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A Christian does not quarrel with any one,
does not attack any one, nor use violence against one;
on the contrary, he himself without murmuring bears violence;
but by this very relation to violence he not only frees himself,
but also the world from external power.
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it
must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.
Leo Tolstoy, DiaryThe evil committed by man not only weakens his soul
and deprives him of true happiness,
but more often than not
falls back on the one who commits it.
Leo Tolstoy, Daily Reading, June 6
Eventually institutional violence will disappear,
not as a result of external action,
but thanks only to the calls of conscience of men
who have awakened to the truth.
Leo TolstoyEvery man, in refusing to take part in military service
or to pay taxes to a government
which uses them for military purposes, is,
by this refusal, rendering a great service to God and man,
for he is thereby making use of the most efficacious means
of furthering the progressive movement of mankind
toward that better social order which it is striving after
and must eventually attain.
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy, the son of Count Nicholas Tolstoy, was born on
August 28, 1828
(September 9 in our Gregorian calendar) at the
family estate Yasnaya Polyana,
where he spent most of his life
about a hundred miles south of Moscow.
His mother died before
he was two years old;
when he was about nine, his father and grandmother
died.
Leo was raised by aunts and tutors, and he followed his
older brothers
to the University of Kazan; wanting to become a
diplomat,
he studied in the Department of Oriental Languages and
strove
to become a sophisticated gentleman of the world.
In 1847
he began to manage his estate at Yasnaya Polyana
while also pursuing
the social life in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In his diary he
formulated rules for living which he had great difficulty following.
At age 23 he followed his older brother Nicholas into the army
life in the Caucasus,
and he fought in the Crimean War until 1856.
During this period he struggled with a penchant for gambling,
"fits of lust" and "criminal sloth."
He criticized
the army for lacking loyalty, courage, and dignity,
and he complained
about the corporal punishment inflicted
on the soldiers and about
the incompetence of the generals.
He was only 24 when he wrote
in his diary that
because war is unjust, those who are involved
in it must stifle their consciences.
Tolstoy began writing sketches on Childhood, Boyhood, and
Youth, and short stories.
He participated in the siege
of Sebastopol in 1854 and
criticized the false heroism of soldiers
in his Sebastopol Sketches.
Tolstoy described the suffering
of a civilized man amid the spontaneous lives
of the natives in The Cossacks, which he completed
in 1862 just prior to
beginning War and Peace.
He studied educational methods
and started an experimental school for the local peasants.
He
formulated his progressive educational theories under the influence
of Rousseau's writings and his travels in western Europe.
When
Leo was 34, he married Sonya, who bore him thirteen children
and
assisted him in his literary career, which in the next fifteen
years
produced two of the greatest novels ever written, War
and Peace and Anna Karenina.
The epic War and Peace describes the lives of five aristocratic
families
during the Napoleonic Wars between Russia and France.
His subtle psychological insights and realistic details
create
an entire world from various points of view.
Tolstoy's own future
views are foreshadowed by the esoteric philosophy
of the Freemasons,
who initiate Pierre into their mysteries.
He is exhorted to an
active life of virtue.
Although they endeavor to reform society,
they renounce the use of violence.
"Every violent reform
deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil
while men
remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence."1
The answer lies in personal transformation,
which Pierre undergoes
during the course of events.
The moral evil of the war is summarized
by Tolstoy in these words:
On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe
crossed the Russian frontier and war began,
that is, an event took place
opposed to human reason and to human nature.
Millions of men perpetrated against one another
such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries,
issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders
as in whole centuries are not recorded
in the annals of all the law courts of the world,
but which those who committed them
did not at the time regard as being crimes.2
Tolstoy did not lay the blame on the leaders and "great
men" whom he believed
were merely puppets of history, a history
shaped by the millions of choices
made by the countless individuals
participating.
Each man lives for himself,
using his freedom to attain his personal aims,
and feels with his whole being that he can now do
or abstain from doing this or that action;
but as soon as he has done it,
that action performed at a certain moment in time
becomes irrevocable and belongs to history,
in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.3
Thus although a person lives consciously for oneself, the social
unconscious
of collective humanity exerts a greater influence
depending on how high
the person stands on the social ladder,
which in turn determines one's power over others.
This diagnosis
was to lead to Tolstoy's twofold solution to the problem
of a
violent society - that is, the social solution of dismantling the
political institutions
which by their nature force their power
on the people, and the individual solution
of refusing to participate
in institutions of violence from a sense of inner conscience.
In Anna Karenina the Tolstoyan hero Levin declares,
"The
good of society is dependent upon scrupulous obedience
of the
moral law engraved in every human heart," and he also believes
that
"no one, therefore, should desire or advocate war,
whatever
generous aim it purports to serve."
In his Confession Tolstoy described the spiritual crisis
he had in 1879 when he contemplated suicide.
He explained how
literary minds fall away from traditional religion
only to get
lost in an aesthetic nihilism.
Neither science nor theology satisfied
his quest for meaning in life,
but living a simple and good life
to benefit others awakened in him
a feeling of faith in God that
reasoning could not find.
He returned to religion, but after a
while he left the dogma and ritual of the church
behind to explore
for himself the original teachings of Christ
especially as presented
in the Sermon on the Mount.
He made his own translation, harmony,
and summary of the Gospels
and expounded their precepts
in his writings for the rest of his life.
He was particularly
moved by the command
not to resist one that is evil but to love
your enemies.
With this foundation he criticized the hypocrisy
of Christian societies
which practiced violence in warfare and
criminal executions.
He felt that the three causes of war in his
time were
the unequal distribution
of property, the military establishment,
and false and deceptive religion.
In What I Believe Tolstoy contrasted the teachings of
Jesus
to the dogma and practices of the Orthodox Church.
In What
Shall We Do Then? Tolstoy presented his observations of
the
slums in Moscow and analyzed the causes of poverty.
In deciding
what to do he suggested three things:
1) not to lie to oneself
or be afraid of the truth,
2) to renounce one's sense of righteousness,
prerogatives, and privileges, and
3) to labor with one's whole
being to support oneself and others.
He criticized the use of
intoxicants and tobacco
in his essay "Why Do Men Stupefy
Themselves?"
He protested the executions of revolutionaries
in "I Cannot Be Silent!"
Also he advocated the land
tax reforms proposed by Henry George.
In 1891 a severe famine occurred in Russia.
While visiting
a friend in Ryazan Province, Tolstoy was moved to work
in relief
efforts, although his pleas for help were attacked by government
officials.
In 1897 he published What is Art? propounding
that in good art
the soul of the artist infects his audience by
means of sympathetic feelings, and
he hailed religious art which
flows from the love of God and man as the highest art.
True art
encourages peaceful co-existence of people,
not by the external
means of courts, police, and institutions,
but through free and
joyous activity.
Art should remove violence.
Tolstoy believed
that art could help bring about a better life for all.
The present task of art is to make
the feeling of brotherhood and love of one's neighbor,
which is now shared only by the best members of society,
the customary feeling, even the instinct, of all human beings.
Art is destined to promulgate the truth that
the well-being of men consists in their being united together,
and to help set up, in place of the reign of force that now exists,
the kingdom of God (Who is Love)
that we all recognize as the highest goal of life.4
Near the close of the century about 12,000 Dukhobors were being
persecuted
in Russia; they refused to serve in the army since
it is against Christian teachings.
The persecutions had depleted
their resources so that
they did not have the funds to migrate
to America.
Tolstoy rapidly completed his novel Resurrection
and turned the
considerable sum of money he received from
it over to the Dukhobors.
Along with other donations, particularly
from English and American Quakers,
they were able to move to Canada.
Tolstoy had adopted a new life-style after his conversion,
giving all his property to his wife and living almost like a peasant.
He gave up smoking and drinking and became a vegetarian.
He worked
in the fields, cleaned his own room, and made his own boots.
Because
of his radical ideas he was excommunicated by the Church in 1901.
Finally after conflicts between his wife and the leading Tolstoyan
disciple Chertkov,
the old man left his home at the age of 82
and died of pneumonia
shortly after starting on this pilgrimage
as a religious hermit.
Tolstoy's major book on nonviolence and the way to peace is
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, which was completed
in 1893.
He began by surveying the nonresistants such as the Quakers,
William Lloyd Garrison, Adin Ballou, and Chelcicky,
who dedicated
their lives to these principles.
He recounted how some people
in Russia refused
to do military service because of religious
convictions.
Tolstoy explained how not resisting evil with evil
is the way to eliminate evil altogether.
It alone makes it possible to tear the evil out by the root,
both out of one's own heart and out of the neighbor's heart.
This doctrine forbids doing that
by which evil is perpetuated and multiplied.
He who attacks another and insults him,
engenders in another the sentiment of hatred,
the root of all evil.
To offend another, because he offended us,
for the specious reason of removing an evil,
means to repeat an evil deed,
both against him and against ourselves.5
Tolstoy responded to five typical criticisms of nonresistance.
First, some assert that violence does not contradict Christ's
teachings,
believing that government is not bound by the admonitions
toward humility,
forgiveness, and love of enemies; they simply
quote Biblical passages
to their liking and ignore the essence
of the teachings.
Second, people feel that turning the other cheek
and giving up one's shirt
are too high a moral demand for this
world, and that if force were not used
to stop evildoers, they
would destroy all the good people.
However, this argument destroys
the Christian teachings,
because true Christians do not wish to
judge evil-doers,
nor do they consider themselves capable of judging
accurately,
nor would they be willing to execute punishment.
The
third argument is that although one ought not to defend oneself,
one ought to defend one's neighbors; this still contradicts Christ's
teaching,
because Jesus did not allow his disciples to defend
him and
because the violence used to defend against threatened
violence
may be even worse since we never know what will result
beforehand.
Fourth, theologians and defenders of the church and
state consider violations
of nonresistance as accidental and even
justifiable under certain circumstances
such as wars and executions;
yet they do not try to justify the breaking
of other commandments
such as against fornication,
and one reason why people ignore
nonresistance
is because church preachers do not recognize it.
The fifth device is merely to ignore the question and criticize
nonresistants
for being one-sided or extremists; these people
are the hardest to reach,
because they are not willing to discuss
the issue and assume they are right
without any logical justification
whatsoever, being under a kind of "hypnotic suggestion."
Tolstoy adopted the following five ideals and commandments
of Christ expressed in the Sermon on the Mount:
1) have no ill-will
against anyone, but love all; do not even offend with a word;
2) be completely chaste, even in thought;
3) live only in the
present and do not worry about the future;
do not swear and do
not promise;
4) never use violence nor repay evil with evil
but
suffer insult and give up possessions; and
5) love our enemies
and those who hate us by treating them as ourselves.
For Tolstoy
these commandments are to be practiced now,
and they will be followed
by higher ones on the path to perfection.
These teachings transcend
the social conception of life,
which may be limited by exclusive
love of one's
family, tribe, nation, race, or even humanity.
These
and socialistic brotherhoods are based on the love of personality;
but the Christian love ever expands because it is based on the
love of God.
Tolstoy pointed out the contradiction of the military in a
society
which professes itself to be Christian-believing in the
brotherhood of men
and being prepared for hostility and murder -
being
a Christian and a gladiator at the same time.
Tolstoy found three
prevalent attitudes to war.
Those who consider it accidental propose
diplomatic and international solutions.
Others deplore the horrors
of war but believe that it is inevitable;
these are the pessimistic
writers who describe
how terrible life is but offer no real solution.
The third group has lost its conscience and justifies wars
as
part of natural evolution and the survival of the fittest.
For
Tolstoy even the first group, which organizes societies and diplomatic
methods
to resolve conflicts, is rather like trying to catch a
bird by putting salt on its tail;
the salt can only be used if
the bird is as good as caught anyway.
Thus international agreements
will only be effective
when men have decided to renounce the use
of weapons.
Therefore the critical step is to refuse to participate
in or support military forces.
Tolstoy compared the advantages
and disadvantages for a person
to submit or not to submit to military
service
and summarized the advantages in these words:
For him who has not refused,
the advantages will consist in this,
that, having submitted to all the humiliations
and having executed all the cruelties demanded of him,
he may, if he is not killed,
receive red, golden, tin-foil decorations over his fool's garments,
and he may at best command hundreds of thousands
of just such bestialized men as himself,
and be called a field-marshal, and receive a lot of money.
But the advantages of him who refuses will consist in this,
that he will retain his human dignity,
will earn the respect of good men,
and, above all else, will know without fail
that he is doing God's work,
and so an incontestable good to men.6
How, then, does society make soldiers of its men?
by intimidation,
bribery, hypnosis, and segregation from civilian society.
Observing
the stirrings of revolutionary movements,
Tolstoy correctly predicted
that the communists and socialists would
put even the economic
sphere under the control of the government.
The Christian solution
of nonviolence must be used if people are
ever to free themselves
from enslavement to violent institutions.
Those who follow a merely
social concept of life do not refuse to submit,
and many fight
and kill in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
However,
the true Christian is liberated from social powers by living
"the
divine law of love, which is implanted in the soul of every man
and is brought into consciousness by Christ."7
Although one
may suffer external violence or physical imprisonment,
the Christian
is free (not a slave of sin) and
therefore is not compelled by
external threats.
Freedom is not found in external things
but
in the inward liberation of choosing what is loving.
Tolstoy cited cases where conscientious Christians refused
to submit
to military service and to swear such an oath or refused
to pay taxes.
He observed that they are more effective with peaceful
disobedience
than are the socialists, communists, and anarchists
with their bombs,
riots, and revolutions, for governments know
how to handle external threats.
Force can fight force, but love
and peace have a subtle power all their own.
He concluded, "The
governments feel their indefensibleness and weakness,
and the
men of the Christian consciousness are awakening
from their lethargy
and are beginning to feel their strength."8
Those who try to rule with violence are obviously breaking
the golden rule
and are morally inferior to those who prefer suffering
violence to doing violence.
The state tries to justify its violence
with the assumption that it prevents violence;
but Tolstoy held
that if the government stopped all its violence,
then the total
amount of violence would decrease.
Since it is the bad or morally
inferior who do violence,
the government has placed itself among
the bad.
Violence will never cease due to the threat of violence
but only when people become good and refrain from it altogether.
Thus society improves as more and more people renounce the cruelty
of violence.
Violence distorts public opinion as to what is right
and obscures
people's recognition of the true spiritual forces
of humanity.
When public opinion condemns violence, then using
violence in government
becomes less desirable, and those holding
positions tend to use less violence.
Inevitably people will eventually
see the uselessness, silliness,
and indecency of violence, and
weapons will no longer be employed.
The sovereignty of God will
come as we live by the light within us.
In the last fifteen years of his life Tolstoy wrote numerous
articles and letters
promoting the philosophy of nonviolence and
the method of civil disobedience.
He expressed his gratitude to
several American writers who especially influenced him,
namely,
Garrison, Parker, Emerson, Ballou, and Thoreau.
He repeated the
basic principle that murder is wrong and that
killing one's fellow
human beings in any circumstances is murder.
Thus the simple truth
is that war and executions are murder,
even though people try
to justify them.
The essential solution to war is for people to
realize
what it really is and call it by its right name.
It should be understood
that an army is an instrument of murder,
that the recruiting and drilling of armies
which Kings, Emperors, and Presidents carry on
with so much self-assurance are preparations for murder.9
Therefore a Christian cannot be a soldier, that is, a murderer,
and a man
with any sense will not enslave himself to a master
whose business is killing.
The way to end war, then, is for those
who recognize that it is wrong,
to refrain from fighting and even
to cease supporting
warlike governments by refusing to pay their
taxes.
Those who are not hypnotized into the wrongdoing must refuse;
those who do follow reason, conscience, and God will always
attain
the best results for themselves and for the world.
They say something
like this: we realize that the danger
they are so anxious to guard
against is a fraud.
All nations claim they want peace, but at
the same time
they are all arming themselves against others.
We
recognize the law that all people are of the same family,
and
it does not matter if one belongs to this country or that.
Thus
we are not frightened by the danger that other nations will attack.
The law of God is more important than the requirement to participate
in killing because our duty is not only not to kill but not to
violate at all.
Therefore we will not prepare for murder nor give
money for that purpose.
We will not attend your meetings designed
to pervert people's
minds and consciences in order to transform
them into
instruments of violence to obey any bad man choosing
to use them.
Now the real struggle is between those who use violence
and
those who refuse to be violent.
Thus Tolstoy urged both officers
and soldiers to resign.
He exposed the cruel punishments the army
uses to turn men into
less than
animals, into machines, which
perform deeds most repulsive to human nature.
He exhorted men
to obey God rather than the shameful commands of men.
We must learn to see through the perverted rationalizations
that governments use to justify war.
In 1894 Tolstoy wrote Christianity
and Patriotism, warning against the
dangerous sentiment of
patriotism, which he defined as "the preference for
one's
own country or nation above the country or nation of any one else."
He found it aptly illustrated in the German patriotic song,
Deutschland,
Deutschland über Alles.
This sentiment he regarded as
immoral because it violates the golden rule
by trying to benefit
oneself at the expense of others.
For Tolstoy patriotism "is
nothing but an instrument for the attainment
of the government's
ambitious and mercenary aims,
and a renunciation of human dignity,
common sense, and conscience by the governed,
and a slavish submission
to those who hold power."10
Patriotism must inevitably yield
to universal brotherhood.
Tolstoy proposed that the most important changes in the life
of humanity
are not brought about by armies nor machines nor exhibitions
nor labor unions
nor revolutions nor inventions but by a change
in public opinion.
We need only to stop lying to ourselves and
realize that strength is not in force but in truth.
Oppressive
governments fear the clear expression of thought more than anything
else;
spiritual force is free and always accessible in the depths
of human consciousness.
We must learn to use the consciousness
of truth by expressing what we know is right.
By expressing the
truth the new public opinion will become enlightened.
This truth
is found in our consciences and is given to us by God.
Christ
gave us his peace, but it is up to us to bring it into realization.
The heroes in this struggle for peace are the martyrs who have
died
for refusing to do violence or who have been locked up in
prisons.
Many were little known; yet the spiritual power of their
actions
can influence consciences of countless people.
Tolstoy
prophesied that war must disappear, and he saw many signs of its
demise,
such as the helplessness of governments, which keep increasing
their arms and
multiplying their taxes to the discontent of the
people, the extreme efficiency in
constructing deadly weapons,
the activities of peace societies and congresses,
and most important,
the refusal of individuals to serve in the military.
All of these
indicators are much more pronounced now than they were a century
ago.
Just as slavery was recognized as wrong in the nineteenth century
and was eventually eradicated, so too war is now being considered
a useless, wicked, harmful madness which must also be eliminated.
Those who are persecuted for the sake of peace and justice gradually
awaken the consciences of their persecutors,
not by coercive force
but by love and persuasion.
By renouncing violence the nonresistance
principle recognizes
the freedom of every individual to make one's
own decisions.
By love and rational persuasion humanity
can truly
progress toward a better way of life.
Tolstoy elucidated three
ways we can know how to act.
First, the collective wisdom of humanity
advises us to act toward others
as we would have them act toward
us.
Second, we can use our reason to see that if people acted
in this way,
it would be best for everyone.
Third, by listening
to our hearts we know by intuition
that the loving action leads
to happiness.
Tolstoy's last book was The Law of Love and the Law of Violence.
He began the preface,
The only reason why I am writing this is because,
knowing the one means of salvation for Christian humanity,
from its physical suffering
as well as from the moral corruption in which it is sunk,
I, who am on the edge of the grave, cannot be silent.11
He could see the increasing conflicts between revolutionaries
and governments,
between oppressed nations and their oppressors,
state against state
and West against East; but few are aware of
the remedies to these problems.
Tolstoy observed that animalistic
man is unhappy and
that evil weakens the soul and usually rebounds.
Force does not keep people social, and cruelty and lies
must eventually
be replaced by Christ's law of love.
It is this law of love and its recognition
as a rule of conduct in all our relations
with friends, enemies and offenders
which must inevitably bring about
the complete transformation
of the existing order of things,
not only among Christian nations,
but among all the peoples of the globe.12
This obviously rules out violence.
Although reason is often
used to justify sin, the horrors of wars are
much worse than the
motives and justifications for them ever consider.
Governments
really use violence so that a minority may continue to exploit
a majority by maintaining the established "order."
The
majority allows themselves to be exploited because they are deceived
and
because they have no faith in God but are manipulated by considerations
of self-interest.
Tolstoy reiterated the need to refuse military
service and described
the joy experienced by some of those he
saw in prison.
Although conditions in the world seem to be reaching a point
where
there seems to be no solution, the supreme law of love is
still the way to salvation.
Conscience has been the moving impulse
behind the
gradual evolution and recognition of human rights.
The type of political or social system, whether to preserve a
monarchy or a republic
or replace it with a socialist or communist
regime, if the method is violent,
they cannot but fail until the
supreme law of love is universally practiced;
for love transcends
all the social systems.
We are free and happy according to how
closely
we follow the supreme law of life, which is love.
When
everyone observes the law of love, union will be realized without
effort.
These ideas Tolstoy wanted to convey before he died, that
by perfecting
our love toward our fellow humans we free ourselves
from illusions.
A year before he died, Tolstoy wrote a pamphlet called The
Slavery of Our Times.
Although he considered the socialist
ideal bankrupt,
he referred to the "iron" law of wages
that German socialists used to describe
the current slavery of
workers; but Tolstoy did not believe this law was immutable.
He
complained that in Russia one-third of a peasant's income was
taken in taxes;
yet only two percent of state revenue was spent
on education,
which is the greatest need of the people.
He argued
that the laws on land, taxes, and property caused slavery,
and
to improve the lives of workers these laws must be changed.
Tolstoy
felt that legislation had been used as organized violence
to allow
some people to oppress others.
Thus he took the radical position
of suggesting that violent governments
must be abolished, and
the way to do that was for the majority of people
to refuse to
supply such governments soldiers and money.
Thus each person should
refuse to serve in the military
or in any part
of a violent government,
should not voluntarily pay taxes used for violence,
and should
not appeal to government violence in order
to protect property, possessions, or oneself and others.
Tolstoy was aware that such
refusals could lead to imprisonment,
but he believed this was
the most effective way to bring about the changes
needed to liberate
people from slavery to violent institutions.
When he was eighty years old, Tolstoy spoke to the Swedish
Peace Congress of 1909.
To the millions of money and millions
of soldiers in the power of the
governments making war he posed
the dilemma of the truth that
killing people is murder and that
therefore war is contrary to Christian teaching.
Thus he suggested
that they draw up an appeal to all people for peace.
He could
not predict what society would be like without armies and wholesale
murders;
but he believed that if people were guided by reason
and conscience
instead of by threats of murder, they would be
no worse off
than they were under the current conditions.
Thus
he hoped that the truth might expose the hypocrisy of the government
leaders.
At the end of his life Tolstoy corresponded with Mohandas Gandhi
concerning the way of love and nonresistance.
Two months before
his death he wrote to Gandhi,
Socialism, communism, anarchism, the Salvation Army,
the growth of crime, unemployment among the population,
the growth of the insane luxury of the rich
and the destitution of the poor,
the terrible growth in the number of suicides-
all these things are signs of this internal contradiction
which ought to and must be solved-
and, of course, solved in the sense of
recognizing the law of love and renouncing all violence.
And so your work in the Transvaal,
at the other end of the world as it seems to us,
is the most central and most important
of all tasks now being done in the world,
and not only Christian peoples, but peoples of the whole world
will inevitably take part in it.
I think you will be pleased to know
that this work is also rapidly developing in Russia
in the form of refusals to do military service,
of which there are more and more every year.
However insignificant may be the number
of your people who practice nonresistance
and of our people in Russia who refuse military service,
both can boldly say that God is with them.
And God is more powerful than men.13
Tolstoy praised Gandhi's work in South Africa,
reported about
refusals to do military service in Russia,
and then predicted
that governments must either admit
they do not follow the Christian
religion or stop their violence.
In recognizing Christianity, even in the distorted form
in which it is professed among Christian peoples,
and in recognizing at the same time the necessity
for armies and arms to kill in wars on the most enormous scale,
there is such an obvious and crying contradiction
that sooner or later, probably very soon,
it will be exposed and will put an end
either to the acceptance of the Christian religion
which is necessary to maintain power,
or to the existence of an army and any violence supported by it,
which is no less necessary to maintain power.
This contradiction is felt by all governments,
your British as well as our Russian,
and from a natural feeling of self-preservation
is prosecuted more vigorously
than any other anti-government activity.14
Thus in the race between education and catastrophe that Arnold
Toynbee
used to describe civilization, the baton of peace and
nonviolence passed to
a humble Indian thousands of miles away,
whose use of the peace philosophy
and nonviolent method on a mass
scale was to astound the world.
1. War and Peace Book 6, Chapter 3 by Leo Tolstoy, tr.
Louise and Aylmer Maude,
p. 476.
2. Ibid., Book 9, Chapter 1, p. 667.
3. Ibid., p. 669-670.
4. What Is Art?, XX by Leo Tolstoy.
5. The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy, tr.
Leo Wiener, p. 18.
6. Ibid., p. 189.
7. Ibid., p. 218.
8. Ibid., p. 240-241.
9. "'Thou Shalt Not Kill' On the Death of King Humbert"
in
Tolstoy's Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence,
p. 160.
10. Christianity and Patriotism XIV in The Kingdom of
God and Peace Essays
by Leo Tolstoy, tr. Alymer Maude,
p. 517.
11. The Law of Love and the Law of Violence by Leo Tolstoy,
tr. Mary Koutouzow Tolstoy, p. ix.
12. Ibid., p. 29.
13. Tolstoy's Letters tr. R. F. Christian, Volume 2, p.
707-708.
14. Ibid., p. 708.
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