[5] “The true Church will be known by the Word of God being studied clear and unmixed with man’s additions and the sacraments being maintained faithful to Christ’s teaching.”
[6] “I know that our right to qualify thus the tendencies which were so actively opposed by the early Fathers is contested. The very use of the word heresy seems an attack upon liberty of conscience and thought. We cannot share this scruple; for it would amount to nothing less than depriving Christianity of all distinctive character.”
[7] “The Church is a free association; there is much to be gained by separation from it. Conflict with error has no weapons other than thought and feeling. One uniform type of doctrine has not yet been elaborated; divergencies in secondary matters arise freely in East and West; theology is not wedded to invariable formulas. If in the midst of this diversity a mass of beliefs common to all is apparent, is one not justified in seeing in it, not a formulated system, framed by the representatives of pedantic authority, but faith itself in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation? If the same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of belief is found also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we not justified in concluding that these tendencies were in flagrant opposition to the fundamental principles of Christianity? And will not this presumption be transformed into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine universally rejected by the Church the characteristic features of one of the religions of the past? To say that gnosticism or ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must boldly deny the existence of Christian thought at all, or any specific character by which it could be recognized. While ostensibly widening its realm, one undermines it. No one in the time of Plato would have ventured to give his name to a doctrine in which the theory of ideas had no place, and one would deservedly have excited the ridicule of Greece by trying to pass off Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy. Let us recognize, then, that if a religion or a doctrine exists which is called Christianity, it may have its heresies.”
[8] The fact that so many varied forms of existence, as the life of the family, of the tribe, of the clan, of the state, and even the life of humanity theoretically conceived by the Positivists, are founded on this social or pagan theory of life, does not destroy the unity of this theory of life. All these varied forms of life are founded on the same conception, that the life of the individual is not a sufficient aim of life—that the meaning of life can be found only in societies of individuals.
[9] Here, for example, is a characteristic view of that kind from the American journal the Arena (October, 1890): “New Basis of Church Life.” Treating of the significance of the Sermon on the Mount and non-resistance to evil in particular, the author, being under no necessity, like the Churchmen, to hide its significance, says:
“Christ in fact preached complete communism and anarchy; but one must learn to regard Christ always in his historical and psychological significance. Like every advocate of the love of humanity, Christ went to the furthest extreme in his teaching. Every step forward toward the moral perfection of humanity is always guided by men who see nothing but their vocation. Christ, in no disparaging sense be it said, had the typical temperament of such a reformer. And therefore we must remember that his precepts cannot be understood literally as a complete philosophy of life. We ought to analyze his words with respect for them, but in the spirit of criticism, accepting what is true,” etc.
Christ would have been happy to say what he ought, but he was not able to express himself as exactly and clearly as we can in the spirit of criticism, and therefore let us correct him. All that he said about meekness, sacrifice, lowliness, not caring for the morrow, was said by accident, through lack of knowing how to express himself scientifically.
[10] “Sur l’Eau,” pp. 71-80.
[11] “Le Sens de la Vie,” pp. 208-13.
[12] Phrase quoted from Victor-Hugo, “Notre-Dame de Paris.”
[13] The fact that in America the abuses of authority exist in spite of the small number of their troops not only fails to disprove this position, but positively confirms it. In America there are fewer soldiers than in other states. That is why there is nowhere else so little oppression of the working classes, and no country where the end of the abuses of government and of government itself seems so near. Of late as the combinations of laborers gain in strength, one hears more and more frequently the cry raised for the increase of the army, though the United States are not threatened with any attack from without. The upper classes know that an army of fifty thousand will soon be insufficient, and no longer relying on Pinkerton’s men, they feel that the security of their position depends on the increased strength of the army.
[14] The fact that among certain nations, as the English and the American, military service is not compulsory (though already one hears there are some who advocate that it should be made so) does not affect the servility of the citizens to the government in principle. Here we have each to go and kill or be killed, there they have each to give the fruit of their toil to pay for the recruiting and training of soldiers.
[15] All the details of this case, as well as those preceding it, are authentic.
[16] I may quote in this connection the amazingly naive and comic declaration of the Russian authorities, the oppressors of other nationalities—the Poles, the Germans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews. The Russian Government has oppressed its subjects for centuries, and has never troubled itself about the Little Russians of Poland, or the Letts of the Baltic provinces, or the Russian peasants, exploited by everyone. And now it has all of a sudden become the champion of the oppressed—the very oppressed whom it is itself oppressing.
Transcriber’s note:
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.
The transcriber has changed the page number for Chapter XII in the Table of Contents from 279 to 278.
What Then Must We Do? Leo Tolstoy
What Then Must We Do?
Translated by Aylmer Maude 1886
CHAPTER I
I HAD spent my life in the country, and when in 1881 I came to live in Moscow the sight of town poverty surprised me. I knew country poverty, but town poverty was new and incomprehensible to me. In Moscow one cannot pass a street without meeting beggars, and beggars who are not like those in the country. They do not ‘carry a bag and beg in Christ’s name’, as country beggars say of themselves; they go without a bag and do not beg.
When you meet or pass them they generally only try to catch your eye; and according to your look they either ask or do not ask. I know one such beggar from among the gentry. The old man walks slowly, stooping at each step. When he meets you he stoops on one leg and seems to be making you a bow. If you stop he takes off his cockaded cap, bows again, and begs; but if you do not stop he makes as though this were merely his way of walking, and goes on, bowing in the same way on the other leg. He is a typical educated Moscow beggar. At first I did not know why they do not ask plainly. Afterwards I learnt this but still did not understand their position.
Once, passing through the Afanasev side-street, I saw a policeman putting a ragged peasant who was swollen with dropsy, into an open cab. I asked: ‘What is this for?’ The policeman replied: ‘For begging.’ ‘Is that forbidden?’ ‘It seems it’s forbidden!’ replied the policeman.
The man with dropsy was taken away in the cab. I got into another cab and followed them. I wanted to find out whether it was really forbidden to ask alms and in what way it was repressed. I could not at all understand that it should be possible to forbid a man s asking another man for anything; and also I could not believe that asking alms was forbidden, for Moscow was full of beggars. I entered the police station to which the beggar was taken. There a man who had a sword and a pistol was sitting at a table. I asked: ‘What has that peasant been arrested for?’ The man with the sword and pistol looked at me sternly and said: ‘What business is it of yours?’
Feeling however that he ought to explain something to me, he added: ‘The authorities order such people to be arrested, so it has to be done.’ I went out. The policeman who had brought the beggar in was sitting o~ a windowsill in the entrance-hall looking dejectedly at a note-book. I asked him: ‘Is it true that beggars are forbidden to ask in Christ’s name for alms?’ The policeman roused himself, looked up at me, and then did not exactly frown but seemed to drowse off again, and sitting on the window-.sill said: ‘The authorities order it, so that means it’s necessary’; and he occupied himself again with his note-book. I went out into the porch to the cabman.
‘Well, what’s happened? Have they arrested him?’ asked the cabman. He, too,
