The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy

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But who are these evil-disposed persons in our midst from whose
attacks we are preserved by the state and its army? Even if,
three or four centuries ago, when men prided themselves on their
warlike prowess, when killing men was considered an heroic
achievement, there were such persons; we know very well that there
are no such persons now, that we do not nowadays carry or use
firearms, but everyone professes humane principles and feels
sympathy for his fellows, and wants nothing more than we all do--
that is, to be left in peace to enjoy his existence undisturbed.
So that nowadays there are no special malefactors from whom the
state could defend us. If by these evil disposed persons is meant
the men who are punished as criminals, we know very well that they
are not a different kind of being like wild beasts among sheep,
but are men just like ourselves, and no more naturally inclined to
crimes than those against whom they commit them. We know now that
threats and punishments cannot diminish their number; that that
can only be done by change of environment and moral influence. So
that the justification of state violence on the ground of the
protection it gives us from evil-disposed persons, even if it had
some foundation three or four centuries ago, has none whatever
now. At present one would rather say on the contrary that the
action of the state with its cruel methods of punishment, behind
the general moral standard of the age, such as prisons, galleys,
gibbets, and guillotines, tends rather to brutalize the people
than to civilize them, and consequently rather to increase than
diminish the number of malefactors.

"Except for the state," they tell us, "we should not have any
religion, education, culture, means of communication, and so on.
Without the state men would not have been able to form the social
institutions needed for doing any thing." This argument too was
well founded only some centuries ago.

If there was a time when people were so disunited, when they had
so little means of communication and interchange of ideas, that
they could not co-operate and agree together in any common action
in commerce, economics, or education without the state as a
center, this want of common action exists no longer. The great
extension of means of communication and interchange of ideas has
made men completely able to dispense with state aid in forming
societies, associations, corporations, and congresses for
scientific, economic, and political objects. Indeed government is
more often an obstacle than an assistance in attaining these aims.

From the end of last century there has hardly been a single
progressive movement of humanity which has not been retarded by
the government. So it has been with abolition of corporal
punishment, of trial by torture, and of slavery, as well as with
the establishment of the liberty of the press and the right of
public meeting. In our day governments not only fail to
encourage, but directly hinder every movement by which people try
to work out new forms of life for themselves. Every attempt at
the solution of the problems of labor, land, politics, and
religion meets with direct opposition on the part of government.

"Without governments nations would be enslaved by their
neighbors." It is scarcely necessary to refute this last
argument. It carries its refutation on the face of it. The
government, they tell us, with its army, is necessary to defend us
from neighboring states who might enslave us. But we know this is
what all governments say of one another, and yet we know that all
the European nations profess the same principles of liberty and
fraternity, and therefore stand in no need of protection against
one another. And if defense against barbarous nations is meant,
one-thousandth part of the troops now under arms would be amply
sufficient for that purpose. We see that it is really the very
opposite of what we have been told. The power of the state, far
from being a security against the attacks of our neighbors,
exposes us, on the contrary, to much greater danger of such
attacks. So that every man who is led, through his compulsory
service in the army, to reflect on the value of the state for
whose sake he is expected to be ready to sacrifice his peace,
security, and life, cannot fail to perceive that there is no kind
of justification in modern times for such a sacrifice.

And it is not only from the theoretical standpoint that every man
must see that the sacrifices demanded by the state have no
justification. Even looking at it practically, weighing, that is
to say, all the burdens laid on him by the state, no man can fail
to see that for him personally to comply with state demands and
serve in the army, would, in the majority of cases, be more
disadvantageous than to refuse to do so.

If the majority of men choose to submit rather than to refuse, it
is not the result of sober balancing of advantages and
disadvantages, but because they are induced by a kind of
hypnotizing process practiced upon them. In submitting they
simply yield to the suggestions given them as orders, without
thought or effort of will. To resist would need independent
thought and effort of which every man is not capable. Even apart
from the moral significance of compliance or non-compliance,
considering material advantage only, non-compliance will be more
advantageous in general.

Whoever I may be, whether I belong to the well-to-do class of the
oppressors, or the working class of the oppressed, in either case
the disadvantages of non-compliance are less and its advantages
greater than those of compliance. If I belong to the minority of
oppressors the disadvantages of non-compliance will consist in my
being brought to judgment for refusing to perform my duties to the
state, and if I am lucky, being acquitted or, as is done in the
case of the Mennonites in Russia, being set to work out my
military service at some civil occupation for the state; while if
I am unlucky, I may be condemned to exile or imprisonment for two
or three years (I judge by the cases that have occurred in
Russia), possibly to even longer imprisonment, or possibly to
death, though the probability of that latter is very remote.

So much for the disadvantages of non-compliance. The
disadvantages of compliance will be as follows: if I am lucky I
shall not be sent to murder my fellow-creatures, and shall not be
exposed to great danger of being maimed and killed, but shall only
be enrolled into military slavery. I shall be dressed up like a
clown, I shall be at the beck and call of every man of a higher
grade than my own from corporal to field-marshal, shall be put
through any bodily contortions at their pleasure, and after being
kept from one to five years I shall have for ten years afterward
to be in readiness to undertake all of it again at any minute. If
I am unlucky I may, in addition, be sent to war, where I shall be
forced to kill men of foreign nations who have done me no harm,
where I may be maimed or killed, or sent to certain destruction as
in the case of the garrison of Sevastopol, and other cases in
every war, or what would be most terrible of all, I may be sent
against my own compatriots and have to kill my own brothers for
some dynastic or other state interests which have absolutely
nothing to do with me. So much for the comparative disadvantages.

The comparative advantages of compliance and non-compliance are as
follows:

For the man who submits, the advantages will be that, after
exposing himself to all the humiliation and performing all the
barbarities required of him, he may, if he escapes being killed,
get a decoration of red or gold tinsel to stick on his clown's
dress; he may, if he is very lucky, be put in command of hundreds
of thousands of others as brutalized as himself; be called a
field-marshal, and get a lot of money.

The advantages of the man who refuses to obey will consist in
preserving his dignity as a man, gaining the approbation of good
men, and above all knowing that he is doing the work of God, and
so undoubtedly doing good to his fellow-men.

So much for the advantages and disadvantages of both lines of
conduct for a man of the wealthy classes, an oppressor. For a man
of the poor working class the advantages and disadvantages will be
the same, but with a great increase of disadvantages. The
disadvantages for the poor man who submits will be aggravated by
the fact that he will by taking part in it, and, as it were,
assenting to it strengthen the state of subjection in which he is
held himself.

But no considerations as to how far the state is useful or
beneficial to the men who help to support it by serving in the
army, nor of the advantages or disadvantages for the individual of
compliance or non-compliance with state demands, will decide the
question of the continued existence or the abolition of
government. This question will be finally decided beyond appeal
by the religious consciousness or conscience of every man who is
forced, whether he will or no, through universal conscription, to
face the question whether the state is to continue to exist or
not.

CHAPTER VIII.

DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE MUST INEVITABLY BE
ACCEPTED BY MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY.

Christianity is Not a System of Rules, but a New Conception of
Life, and therefore it was Not Obligatory and was Not Accepted
in its True Significance by All, but only by a Few--Christianity
is, Moreover, Prophetic of the Destruction of the Pagan Life,
and therefore of Necessity of the Acceptance of the Christian
Doctrines--Non-resistance of Evil by Force is One Aspect of the
Christian Doctrine, which must Inevitably in Our Times be
Accepted by Men--Two Methods of Deciding Every Quarrel--First
Method is to Find a Universal Definition of Evil, which All Must
Accept, and to Resist this Evil by Force--Second Method is the
Christian One of Complete Non-resistance by Force--Though the
Failure of the First Method was Recognized since the Early Days of
Christianity, it was Still Proposed, and only as Mankind has
Progressed it has Become More and More Evident that there Cannot
be any Universal Definition of Evil--This is Recognized by All at
the Present Day, and if Force is Still Used to Resist Evil, it is
Not Because it is Now Regarded as Right, but Because People Don't
Know How to Avoid It--The Difficulty of Avoiding It is the Result
of the Subtle and Complex Character of the Government Use of
Force--Force is Used in Four Ways: Intimidation, Bribery,
Hypnotism, and Coercion by Force of Arms--State Violence Can Never
be Suppressed by the Forcible Overthrow of the Government--Men are
Led by the Sufferings of the Pagan Mode of Life to the Necessity
of Accepting Christ's Teaching with its Doctrine of Non-resistance
by Force--The Consciousness of its Truth which is Diffused
Throughout Our Society, Will also Bring About its Acceptance--This
Consciousness is in Complete Contradiction with Our Life--This is
Specially Obvious in Compulsory Military Service, but Through
Habit and the Application of the Four Methods of Violence by the
State, Men do not See this Inconsistency of Christianity with Life
of a Soldier--They do Not even See It, though the Authorities
Themselves Show all the Immorality of a Soldier's Duties with
Perfect Clearness--The Call to Military Service is the Supreme
Test for Every Man, when the Choice is Offered Him, between
Adopting the Christian Doctrine of Non-resistance, or Slavishly
Submitting to the Existing State Organization--Men Usually
Renounce All They Hold Sacred, and Submit to the Demands of
Government, Seeming to See No Other Course Open to Them--For Men
of the Pagan Conception of Life there is No Other Course Open, and
Never Will Be, in Spite of the Growing Horrors of War--Society,
Made Up of Such Men, Must Perish, and No Social Reorganization Can
Save It--Pagan Life Has Reached Its Extreme Limit, and Will
Annihilate Itself.

It is often said that if Christianity is a truth, it ought to have
been accepted by everyone directly it appeared, and ought to have
transformed men's lives for the better. But this is like saying
that if the seed were ripe it ought at once to bring forth stalls,
flower, and fruit.

The Christian religion is not a legal system which, being imposed
by violence, may transform men's lives. Christianity is a new and
higher conception of life. A new conception of life cannot be
imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can
only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and
internal, the other experimental and external.

Some people--a minority--by a kind of prophetic instinct divine
the truth of the doctrine, surrender themselves to it and adopt
it. Others--the majority--only through a long course of mistakes,
experiments, and suffering are brought to recognize the truth of
the doctrine and the necessity of adopting it.

And by this experimental external method the majority of Christian
men have now been brought to this necessity of assimilating the
doctrine. One sometimes wonders what necessitated the corruption
of Christianity which is now the greatest obstacle to its
acceptance in its true significance.

If Christianity had been presented to men in its true, uncorrupted
form, it would not have been accepted by the majority, who would
have been as untouched by it as the nations of Asia are now. The
peoples who accepted it in its corrupt form were subjected to its
slow but certain influence, and by a long course of errors and
experiments and their resultant sufferings have now been brought
to the necessity of assimilating it in its true significance.

The corruption of Christianity and its acceptance in its corrupt
form by the majority of men was as necessary as it is that the
seed should remain hidden for a certain time in the earth in order
to germinate.

Christianity is at once a doctrine of truth and a prophecy.
Eighteen centuries ago Christianity revealed to men the truth in
which they ought to live, and at the same time foretold what human
life would become if men would not live by it but continued to
live by their previous principles, and what it would become if
they accepted the Christian doctrine and carried it out in their
lives.

Laying down in the Sermon on the Mount the principles by which to
guide men's lives, Christ said: "Whosoever heareth these sayings
of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who
built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it
fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that
heareth these sayings, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a
foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon
that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it" (Matt. vii.
24-27).

And now after eighteen centuries the prophecy has been fulfilled.
Not having followed Christ's teaching generally and its
application to social life in non-resistance to evil, men have
been brought in spite of themselves to the inevitable destruction
foretold by Christ for those who do not fulfill his teaching.

People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force
is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question
is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer
from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been
outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life
like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the
road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but
will go on just as I did before. There was one road, now there
are two, and he must make his choice.

In the same way since Christ's teaching has been known by men they
cannot say: I will live as before and will not decide the question
of resistance or non-resistance to evil by force. At every new,
struggle that arises one must inevitably decide; am I, or am I
not, to resist by force what I regard as evil.

The question of resistance or non-resistance to evil arose when
the first conflict between men took place, since every conflict is
nothing else than resistance by force to what each of the
combatants regards as evil. But before Christ, men did not see
that resistance by force to what each regards as evil, simply
because one thinks evil what the other thinks good, is only one of
the methods of settling the dispute, and that there is another
method, that of not resisting evil by force at all.

Before Christ's teaching, it seemed to men that the one only means
of settling a dispute was by resistance to evil by force. And
they acted accordingly, each of the combatants trying to convince
himself and others that what each respectively regards as evil, is
actually, absolutely evil.

And to do this from the earliest time men have devised definitions
of evil and tried to make them binding on everyone. And such
definitions of evil sometimes took the form of laws, supposed to
have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the
commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was
attributed. Men resorted to violence against others, and
convinced themselves and others that they were directing their
violence against evil recognized as such by all.

This means was employed from the earliest times, especially by
those who had gained possession of authority, and for a long while
its irrationality was not detected.

But the longer men lived in the world and the more complex their
relations became, the more evident it was that to resist by force
what each regarded as evil was irrational, that conflict was in no
way lessened thereby, and that no human definitions can succeed in
making what some regard as evil be accepted as such by others.

Already at the time Christianity arose, it was evident to a great
number of people in the Roman Empire where it arose, that what was
regarded as evil by Nero and Caligula could not be regarded as
evil by others. Even at that time men had begun to understand
that human laws, though given out for divine laws, were compiled
by men, and cannot be infallible, whatever the external majesty
with which they are invested, and that erring men are not rendered
infallible by assembling together and calling themselves a senate
or any other name. Even at that time this was felt and understood
by many. And it was then that Christ preached his doctrine, which
consisted not only of the prohibition of resistance to evil by
force, but gave a new conception of life and a means of putting an
end to conflict between all men, not by making it the duty of one
section only of mankind to submit without conflict to what is
prescribed to them by certain authorities, but by making it the
duty of all--and consequently of those in authority--not to resort
to force against anyone in any circumstances.

This doctrine was accepted at the time by only a very small number
of disciples. The majority of men, especially all who were in
power, even after the nominal acceptance of Christianity,
continued to maintain for themselves the principle of resistance
by force to what they regarded as evil. So it was under the Roman
and Byzantine emperors, and so it continued to be later.

The insufficiency of the principle of the authoritative definition
of evil and resistance to it by force, evident as it was in the
early ages of Christianity, becomes still more obvious through the
division of the Roman Empire into many states of equal authority,
through their hostilities and the internal conflicts that broke
out within them.

But men were not ready to accept the solution given by Christ, and
the old definitions of evil, which ought to be resisted, continued
to be laid down by means of making laws binding on all and
enforced by forcible means. The authority who decided what ought
to be regarded as evil and resisted by force was at one time the
Pope, at another an emperor or king, an elective assembly or a
whole nation. But both within and without the state there were
always men to be found who did not accept as binding on themselves
the laws given out as the decrees of a god, or made by men
invested with a sacred character, or the institutions supposed to
represent the will of the nation; and there were men who thought
good what the existing authorities regarded as bad, and who
struggled against the authorities with the same violence as was
employed against them.

The men invested with religious authority regarded as evil what
the men and institutions invested with temporal authority regarded
as good and vice versa, and the struggle grew more and more
intense. And the longer men used violence as the means of
settling their disputes, the more obvious it became that it was an
unsuitable means, since there could be no external authority able
to define evil recognized by all.

Things went on like this for eighteen centuries, and at last
reached the present position in which it is absolutely obvious
that there is, and can be, no external definition of evil binding
upon all. Men have come to the point of ceasing to believe in the
possibility or even desirability of finding and establishing such
a general definition. It has come to men in power ceasing to
attempt to prove that what they regard as evil is evil, and simply
declaring that they regard as evil what they don't like, while
their subjects no longer obey them because they accept the
definition of evil laid down by them, but simply obey because they
cannot help themselves. It was not because it was a good thing,
necessary and beneficial to men, and the contrary course would
have been an evil, but simply because it was the will of those in
power that Nice was incorporated into France, and Lorraine into
Germany, and Bohemia into Austria, and that Poland was divided,
and Ireland and India ruled by the English government, and that
the Chinese are attacked and the Africans slaughtered, and the
Chinese prevented from immigrating by the Americans, and the Jews
persecuted by the Russians, and that landowners appropriate lands
they do not cultivate and capitalists enjoy the fruits of the
labor of others. It has come to the present state of things; one
set of men commit acts of violence no longer on the pretext of
resistance to evil, but simply for their profit or their caprice,
and another set submit to violence, not because they suppose, as
was supposed in former times, that this violence was practised
upon them for the sake of securing them from evil, but simply
because they cannot avoid it.

If the Roman, or the man of mediaeval times, or the average
Russian of fifty years ago, as I remember him, was convinced
without a shade of doubt that the violence of authority was
indispensable to preserve him from evil; that taxes, dues,
serfage, prisons, scourging, knouts, executions, the army and war
were what ought to be--we know now that one can seldom find a man
who believes that all these means of violence preserve anyone from
any evil whatever, and indeed does not clearly perceive that most
of these acts of violence to which he is exposed, and in which he
has some share, are in themselves a great and useless evil.

There is no one to-day who does not see the uselessness and
injustice of collecting taxes from the toiling masses to enrich
idle officials; or the senselessness of inflicting punishments on
weak or depraved persons in the shape of transportation from one
place to another, or of imprisonment in a fortress where, living
in security and indolence, they only become weaker and more
depraved; or the worse than uselessness and injustice, the
positive insanity and barbarity of preparations for war and of
wars, causing devastation and ruin, and having no kind of
justification. Yet these forms of violence continue and are
supported by the very people who see their uselessness, injustice,
and cruelty, and suffer from them. If fifty years ago the idle
rich man and the illiterate laborer were both alike convinced that
their state of everlasting holiday for one and everlasting toil
for the other was ordained by God himself, we know very well that
nowadays, thanks to the growth of population and the diffusion of
books and education, it would be hard to find in Europe or even in
Russia, either among rich or poor, a man to whom in one shape or
another a doubt as to the justice of this state of things had
never presented itself. The rich know that they are guilty in the
very fact of being rich, and try to expiate their guilt by
sacrifices to art and science, as of old they expiated their sins
by sacrifices to the Church. And even the larger half of the
working people openly declare that the existing order is
iniquitous and bound to be destroyed or reformed. One set of
religious people of whom there are millions in Russia, the so-
called sectaries, consider the existing social order as unjust and
to be destroyed on the ground of the Gospel teaching taken in its
true sense. Others regard it as unjust on the ground of the
socialistic, communistic, or anarchistic theories, which are
springing up in the lower strata of the working people. Violence
no longer rests on the belief in its utility, but only on the fact
of its having existed so long, and being organized by the ruling
classes who profit by it, so that those who are under their
authority cannot extricate themselves from it. The governments of
our day--all of them, the most despotic and the liberal alike--
have become what Herzen so well called "Ghenghis Khan with the
telegraph;" that is to say, organizations of violence based on no
principle but the grossest tyranny, and at the same time taking
advantage of all the means invented by science for the peaceful
collective social activity of free and equal men, used by them to
enslave and oppress their fellows.

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