solitary examples of this recognition of the

emptiness and evil of power. Everyone who gains a position of

power he has striven for, every general, every minister, every

millionaire, every petty official who has gained the place he has

coveted for ten years, every rich peasant who has laid by some

hundred rubles, passes through this unconscious process of

softening.

 

And not only individual men, but societies of men, whole nations,

pass through this process.

 

The seductions of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it

gives, seem a sufficient aim for men’s efforts only so long as

they are unattained. Directly a man reaches them he sees all

their vanity, and they gradually lose all their power of

attraction. They are like clouds which have form and beauty only

from the distance; directly one ascends into them, all their

splendor vanishes.

 

Men who are in possession of power and wealth, sometimes even

those who have gained for themselves their power and wealth, but

more often their heirs, cease to be so eager for power, and so

cruel in their efforts to obtain it.

 

Having learnt by experience, under the operation of Christian

influence, the vanity of all that is gained by violence, men

sometimes in one, sometimes in several generations lose the vices

which are generated by the passion for power and wealth. They

become less cruel and so cannot maintain their position, and are

expelled from power by others less Christian and more wicked.

Thus they return to a rank of society lower in position, but

higher in morality, raising thereby the average level of Christian

consciousness in men. But directly after them again the worst,

coarsest, least Christian elements of society rise to the top, and

are subjected to the same process as their predecessors, and again

in a generation or so, seeing the vanity of what is gained by

violence, and having imbibed Christianity, they come down again

among the oppressed, and their place is again filled by new

oppressors, less brutal than former oppressors, though more so

than those they oppress. So that, although power remains

externally the same as it was, with every change of the men in

power there is a constant increase of the number of men who have

been brought by experience to the necessity of assimilating the

Christian conception of life, and with every change—though it is

the coarsest, crudest, and least Christian who come into

possession of power, they are less coarse and cruel and more

Christian than their predecessors when they gained possession of

power.

 

Power selects and attracts the worst elements of society,

transforms them, improves and softens them, and returns them to

society.

 

“Such is the process by means of which Christianity, in spite of

the hindrances to human progress resulting from the violence of

power, gains more and more hold of men. Christianity penetrates

to the consciousness of men, not only in spite of the violence of

power, but also by means of it.

 

And therefore the assertion of the champions of the state, that if

the power of government were suppressed the wicked would oppress

the good, not only fails to show that that is to be dreaded, since

it is just what happens now, but proves, on the contrary, that it

is governmental power which enables the wicked to oppress the

good, and is the evil most desirable to suppress, and that it is

being gradually suppressed in the natural course of things.

 

“But if it be true that governmental power will disappear when

those in power become so Christian that they renounce power of

their own accord, and there are no men found willing to take their

place, and even if this process is already going on,” say the

champions of the existing order, “when will that come to pass?

If, after eighteen hundred years, there are still so many eager

for power, and so few anxious to obey, there seems no likelihood

of its happening very soon—or indeed of its ever happening at

all.

 

“Even if there are, as there have always been, some men who prefer

renouncing power to enjoying it, the mass of men in reserve, who

prefer dominion to subjection, is so great that it is difficult to

imagine a time when the number will be exhausted.

 

“Before this Christianizing process could so affect all men one

after another that they would pass from the heathen to the

Christian conception of life, and would voluntarily abandon power

and wealth, it would be necessary that all the coarse, half-savage

men, completely incapable of appreciating Christianity or acting

upon it, of whom there are always a great many in every Christian

society, should be converted to Christianity. More than this, all

the savage and absolutely non-Christian peoples, who are so

numerous outside the Christian world, must also be converted. And

therefore, even if we admit that this Christianizing process will

some day affect everyone, still, judging by the amount of progress

it has made in eighteen hundred years, it will be many times

eighteen centuries before it will do so. And it is therefore

impossible and unprofitable to think at present of anything so

impracticable as the suppression of authority. We ought only to

try to put authority into the best hands.”

 

And this criticism would be perfectly just, if the transition from

one conception of life to another were only accomplished by the

single process of all men, separately and successively, realizing,

each for himself, the emptiness of power, and reaching Christian

truth by the inner spiritual path. That process goes on

unceasingly, and men are passing over to Christianity one after

another by this inner way.

 

But there is also another external means by which men reach

Christianity and by which the transition is less gradual.

 

This transition from one organization of life to another is not

accomplished by degrees like the sand running through the

hourglass grain after grain. It is more like the water filling a

vessel floating on water. At first the water only runs in slowly

on one side, but as the vessel grows heavier it suddenly begins to

sink, and almost instantaneously fills with water.

 

It is just the same with the transitions of mankind from one

conception—and so from one organization of life—to another. At

first only gradually and slowly, one after another, men attain to

the new truth by the inner spiritual way, and follow it out in

life. But when a certain point in the diffusion of the truth has

been reached, it is suddenly assimilated by everyone, not by the

inner way, but, as it were, involuntarily.

 

That is why the champions of the existing order are wrong in

arguing that, since only a small section of mankind has passed

over to Christianity in eighteen centuries, it must be many times

eighteen centuries before all the remainder do the same. For in

that argument they do not take into account any other means,

besides the inward spiritual one, by which men assimilate a new

truth and pass from one order of life to another.

 

Men do not only assimilate a truth through recognizing it by

prophetic insight, or by experience of life. When the truth has

become sufficiently widely diffused, men at a lower stage of

development accept it all at once simply through confidence in

those who have reached it by the inner spiritual way, and are

applying it to life.

 

Every new truth, by which the order of human life is changed and

humanity is advanced, is at first accepted by only a very small

number of men who understand it through inner spiritual intuition.

The remainder of mankind who accepted on trust the preceding truth

on which the existing order is based, are always opposed to the

diffusion of the new truth.

 

But seeing that, to begin with, men do