Think of the men who have done most good in the world, and you will find that this has been their principle.
But there is another plan, much more often tried, and still approved of by most people. It consists in making up one’s mind what other people should do, and then, if necessary, using physical violence to make them do it.
For instance, we may think that the Boers ought to let everybody vote for the election of their upper house and chief ruler, and (instead of beginning by trying the experiment at home) we may send out 300,000 men to kill Boers until they leave it to us to decide whether they shall have any votes at all.
People who act like that — Ahab, Attila, Caesar, Napoleon, Bismarck, or Joseph Chamberlain — influence people as long as they can reach them, and even longer; but the influence that lives after them and that spreads furthest, is to a very great extent a bad influence, inflaming men’s hearts with anger, with bitter patriotism, and with malice.
These two lines of conduct are contrary the one to the other. You cannot persuade a man while he thinks you wish to hit or coerce him.
The last commandment is the most sweeping of all, and especially re-enforces the 1st, 3rd, and 4th.
(5) “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies … that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you … what do ye more than others? Do not even the Gentiles (Foreigners: Boers, Turks, etc.) the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The meaning of these five commandments, backed as they are by the example of Jesus and the drift and substance of his most emphatic teaching, is too plain to be misunderstood. It is becoming more and more difficult for the commentators and the expositors to obscure it, though to many of them the words apply: “Ye have made void the word of God because of your traditions.” What Jesus meant us to do, the direction in which he pointed us, and the example he set us, are unmistakable. But, we are told, ‘it is impracticable!’ ‘It must be wrong because it is not what we are doing.’ ‘It is impossible that Jesus can have pointed men to a morality higher than ours!’
There it is! As long as we, men or nations, are self-satisfied — like the Pharisee who thanked God he was not as other men are — we cannot progress. “They that are whole need no physician.” Religion and philosophy can be of use only to those who will admit their imperfections and willingly seek guidance.
‘But it is impossible for us to cease killing men wholesale at the command of our rulers, or to cease hanging men who kill in retail without being told to. We must go on injuring one another, or evil will be sure to come of it.’ If so, then let us throw away Christ’s religion, for it leads us astray, and let us find a better religion instead. The trouble is that the best of the other religious teachers (such as Buddha) said the same thing! And we can hardly admit openly that we are still worshipping Mars or Mammon.
The only other way is for us to be humble and honest about the matter and confess: “I begin to see the truth of this teaching. It points to perfection above the level we have reached; but if I am not good enough to apply it altogether, I will apply it as far as I can, and will at least not deny it, or pervert it, or try by sophistry to debase it to my own level.”
After reaching this view of life (about the year 1880 or a little earlier), Tolstoy saw that much he had formerly considered good was bad, and much he had thought bad was good.
If the aim of life is to co-operate with our Father in doing good, we should not seek to acquire as much property as possible for ourselves, but should seek to give as much to others, and to take as little from others, as we can.
Instead of wanting the most expensive and luxurious food for ourselves, we should seek the cheapest and simplest food that will keep us in health.
Instead of wishing to be better dressed than our neighbours, and wanting to have a shiny black chimney-pot hat to show that we are superior to common folk, we should wish to wear nothing that will separate us from the other children of our Father.
Instead of seeking the most refined and pleasant work for ourselves, and trying to put the rough, disagreeable work on those weaker, less able, less fortunate, or less pushing and selfish than ourselves, we should, on the contrary, make it a point of honour to do our share of what is disagreeable and ill-paid.
Economically speaking, what I take from my brethren should go to my debit, only what service I do them should go to the credit of my account.
Tolstoy became a strict vegetarian, eating only the simplest food and avoiding stimulants. He ceased to smoke. He dressed in the simplest and cheapest manner. Attaching great importance to manual labour, he was careful to take a share of the housework: lighting his own fire and carrying water. He also learned boot-making. Especially he enjoyed labouring with the peasants in the fields, and found that hard as the work was he enjoyed it, and, strange to say, could do better mental work when he only allowed himself a few hours a day for it than he had been able to do when he gave himself up entirely to literary work. Instead of writing chiefly novels and stories for the well-to-do and idle classes, he devoted his wonderful powers principally to clearing up those perplexing problems of human conduct which seem to block the path of progress.
Besides some stories (especially short stories for the people, and some folk-stories which he wrote down in order that they may reach those who are not accustomed to go to the peasants for instruction), many essays and letters on important questions, and a drama and a comedy, his chief works during the last twenty years have been these thirteen books: —
(1) My Confession.
(2) A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, never yet translated.
(3) The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, of which two parts out of three have been (not very well) translated.
(4) What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion.
(5) The Gospel in Brief, a summary of The Four Gospels, and better suited for the general reader than the larger work.
(6) What then must we do? Sometimes called What to do?
(7) On Life, also called Life: a book not carefully finished, and not easy to read in the original. The existing English translation makes nonsense of it in many places, but a new one has now (1902) been announced by the Free Age Press.
(8) The Kreutzer Sonata: a story treating of the sex-question. It should be read with the Afterword, explaining Tolstoy’s views on the subject.
(9) The Kingdom of God is Within You.
(10) The Christian Teaching: a brief summary of Tolstoy’s understanding of Christ’s teaching. He considers that this book still needs revision, but it will be found useful by those who have understood the works numbered 1, 4, 5 and 6 in this list.
(11) What is Art? In Tolstoy’s opinion the best constructed of his books. The profound outcome of fifteen years’ consideration of the problem.
(12) Resurrection, a novel begun about 1894, laid aside in favour of what seemed more important work, and completely re-written and published in 1899, for the benefit of the Doukhobórs.
(13) What is Religion, and what is its Essence? (Feb. 1902.)
The subjects that occupied him were the most important subjects of human knowledge, those which should be (though to-day they are not) emphatically called Science: the kind of science that occupied “Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Confucius, Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who have taught men to live a moral life.” He examined “the results of good and bad actions,” considered the “reasonableness or unreasonableness of human institutions and beliefs,” “how human life should be lived in order to obtain the greatest well-being for each,” and “what one may and should, and what