Main points of the Christian ethics

The central point of the Christian teaching Tolstóy sees in non-resistance. During the first years after his crisis he preached absolute “non-resistance to evil” — in full conformity with the verbal and definite sense of the words of the gospel, which words, taken in connection with the sentence about the right and the left cheek, evidently mean complete humility and resignation. However, he must have soon realised that such a teaching not only was not in conformity with his above-mentioned conception of God, but that it also amounted simply to abetting evil. It contains precisely that license to evil which always has been preached by the State religions in the interest of the ruling classes, and Tolstóy must have realised this. He tells us how he once met in a train the Governor of the Túla province at the head of a detachment of soldiers who were armed with rifles and provided with a cart-load of birch-rods. They were going to flog the peasants of a village in order to enforce an act of sheer robbery passed by the Administration in favour of the landlord and in open breach of the law. He describes with his well-known graphical powers how, in their presence, a “Liberal lady” openly, loudly and in strong terms condemned the Governor and the officers, and how they were ashamed. Then he describes how, when such an expedition began its work, the peasants, with truly Christian resignation, would cross themselves with trembling hand and lie down on the ground, to be martyrised and flogged till the heart of the victim stopped beating, without the officers having been touched in the least by that Christian humility. What Tolstóy did when he met the expedition, we don’t know: he does not tell us. He probably remonstrated with the chiefs and advised the soldiers not to obey them — that is, to revolt. At any rate, he must have felt that a passive attitude in the face of this evil — the non-resistance to it — would have meant a tacit approval of the evil; it would have meant giving support to it. Moreover, a passive attitude of resignation in the ace of evil is so contrary to the very nature of Tolstóy, that he could not remain for a long time a follower of such a doctrine, and he soon altered his interpretation of the text of the gospel in the sense of: “Don’t resist evil by violence.” All his later writings have consequently been a passionate resistance against the different forms of evil which he has seen round about himself in the world. Continually he makes his mighty voice resound against both evil and evil-doers; he only objects to physical force in resisting evil because he believes that works harm.

The other four points of the Christian teaching, always according to Tolstóy’s interpretation of it, are: Do not be angry, or, at least, abstain from anger as much as you can: Remain true to the one woman with whom you have united your life, and avoid all that excites passion: Do not take oaths, which in Tolstóy’s opinion means: Never tie your hands with an oath; oath-taking is the means resorted to by all governments to bind men in their consciences to do whatever they bid them do; and finally, Love your enemies; or, as Tolstóy points it out in several of his writings: Never judge, and never prosecute another before a tribunal.

To these five rules Tolstóy gives the widest possible interpretation and he deducts from them all the teachings of free communism. He proves with a wealth of arguments that to live upon the work of others, and not to earn one’s own living, is to break the very law of all nature; it is the main cause of all social evils, as also of nearly all personal unhappiness and discomforts. He shows how the present capitalistic organisation of labour is as bad as slavery or serfdom has ever been.

He insists upon the simplification of life — in food, dress, and dwelling — which results from one’s taking to manual work, especially on the land, and shows the advantages that even the rich and idle of to-day would find in such labour. He shows how all the evils of present misgovernment result from the fact that the very men who protest against bad government make every effort to become a part of that government.

As emphatically as he protests against the Church, he protests against the State, as the only real means for bringing to an end the present slavery imposed upon men by this institution. He advises men to refuse having anything to do with the State. And finally, he proves with a wealth of illustrations in which his artistic powers appear in full, that the lust of the rich classes for wealth and luxury — a lust which has no limits, and can have none — is what maintains all this slavery, all these abnormal conditions of life, and all the prejudices and teachings now disseminated by Church and State in the interest of the ruling classes.

On the other hand, whenever he speaks of God, or of immortality, his constant desire is to show that he needs none of the mystical conceptions and metaphysical words which are usually resorted to. And while his language is borrowed from religious writings, he always brings forward, again and again, the rationalistic interpretation of religious conceptions. He carefully sifts from the Christian teaching all that cannot be accepted by followers of other religions, and brings into relief all that is common to Christianity as well as to other positive religions; all that is simply humane in them and thus might be approved by reason, and therefore be accepted by disbelievers as well as by believers.

In other words, in proportion as he has lately studied the teachings of different founders of religions and those of moral philosophers, he has tried to determine and to state the elements of a universal religion in which all men could unite — a religion, however, which would have nothing supernatural in it, nothing that reason and knowledge would have to reject, but would contain a moral guidance for all men — at whatever stage of intellectual development they may halt. Having thus begun, in 1875–77, by joining the Greek Orthodox religion — in the sense in which Russian peasants understand it — he came finally in The Christian Teaching to the construction of a Moral Philosophy which, in his opinion, might be accepted by the Christian, the Jew, the Mussulman, the Buddhist, and so on, and the naturalist philosopher as well — a religion which would retain the only substantial elements of all religions: namely, a determination of one’s relation towards the universe (Weltanschauung), in accordance with present knowledge, and a recognition of the equality of all men.

Whether these two elements, one of which belongs to the domain of knowledge and science and the other (justice) to the domain of ethics, are sufficient to constitute a religion, and need no substratum of mysticism — is a question which lies beyond the scope of this book.