The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read fiction .TXT] 📗

correctly and

conscientiously done his duty. And all these poor deluded lads

believe that these nonsensical and incomprehensible words which

they have just uttered set them free for the whole time of their

service from their duties as men, and lay upon them fresh and more

binding duties as soldiers.

 

And this crime is perpetrated publicly and no one cries out to the

deceiving and the deceived: “Think what you are doing; this is the

basest, falsest lie, by which not bodies only, but souls too, are

destroyed.”

 

No one does this. On the contrary, when all have been enrolled,

and they are to be let out again, the military officer goes with a

confident and majestic air into the hall where the drunken,

cheated lads are shut up, and cries in a bold, military voice:

“Your health, my lads! I congratulate you on ‘serving the Tzar!’”

And they, poor fellows (someone has given them a hint beforehand),

mutter awkwardly, their voices thick with drink, something to the

effect that they are glad.

 

Meantime the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives is standing at

the doors waiting. The women keep their tearful eyes fixed on the

doors. They open at last, and out come the conscripts, unsteady,

but trying to put a good face on it. Here are Piotr and Vania and

Makar trying not to look their dear ones in the face. Nothing is

heard but the wailing of the wives and mothers. Some of the lads

embrace them and weep with them, others make a show of courage,

and others try to comfort them.

 

The wives and mothers, knowing that they will be left for three,

four, or five years without their breadwinners, weep and rehearse

their woes aloud. The fathers say little. They only utter a

clucking sound with their tongues and sigh mournfully, knowing

that they will see no more of the steady lads they have reared and

trained to help them, that they will come back not the same quiet

hard-working laborers, but for the most part conceited and

demoralized, unfitted for their simple life.

 

And then all the crowd get into their sledges again and move away

down the street to the taverns and pot-houses, and louder than

ever sounds the medley of singing and sobbing, drunken shouts, and

the wailing of the wives and mothers, the sounds of the accordeon

and oaths. They all turn into the taverns, whose revenues go to

the government, and the drinking bout begins, which stifles their

sense of the wrong which is being done them.

 

For two or three weeks they go on living at home, and most of that

time they are “jaunting,” that is, drinking.

 

On a fixed day they collect them, drive them together like a flock

of sheep, and begin to train them in the military exercises and

drill. Their teachers are fellows like themselves, only deceived

and brutalized two or three years sooner. The means of

instruction are: deception, stupefaction, blows, and vodka. And

before a year has passed these good, intelligent, healthy-minded

lads will be as brutal beings as their instructors.

 

“Come, now, suppose your father were arrested and tried to make

his escape?” I asked a young soldier.

 

“I should run him through with my bayonet,” he answered with the

foolish intonation peculiar to soldiers; “and if he made off, I

ought to shoot him,” he added, obviously proud of knowing what he

must do if his father were escaping.

 

And when a good-hearted lad has been brought to a state lower than

that of a brute, he is just what is wanted by those who use him as

an instrument of violence. He is ready; the man has been

destroyed and a new instrument of violence has been created. And

all this is done every year, every autumn, everywhere, through all

Russia in broad daylight in the midst of large towns, where all

may see it, and the deception is so clever, so skillful, that

though all men know the infamy of it in their hearts, and see all

its horrible results, they cannot throw it off and be free.

 

When one’s eyes are opened to this awful deception practiced upon

us, one marvels that the teachers of the Christian religion and of

morals, the instructors of youth, or even the good-hearted and

intelligent parents who are to be found in every society, can

teach any kind of morality in a society in which it is openly

admitted (it is so admitted, under all governments and all

churches) that murder and torture form an indispensable element in

the life of all, and that there must always be special men trained

to kill their fellows, and that any one of us may have to become

such a trained assassin.

 

How can children, youths, and people generally be taught any kind

of morality—not to speak of teaching in the spirit of

Christianity—side by side with the doctrine that murder is

necessary for the public weal, and therefore legitimate, and that

there are men, of whom each of us may have to be one, whose duty

is to murder and torture and commit all sorts of crimes at the

will of those who are in possession of authority. If this is so,

and one can and ought to murder and torture, there is not, and

cannot be, any kind of moral law, but only the law that might is

right. And this is just how it is. In reality that is the

doctrine—justified to some by the theory of the struggle for

existence—which reigns in our society.

 

And, indeed, what sort of ethical doctrine could admit the

legitimacy of murder for any object whatever? It is as impossible

as a theory of mathematics admitting that two is equal to three.

 

There may be a semblance of mathematics admitting that two is

equal to three, but there can be no real science of mathematics.

And there can only be a semblance of ethics in which murder in the

shape of war and the execution of criminals is allowed, but no

true ethics. The recognition of the life of every man as sacred

is the first and only basis of all ethics.

 

The doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth has been

abrogated by Christianity, because it is the justification of

immorality, and a mere semblance of equity, and has no real

meaning. Life is a value which has no weight nor size, and cannot

be compared to any other, and so there is no sense in destroying a

life for a life. Besides, every social law aims at the

amelioration of man’s life. What way, then, can the annihilation

of the life of some men ameliorate men’s life? Annihilation of

life cannot be a means of the amelioration of life; it is a

suicidal act.

 

To destroy another life for the sake of justice is as though a

man, to repair the misfortune of losing one arm, should cut off

the other arm for the sake of equity.

 

But putting aside the sin of deluding men into regarding the most

awful crime as a duty, putting aside the revolting sin of using

the name and authority of Christ to sanction what he most

condemned, not to speak of the curse on those who cause these

“little ones” to offend—how can people who cherish their own way

of life, their progress, even from the point of view of their

personal security, allow the formation in their midst of an

overwhelming force as senseless, cruel, and destructive as every

government is organized on the basis of an army? Even the most

cruel band of brigands is not so much to be dreaded as such a

government.

 

The power of every brigand chief is at least so far limited that

the men of his band preserve at least some human liberty, and can

refuse to commit acts opposed to their conscience. But, owing to

the perfection to which the discipline of the army has been

brought, there is no limit to check men who form part of a

regularly organized government. There are no crimes so revolting

that they would not readily be committed by men who form part of a

government or army, at the will of anyone (such as Boulanger,

Napoleon, or Pougachef) who may chance to be at their head.

 

Often when one sees conscription levies, military drills and

maneuvers, police officers with loaded revolvers, and sentinels at

their posts with bayonets on their rifles; when one hears for

whole days at a time (as I hear it in Hamovniky where I live) the

whistle of balls and the dull thud as they fall in the sand; when

one sees in the midst of a town where any effort at violence in

self-defense is forbidden, where the sale of powder and of

chemicals, where furious driving and practicing as a doctor

without a diploma, and so on, are not allowed; thousands of

disciplined troops, trained to murder, and subject to one man’s

will; one asks oneself how can people who prize their security

quietly allow it, and put up with it? Apart from the immorality

and evil effects of it, nothing can possibly be more unsafe. What

are people thinking about? I don’t mean now Christians, ministers

of religion, philanthropists, and moralists, but simply people who

value their life, their security, and their comfort. This

organization, we know, will work just as well in one man’s hands

as another’s. To-day, let us assume, power is in the hands of a

ruler who can be endured, but tomorrow it may be seized by a

Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pougachef, a Napoleon I., or a

Napoleon III.

 

And the man in authority, endurable to-day, may become a brute tomorrow, or may be succeeded by a mad or imbecile heir, like the

King of Bavaria or our Paul I.

 

And not only the highest authorities, but all little satraps

scattered over everywhere, like so many General Baranovs,

governors, police officers even, and commanders of companies, can

perpetrate the most awful crimes before there is time for them to

be removed from office. And this is what is constantly happening.

 

One involuntarily asks how can men let it go on, not from higher

considerations only, but from regard to their own safety?

 

The answer to this question is that it is not all people who do

tolerate it (some—the greater proportion—deluded and submissive,

have no choice and have to tolerate anything). It is tolerated by

those who only under such an organization can occupy a position of

profit. They tolerate it, because for them the risks of suffering

from a foolish or cruel man being at the head of the government or

the army are always less than the disadvantages to which they

would be exposed by the destruction of the organization itself.

 

A judge, a commander of police, a governor, or an officer will

keep his position just the same under Boulanger or the republic,

under Pougachef or Catherine. He will lose his profitable

position for certain, if the existing order of things which

secured it to him is destroyed. And so all these people feel no

uneasiness as to who is at the head of the organization, they will

adapt themselves to anyone; they only dread the downfall of the

organization itself, and that is the reason—though often an

unconscious one—that they support it.

 

One often wonders why independent people, who are not forced to do

so in any way, the so-called �LITE of society, should go into the

army in Russia, England, Germany, Austria, and even France, and

seek opportunities of becoming murderers. Why do even high-principled parents send their boys to military schools? Why do

mothers buy their children toy