"The Samaritan had the capacity for a universal altruism. He had a piercing insight into that which is beyond the eternal accidents of race, religion, and nationality. One of the great tragedies of man's long trek along the highway of history has been the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class, or nation. The God of early Old Testament days was a tribal god and the ethic was tribal. 'Thou shalt not kill' meant 'Thou shalt not kill a fellow Israelite, but for God's sake, kill a Philistine.' Greek democracy embraced a certain aristocracy, but not the hordes of Greek slaves whose labors built the city-states. The universalism at the center of the Declaration of Independence has been shamefully negated by America's appalling tendency to substitute 'some' for 'all.' Numerous people in the North and South still believe that the affirmation, 'All men are created equal,' means 'All white men are created equal.' Our unswerving devotion to monopolistic capitalism makes us more concerned about the economic security of the captains of industry than for the laboring men whose sweat and skills keep industry functioning.

What are the devastating consequences of this narrow, group-centered attitude? It means that one does not really mind what happens to the people outside his group. If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime but the murder of the citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? If manufacturers are concerned only in their personal interests, they will pass by on the other side while thousands of working people are stripped of their jobs and left displaced on some Jericho road as a result of automation, and they will judge every move toward a better distribution of wealth and a better life for the working man to be socialistic. If a white man is concerned only about his race, he will casually pass by the Negro who has been robbed of his personhood, stripped of his sense of dignity, and left dying on some wayside road.

A few years ago, when an automobile carrying several members of a Negro college basketball team had an accident on a Southern highway, three of the young men were severely injured. An ambulance was immediately called, but on arriving at the place of the accident, the driver, who was white, said without apology that it was not his policy to service Negroes, and he drove away. The driver of a passing automobile graciously drove the boys to the nearest hospital, but the attending physician belligerently said, 'We don't take n****** in this hospital.' When the boys finally arrived at a 'colored' hospital in a town some fifty miles from the scene of the accident, one was dead and the other two died thirty and fifty minutes later, respectively. Probably all three could have been saved if they had been given immediate treatment. This is only one of thousands of inhuman incidents that occur daily in the South, an unbelievable expression of the barbaric consequences of any tribal-centered, national-centered, or racial-centered ethic.

The real tragedy of such narrow provincialism is that we see people as entities or merely as things. Too seldom do we see people in their true humanness. A spiritual myopia [short-sightedness] limits our vision to external accidents. We see men as Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or Protestants, Chinese or American, Negroes or whites. We fail to think of them as fellow human beings made from the same basic stuff as we, molded in the same divine image. The priest and the Levite saw only a bleeding body, not a human being like themselves. But the good Samaritan will always remind us to remove the cataracts of provincialism from our spiritual eyes and see men as men. If the Samaritan had considered the wounded man as a Jew first, he would not have stopped, for the Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings. He saw him as a human being first, who was a Jew only by accident. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and dicerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers." - Martin Luther King, jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Three, "On Being a Good Neighbor"

Tolstoy's School of Love

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels. For context: The Gospel In Brief.

"So, for example, in the case before us, men are going to murder and torture the famishing, and they admit that in the dispute between the peasants and the landowner the peasants are right (all those in command said as much to me). They know that the peasants are wretched, poor, and hungry, and the landowner is rich and inspires no sympathy. Yet they are all going to kill the peasants to secure three thousand rubles for the landowner, only because at that moment they fancy themselves not men but governor, official, general of police, officer, and soldier, respectively, and consider themselves bound to obey, not the eternal demands of the conscience of man, but the casual, temporary demands of their positions as officers or soldiers. Strange as it may seem, the sole explanation of this astonishing phenomenon is that they are in the condition of the hypnotized, who, they say, feel and act like the creatures they are commanded by the hypnotizer to represent. When, for instance, it is suggested to the hypnotized subject that he is lame, he begins to walk lame, that he is blind, and he cannot see, that he is a wild beast, and he begins to bite. This is the state, not only of those who were going on this expedition, but of all men who fulfill their state and social duties in preference to and in detriment of their human duties.

The essence of this state is that under the influence of one suggestion they lose the power of criticising their actions, and therefore do, without thinking, everything consistent with the suggestion to which they are led by example, precept, or insinuation. The difference between those hypnotized by scientific men and those under the influence of the state hypnotism, is that an imaginary position is suggested to the former suddenly by one person in a very brief space of time, and so the hypnotized state appears to us in a striking and surprising form, while the imaginary position suggested by state influence is induced slowly, little by little, imperceptibly from childhood, sometimes during years, or even generations, and not in one person alone but in a whole society. 'But,' it will be said, 'at all times, in all societies, the majority of persons — all the children, all the women absorbed in the bearing and rearing of the young, all the great mass of the laboring population, who are under the necessity of incessant and fatiguing physical labor, all those of weak character by nature, all those who are abnormally enfeebled intellectually by the effects of nicotine, alcohol, opium, or other intoxicants — are always in a condition of incapacity for independent thought, and are either in subjection to those who are on a higher intellectual level, or else under the influence of family or social traditions, of what is called public opinion, and there is nothing unnatural or incongruous in their subjection.'

And truly there is nothing unnatural in it, and the tendency of men of small intellectual power to follow the lead of those on a higher level of intelligence is a constant law and it is owing to it that men can live in societies and on the same principles at all. The minority consciously adopt certain rational principles through their correspondence with reason, while the majority act on the same principles unconsciously because it is required by public opinion. Such subjection to public opinion on the part of the unintellectual does not assume an unnatural character till the public opinion is split into two. But there are times when a higher truth, revealed at first to a few persons, gradually gains ground till it has taken hold of such a number of persons that the old public opinion, founded on a lower order of truths, begins to totter and the new is ready to take its place, but has not yet been firmly established. It is like the spring, this time of transition, when the old order of ideas has not quite broken up and the new has not quite gained a footing. Men begin to criticise their actions in the light of the new truth, but in the meantime in practice, through inertia and tradition, they continue to follow the principles which once represented the highest point of rational consciousness, but are now in flagrant contradiction with it.

Then men are in an abnormal, wavering condition, feeling the necessity of following the new ideal, and yet not bold enough to break with the old established traditions. Such is the attitude in regard to the truth of Christianity not only of the men in the Toula train, but of the majority of men of our times, alike of the higher and the lower orders. Those of the ruling classes, having no longer any reasonable justification for the profitable positions they occupy, are forced, in order to keep them, to stifle their higher rational faculty of loving, and to persuade themselves that their positions are indispensable. And those of the lower classes, exhausted by toil and brutalized of set purpose, are kept in a permanent deception, practiced deliberately and continuously by the higher classes upon them.

Only in this way can one explain the amazing contradictions with which our life is full, and of which a striking example was presented to me by the expedtion I met on the 9th of September; good, peaceful men, known to me personally, going with untroubled tranquillity to perpetrate the most beastly, sense less, and vile of crimes. Had not they some means of stifling their conscience, not one of them would be capable of committing a hundredth part of such villainy. It is not that they have not a conscience which forbids them from acting thus, just as, even three or four hundred years ago, when people burnt men at the stake and put them to the rack they had a conscience which prohibited it; the conscience is there, but it has been put to sleep — in those in command by what the psychologists call auto-suggestion; in the soldiers, by the direct conscious hypnotizing exerted by the higher classes.

Though asleep, the conscience is there, and in spite of the hypnotism it is already speaking in them, and it may awake. All these men are in a position like that of a man under hypnotism, commanded to do something opposed to everything he regards as good and rational, such as to kill his mother or his child. The hypnotized subject feels himself bound to carry out the suggestion — he thinks he cannot stop — but the and nearer he gets to the time and the place of the action, the more the benumbed conscience begins to stir, to resist, and to try to awake. And no one can say beforehand whether he will carry out the suggestion or not; which will gain the upper hand? The rational conscience or the irrational suggestion? It all depends on their relative strength. That is just the case with the men in the Toula train and in general with everyone carrying out acts of state violence in our day.

There was a time when men who set out with the object of murder and violence, to make an example, did not return till they had carried out their object, and then, untroubled by doubts or scruples, having calmly flogged men to death, they returned home and caressed their children, laughed, amused themselves, and enjoyed the peaceful pleasures of family life. In those days it never struck the landowners and wealthy men who profited by these crimes, that the privileges they enjoyed had any direct connection with these atrocities. But now it is no longer so. Men know now, or are not far from knowing, what they are doing and for what object they do it. They can shut their eyes and force their conscience to be still, but so long as their eyes are opened and their conscience undulled, they must all — those who carry out and those who profit by these crimes alike — see the import of them. Sometimes they realize it only after the crime has been perpetrated, sometimes they realize it just before its perpetration. Thus those who commanded the recent acts of violence in Nijni-Novgorod, Saratov, Orel, and the Yuzovsky factory realized their significance only after their perpetration, and now those who commanded and those who carried out these crimes are ashamed before public opinion and their conscience.

I have talked to soldiers who had taken part in these crimes, and they always studiously turned the conversation off the subject, and when they spoke of it, it was with horror and bewilderment. There are cases, too, when men come to themselves just before the perpetration of the crime. Thus I know the case of a sergeant-major who had been beaten by two peasants during the repression of disorder and had made a complaint. The next day, after seeing the atrocities perpetrated on the other peasants, he entreated the commander of his company to tear up his complaint and let off the two peasants. I know cases when soldiers, commanded to fire, have refused to obey, and I know many cases of officers who have refused to command expeditions for torture and murder. So that men sometimes come to their senses long before perpetrating the suggested crime, sometimes at the very moment before perpetrating it, sometimes only afterward.

The men traveling in the Toula train were going with the object of killing and injuring their fellow-cratures, but none could tell whether they would carry out their object or not. However obscure his responsibility for the affair is to each, and however strong the idea instilled into all of them that they are not men, but governers, officials, officers, and soldiers, and as such beings can violate every human duty, the nearer they approach the place of the execution, the stronger their doubts as to its being right, and this doubt will reach its highest point when the very moment for carrying it out has come." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"

"Just about this time Narayan Hemchandra came to England. I had heard of him as a writer. We met at the house of Miss Manning of the National Indian Association. Miss Manning knew that I could not make myself sociable. When I went to her place I used to sit tongue-tied, never speaking except when spoken to. She introduced me to Narayan Hemchandra. He did not know English. His dress was queer — a clumsy pair of trousers, a wrinkled, dirty, brown coat after the Parsi fashion, no necktie or collar, and a tasselled woollen cap. He grew a long beard. He was lightly built and short of stature. His round face was scarred with small-pox, and had a nose which was neither pointed nor blunt. With his hand he was constantly turning over his beard. Such a queer-looking and queerly dressed person was bound to be singled out in fashionable society.

'I have heard a good deal about you,' I said to him. 'I have also read some of your writings. I should be very pleased if you were kind enough to come to my place.' Narayan Hemchandra had a rather hoarse voice. With a smile on his face he replied: 'Yes, where do you stay?'

'In Store Street.'

'Then we are neighbours. I want to learn English. Will you teach me?'

'I shall be happy to teach you anything I can, and will try my best. If you like, I will go to your place.'

'Oh, no. I shall come to you. I shall also bring with me a Translation Exercise Book.' So we made an appointment. Soon we were close friends...

We met daily. There was a considerable amount of similarity between our thoughts and actions. Both of us were vegetarians. We would often have our lunch together. This was the time when I lived on 17s. a week and cooked for myself. Sometimes I would go to his room, and sometimes he would come to mine. I cooked in the English style. Nothing but Indian style would satisfy him. He could not do without dal. I would make soup of carrots etc., and he would pity me for my taste. Once he somehow hunted out mung cooked it and brought it to my place. I ate it with delight. This led on to a regular system of exchange between us. I would take my delicacies to him and he would bring his to me.

Cardinal Manning's name was then on every lip. The dock labourers' strike had come to an early termination owing to the efforts of John Burns and Cardinal Manning. I told Narayan Hemchandra of Disraeli's tribute to the Cardinal's simplicity. 'Then I must see the sage,' said he. 'He is a big man. How do you expect to meet him?'

'Why? I know how. I must get you to write to him in my name. Tell him I am an author and that I want to congratulate him personally on his humanitarian work, and also say that I shall have to take you as interpreter as I do not know English.'

I wrote a letter to that effect. In two or three days came Cardinal Manning's card in reply giving us an appointment. So we both called on the Cardinal. I put on the usual visiting suit. Narayan Hemchandra was the same as ever, in the same coat and the same trousers. I tried to make fun of this, but he laughed me out and said: 'You civilized fellows are all cowards. Great men never look at a person's exterior. They think of his heart.' " - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Twenty-two: "Narayan Hemchandra"

"Satisfaction of one's will is not necessary for true life. Temporal, mortal life is the food of the true life — it is the material for a life of reason. And therefore the true life is outside of time, it exists only in the present. Time is an illusion to life: the life of the past or the future hides the true life of the present from people. And therefore man should strive to destroy the deception of the temporal life of the past and future. The true life is not just life outside of time — the present — but it is also a life outside of the individual. Life is common to all people and expresses itself in love. And therefore, the person who lives in the present, in the common life of all people, unites himself with the father — with the source and foundation of life." - Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel In Brief, Preface

Time being a consequence of consciousness; the way we're inherently able to perceive the past and future, and organize it the way we did. And our imaginations — another consequence of being able to be as conscious as we are to our surroundings, as well as ourselves. However, too much time spent in our heads, with no source of love to keep us in the present, they can also become our undoing.

A life of selflessness offers anyone of any belief a life most lived in the present, rather than becoming a prisoner of our minds, stuck in our heads, the illusions or images of our past and future bred from our inherent worry, need, or fear for ourselves, governing over how we feel today. This is what a life of things like selfishness, self-obsession, pride, and self-indulgence have to offer, and that Jesus warned us of; one where there's no one around anymore to keep you out of your head, so in your head you remain. And if you don’t become a prisoner of your mind (to your conscience) by making yourself the emphasis throughout your life, than a prisoner to men you ultimately become, labeled one amoungst the sea of what we presently consider — based on our still more blind standards, the "worst" of the world.

Jesus did save us, but from ourselves, by warning us, with a knowledge; not from a literal hell that men only a few centuries later invented, but from a hell we potentially make for ourselves in this life — God or not. To warn us that our inherency of building our house (our life) on the sand — like most people, shaping and making our life about all that we can squeeze out of it for ourselves, is exactly what leads us to this hell, becoming a prisoner of our minds, or to men, ultimately. When it's building our house (our life) on the rock, squeezing out as much as we can for the sake of others, this is the life that leads us away from this life of hell we all become convinced is right, true, and just beyond any doubt. It's in the incessant participation, and our inherency to organize ourselves around ourselves individually — around the idea of quid pro quo: something for something (eye for an eye), rather than Jesus' something for nothing that leads us to the death of this "true life." And when the storm of death begins to slowly creep toward the shore of your conscience, where will you have built your house (your life)? Out on the sand? As most people would be inherently drawn to? "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” - Matt 7:27

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction [selfishness], and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life [selflessness], and those who find it are few." - Matt 7:13

Tolstoy: "I am a man [human]. How should I live? What do I do?"

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house." - Matt 5:14

The Light

We're humans. Therefore, how should we live? What do we do? Well, what good is a lamp if it's being hidden under a basket? What good is the gold of being capable of knowing life and the great lengths we humans can act upon this knowledge if it's being smothered by fear for oneself or even contempt for ones contemporaries? Or if it's being used not to make more light for others, but more darkenss? It's our unique and profound ability to retain and transfer knowledge that separates us the most from nature. Thus, "logos" (the Ancient Greek word that's being translated as "the Word" in John 1) — for the shapes we presently call "letters" and therefore, "words," and to give meaning to them to create "speech;" language and conscious reasoning, and with that, divine revelation to any degree; to be capable of giving life to the knowledge of God here on Earth. If there were no humans on this planet, there would be nothing conscious enough to give life to our knowledge of anything — via our ability for logos — including our knowledge of time, the experience, morality, and of the divine, and earth would continue as it has for the last five billion years, void of anything with a great potential to acknowledge and know life and give it meaning and definition, and with that, no great desire and passion to not only act upon, but to be willing to give ones life for the smallest, or even the most despised of creatures.

This is the "light:" knowledge. Without it, instinct would rule over us as it does lesser conscious capable beings; it's what allows us to set ourselves free from our instinct for ourselves that gives way to anger, lust, grudges; pride, arrogance and self-assurance; retaliation; to hate what we hate rather than even considering to find the strength to love it as a means to over come it, and for judging and slandering others and placing them beneath ourselves as they do the same to us. And the regret that enraptures us when met with the sobering knowledge of the influence of our own death for not loving when we hated, that instinct would lead us directly into otherwise, it being the wider, easier, more convenient path that we can't help but be more inherently drawn to; however, we're also just as inherently drawn to reason, rationality, and logic. Which is of course what love is.

Knowledge is what has the potential of saving us humans from our inherency to ourselves, for what's a.k.a. "Sin" (missing the mark; lack of knowledge). This is born from the extent of how much more conscious we are of ourselves in contrast to nature and subsequently how much more knowledge we possess and have the potential of possessing, of ourselves especially, which leads us into the most inherent demand for ourselves. This is what the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" or "hell" people like Jesus was referring to, and the "dying, you die" regarding the story of Eden; dying, as all things are destined to do, we became aware of our dying once we gained the knowledge of good and evil, of morality, while nature is blissfully unaware. Knowledge itself is the curse, but it's also the cure.

With this great capacity to be as conscious and knowledgeable as we are of both ourselves and anything else, comes the increasing of our knowledge of what is right or wrong, good or evil, love or hate, true or false in relation to it — that is, our capacity for selfish and selfless consciousness and how much more we're capable of acting upon the desires and passions that are flamed by the more and more aware we become of both ourselves (selfishness) and everything else (selflessness) as we "age," and what is "right" or "wrong" in relation to it, within the way mankind has made the world up until whatever given point in time. Our knowledge of morality can taint our knowledge of time and the experience and lead to our undoing, but it's also what saves us from the hell we make for ourselves here in this life by living a long life of giving in to instinct and allowing the worry born out of knowledge to govern over us each day, rather than living the "true life" of "this day — our daily bread," freeing ourselves from the anxiety or depression that comes the more and more knowledge we gain as we age and move closer and closer to death.

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the reign (kingdom) of heaven." - Matt 18:3

'O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you.' - Krishna

The most effective means of gathering the will to push past our instinct for dwelling on our knowledge of time and the experience, and giving into the passions that are flamed by our knowledge of both hate and love, is our unique and profound ability to be capable of knowing "God(s)," and subsequently possess the ability to be willing to believe in, or to have "faith" in the divine; it unlocks a kind of will or "spirit," that's the most potent in aiding this unique ability we humans possess to not only be able to acknowledge our own instincts to begin with, but to push past it, even to the most extreme degrees in favor of where knowledge takes us; to even consider to offer our other cheek in return within reason or "return with gladness good for evil done," and to find the strength to follow through with it when met with the opportunity.

But what comes as a consequence of consciousness and therefore, imagination and knowledge? Ignorance, or simply, lack of knowledge. To be capable of knowing anything, is to inevitably not know things; lack of knowledge is as inevitable in life as needing air to breath. Therefore, anything capable of acknowledging knowledge is doomed to act out of a degree of lack of knowledge all throughout their lives until the day they die. There's no escaping it; no one can know everything, but man as a whole can know the most of what we presently understand of anything.

This is how we're "fallen." Everything was perfect in Eden because we knew everything, as much as even God did, but we lived blissfully unaware of the knowledge of morality. It's desire, stemming from our sense organs reacting to our environment, that leads us into making the fatal mistake of measuring morality in relation to both ourselves and anything else. Which gives way to all the various passions that come as a result. Like fear, as a prime example. We lived in ignorance of any reason to weep or gnash our teeth. This is what leads us humans to "fall short" or "miss the mark" — lack of knowledge; our limits for it.

"Thus says our Father: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?' " - Isaiah 66

"They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken." - Psalms 82

Lack of knowledge can be considered the equivalent of blindness. No one can see what they don't understand, and no one can understand what they don't know, and no one can know until they know. Do we get angry and frustrated with the literal blind for making mistakes that a person who's lost there ability to see would make? Not to mention those born without the ability to utilize their eyes. Most of all, no one asks, earns, chooses or has any right to their capacity for knowledge; their ability to understand. Autism is proof of this. No one asks for that, it just happens. Vice versa, no one earns the capability for "intelligence," we've all either stumbled upon it or your God made it so.

This is something that becomes smothered underneath all the dogma of the story of Eden ever since, that we made that choice out of ignorance. We weren't aware of what is good or evil; right or wrong when the serpents arrogant influence was introduced to us. This is where God's grace comes from; it's timeless, whole or complete love. That we're not all knowing God's. We're "gods, sons [reflections] of the Most High" (Psalms 82), so of course we shouldn't judge and condemn other puny, limited humans as if we're all knowing ourselves, especially regarding the knowledge of the experience. That would be pride and arrogance (the Adversary; Satan) that leads us to do something so foolish. We should instead do nothing but what we human beings were clearly designed to do: love.

"And our Father said, 'Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?' " - Jonah 4:11

The Salt Is Selflessness

"The truth of this text [the story of Moses freeing the Israelite slaves from Egypt] is revealed in the contemporary struggle between good in the form of freedom and justice and evil in the form of oppression and colonialism. Of the approximately three billion people in our world, more than 1.9 billion — a vast majority — live on the continents of Asia and Africa. Less than two decades ago most of the Asian and African peoples were colonial subjects, dominated politically, exploited economically, and segregated and humiliated by foreign powers. For years they protested against these grave injustices. In nearly every territory in Asia and Africa, a courageous Moses pleaded passionately for the freedom of his people. For more than twenty years, Mahatma Gandhi unrelentingly urged British viceroys, governors general, prime ministers, and kings to let his people go. Like the pharaohs of old, the British leaders turned deaf ears to these agonizing pleas. Even the great Winston Churchill responded to Gandhi's cry for independence by saying, 'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.' The conflict between two determined forces, the colonial powers and the Asian and African peoples, has been one of the most momentous and critical struggles of the twentieth century.

But in spite of the resistance and recalcitrance of the colonial powers, the victory of the forces of justice and human dignity is gradually being achieved. Twenty-five years ago there were only three independent countries in the whole continent of Africa, but today thirty-two countries are independent. A short fifteen years ago the British Empire politically dominated more than six hundred fifty million people in Asia and Africa, but today the number is less than sixty million. The Red Sea has opened. The oppressed masses in Asia and Africa have won their freedom from the Egypt of colonialism and now move toward the promised land of economic and cultural stability. These peoples see the evils of colonialism and imperialism dead upon the seashore. In our own American struggle for freedom and justice, we are seeing the death of evil. In 1619, the Negro was brought to America from the soils of Africa. For more than two hundred years Africa was raped and plundered, her native kingdoms disorganized, and her people and rulers demoralized. In America the Negro slave was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine.

But there were those who had a nagging conscience and knew that so unjust a system represented a strange paradox in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. In 1820, six years before his death, Thomas Jefferson wrote these melancholy words:

But the momentous question [slavery], like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. . . . I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away. . . and my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.

Numerous abolitionists, like Jefferson, were tortured in their hearts by the question of slavery. With keen perception they saw that the immorality of slavery degraded the white master as well as the Negro.

Then came the day when Abraham Lincoln faced squarely this matter of slavery. His torments and vacillations are well known, yet the conclusion of his search is embodied in these words: 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve.' On this moral foundation Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that brought an end to chattel slavery. The significance of the Emancipation Proclamation was colorfully described by a great American, Frederick Douglass, in these words:

It recognizes and declares the real nature of the contest and places the North on the side of justice and civilization. Unquestionably the first of January, 1863, is to be the most memorable in American annals. The Fourth of July was great, but the First of January, when we consider it in all its relations and bearings, is incomparably greater. The one had respect to the mere political birth of a nation; the last concerns the national life and character and is to determine whether that life and character shall be radiantly glorious with all high and noble virtues, or infamously blackened forevermore.

The Emancipation Proclamation did not, however, bring full freedom to the Negro, for although he enjoyed certain political and social opportunities during the Reconstruction, the Negro soon discovered that the pharaohs of the South were determined to keep him in slavery. Certainly the Emancipation Proclamation brought him nearer to the Red Sea, but it did not guarantee his passage through parted waters. Racial segregation, backed by a decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1896, was a new form of slavery disguised by certain niceties of complexity. In the great struggle of the last half century between the forces of justice attempting to end the evil system of segregation and the forces of injustice attempting to maintain it, the pharaohs have employed legal maneuvers, economic reprisals, and even physical violence to hold the Negro in the Egypt of segregation. Despite the patient cry of many a Moses, they refused to let the Negro people go.

Today we are witnessing a massive change. A world-shaking decree by the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court opened the Red Sea and the forces of justice are moving to the other side. The Court decreed an end to the old Plessy decision of 1896 and affirmed that separated facilities are inherently unequal and that to segregate a child on the basis of race is to deny the child an equal legal protection. This decision is a great beacon light of hope to millions of disinherited people. Looking back, we see the forces of segregation gradually dying on the seashore. The problem is far from solved, and gigantic mountains of opposition lie ahead, but at least we have left Egypt, and with patient yet firm determination we shall reach the promised land. Evil in the form of injustice and exploitation shall not survive forever. A Red Sea passage in history ultimately brings the forces of goodness to victory, and the closing of the same waters marks the doom and destruction of the forces of evil.

All of this reminds us that evil carries the seed of its own destruction. In the long run right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Historian Charles A. Beard, when asked what major lessons he had learned from history, answered:

First, whom the gods would destroy they must first make mad with power. Second, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. Third, the bee fertilizes the flower it robs. Fourth, when it is dark enough you can see the stars.

These are the words not of a preacher but of a hardhearted historian, whose long and painstaking study of history revealed to him that evil has a self-defeating quality. It can go a long way, but then it reaches its limit. There is something in this universe that Greek mythology referred to as the goddess of Nemesis." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Eight, "The Death of Evil Upon the Seashore"

"Ever since I have grown up, I have never desire to smoke and have always regarded the habit of smoking as barbarous, dirty and harmful. I have never understood why there is such a rage for smoking throughout the world. I cannot bear to travel in a compartment full of people smoking. I become choked. But much more serious than this theft was the one I was guilty of a little later. I pilfered the coppers when I was twelve or thirteen, possibly less. The other theft was committed when I was fifteen. In this case I stole a bit of gold out of my meat-eating brother's armlet. This brother had run into a debt of about twenty-five rupees. He had on his arm an armlet of solid gold. It was not difficult to clip a bit out of it.

Well, it was done, and the debt cleared. But this became more than I could bear. I resolved never to steal again. I also made up my mind to confess it to my father. But I did not dare to speak. Not that I was afraid of my father beating me. No. I do not recall his ever having beaten any of us. I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him. But I felt the risk should be taken; that there could not be a cleansing without a clean confession.

I decided at last to write out the confession, to submit it to my father, and ask his forgiveness. I wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to him myself. In this note not only did I confess my guilt, but I asked adequate punishment for it, and closed with a request to him not to punish himself for my offence. I also pledged myself never to steal in the future. I was trembling as I handed the confession to my father. He was then suffering from a fistula [abnormal connection of two body cavities or a body cavity and the skin] and was confined to bed. His bed was a plain wooden plank. I handed him the note and sat opposite the plank. He read it through, and pearl drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up the note. He had sat up to read it. He again lay down. I also cried. I could see my father's agony. If I were a painter I could draw a picture of the whole scene today. It is still so vivid in my mind.

Those pearl drops of love cleansed my heart, and washed my sin away. Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is. As the hymn says:

Only he, Who is smitten with the arrows of love, Knows its power.

This was, for me, an object-lesson in Ahimsa. Then I could read in it nothing more than a father's love, but today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes all-embracing, it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power.

This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had thought that he would be angry, say hard things, and strike his forehead. But he was so wonderfully peaceful, and I believe this was due to my clean confession. A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance. I know that my confession made my father feel absolutely safe about me, and increased his affection for me beyond measure." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Eight, "Stealing and Atonement"

Gandhi's Thoughts in "Ahimsa"

"The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews, religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute and temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic, permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any kind of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest police officer at the street corner, and also those who are in subjection to authority and in a state of stupefied servility. The latter, like all slaves, always find a justification for their own servility, in ascribing the greatest possible dignity and importance to those they serve. It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts opposed to their conscience without the least scruple or remorse.

Under the influence of this intoxication, men imagine themselves no longer simply men as they are, but some special beings — noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers, tzars, ministers, or soldiers — no longer bound by ordinary human duties, but by other duties far more weighty — the peculiar duties of a nobleman, merchant, governor, judge, officer, tzar, minister, or soldier. Thus the landowner, who claimed the forest, acted as he did only because he fancied himself not a simple man, having the same rights to life as the peasants living beside him and everyone else, but a great landowner, a member of the nobility, and under the influence of the intoxication of power he felt his dignity offended by the peasants' claims. It was only through this feeling that, without considering the consequences that might follow, he sent in a claim to be reinstated in his pretended rights.

In the same way the judges, who wrongfully adjudged the forest to the proprietor, did so simply because they fancied themselves not simply men like everyone else, and so bound to be guided in everything only by what they consider right, but, under the intoxicating influence of power, imagined themselves the representatives of the justice which cannot err; while under the intoxicating influence of servility they imagined themselves bound to carry out to the letter the instructions inscribed in a certain book, the so-called law. In the same way who take part in such an affair, from the highest representative of authority who signs his assent to the report, from the superintendent presiding at recruiting sessions, and the priest who deludes the recruits, to the lowest soldier who is ready now to fire on his own brothers, imagine, in the intoxication of power or of servility, that they are some conventional characters. They do not face the question that is presented to them, whether or not they ought to take part in what their conscience judges an evil act, but fancy themselves various conventional personages — one as the Tzar, God's anointed, an exceptional being, called to watch over the happiness of one hundred millions of men; another as the representative of nobility; another as a priest, who has received special grace by his ordination; another as a soldier, bound by his military oath to carry out all he is commanded without reflection. Only under the intoxication of the power or the servility of their imagined positions could all these people act as they do. Were not they all firmly convinced that their respective vocations of tzar, minister, governor, judge, nobleman, landowner, superintendent, officer, and soldier are something real and important, not one of them would even think without horror and aversion of taking part in what they do now.

The conventional positions, established hundreds of years, recognized for centuries and by everyone, distinguished by special names and dresses, and, moreover, confirmed by every kind of solemnity, have so penetrated into men's minds through their senses, that, forgetting the ordinary conditions of life common to all, they look at themselves and everyone only from conventional point of view, and are guided in their estimation of their own actions and those of others by this conventional standard.

Thus we see a man of perfect sanity and ripe age, simply because he is decked out with some fringe, or embroidered keys on his coat tails, or a colored ribbon only fit for some gayly dressed girl, and is told that he is a general, a chamberlain, a knight of the order of St. Andrew, or some similar nonsense, suddenly become self-important, proud, and even happy, or, on the contrary, grow melancholy and unhappy to the point of falling ill, because he has failed to obtain the expected decoration or title. Or what is still more striking, a young man, perfectly sane in every other matter, independent and beyond the fear of want, simply because he has been appointed judicial prosecutor or district commander, separates a poor widow from her little children, and shuts her up in prison, leaving her children uncared for, all because the unhappy woman carried on a secret trade in spirits, and so deprived the revenue of twenty-five rubles, and he does not feel the least pang of remorse. Or what is still more amazing; a man, otherwise sensible and good-hearted, simply because he is given a badge or a uniform to wear, and told that he is a guard or customs officer, is ready to fire on people, and neither he nor those around him regard him as to blame for it, but, on the contrary, would regard him as to blame if he did not fire. To say nothing of judges and juries who condemn men to death, and soldiers who kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple merely because it has been instilled into them that they are not simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.

This strange and abnormal condition of men under state organization is usually expressed in the following words: 'As a man, I pity him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or soldier, it is my duty to kill or torture him.' Just as though there were some positions conferred and recognized, which would exonerate us from the obligations laid on each of us by the fact of our common humanity." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"

"But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart. Toughmindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving one's life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of summer. What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of toughmindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hardheartedness?

The hardhearted person never truly loves. He engages in a crass utilitarianism which values other people mainly according to their usefulness to him. He never experiences the beauty of friendship, because he is too cold to feel affection for another and is too self-centered to share another's joy and sorrow. He is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of humanity. The hardhearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion. He is unmoved by the pains and afflictions of his brothers. He passes unfortunate men every day, but he never really sees them. He gives dollars to a worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit. The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life.

Jesus frequently illustrated the characteristics of the hardhearted. The rich fool was condemned, not because he was not toughminded, but rather because he was not tenderhearted. Life for him was a mirror in which he saw only himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves. Dives went to hell, not because he was wealthy, but because he was not tenderhearted enough to see Lazarus and because he made no attempt to bridge the gulf between himself and his brother. Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike without serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.

We as Negroes must bring together toughmindedness and tenderheartedness, if we are to move creatively toward the goal of freedom and justice. Softminded individuals among us feel that the only way to deal with oppression is by adjusting to it. They acquiesce [accept something reluctantly but without protest] and resign themselves to segregation. They prefer to remain oppressed. When Moses led the children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land, he discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They would rather bear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee to others that they know not of. They prefer the 'fleshpots of Egypt' to the ordeals of emancipation. But this is not the way out. Softminded acquiescence is cowardly. My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or elsewhere if we are willing to trade the future of our children for our personal safety and comfort. Moreover, we must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.

And there are hardhearted and bitter individuals among us who would combat the opponent with physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos. A Voice, echoing through the corridors of time, says to every intemperate [having or showing a lack of self-control; immoderate] Peter, 'Put up thy sword.' History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow Christ's command.

A third way is open in our quest for freedom, namely, nonviolent resistance, that combines toughmindedness and tenderheartednes and avoids the complacency and do-nothingness of the softminded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted. My belief is that this method must guide our action in the present crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter One, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart

• King's "Life at its Best Is a Creative Synthesis of Opposites in Fruitful Harmony"

• King's Thoughts on "Toughmindedness"

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels. For context: The Gospel in Brief.

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Thoughts on Truth and Free Will (Part One of Two)

"Every man during his life finds himself in regard to truth in the position of a man walking in the darkness with light thrown before him by the lantern he carries. He does not see what is not yet lighted up by the lantern; he does not see what he has passed which is hidden in the darkness; but at every stage of his journey he sees what is lighted up by the lantern, and he can always choose one side or the other of the road. There are always unseen truths not yet revealed to the man's intellectual vision, and there are other truths outlived, forgotten, and assimilated by him, and there are also certain truths that rise up before the light of his reason and require his recognition. And it is in the recognition or non-recognition of these truths that what we call his freedom is manifested.

All the difficulty and seeming insolubility [impossible to solve] of the question of the freedom of man results from those who tried to solve the question imagining man as stationary in his relation to the truth. Man is certainly not free if we imagine him stationary, and if we forget that the life of a man and of humanity is nothing but a continual movement from darkness into light, from a lower stage of truth to a higher, from a truth more alloyed with errors to a truth more purified from them. Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all, and in the same way he would not be free and would not even have any idea of freedom if the whole truth which was to guide him in life had been revealed once for all to him in all its purity without any admixture of error. But man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree of truth, and growing more and more free from error. And therefore men are in a threefold relation to truth. Some truths have been so assimilated by them that they have become the unconscious basis of action, others are only just on the point of being revealed to him, and a third class, though not yet assimilated by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient clearness to force him to decide either to recognize them or to refuse to recognize them. These, then, are the truths which man is free to recognize or to refuse to recognize.

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting independently of the progress of life and the influences arising from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the truth revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful participator in the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of the world; or on the other hand for refusing to recognize the truth, and so being a miserable and reluctant slave dragged whither he has no desire to go. Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to move, but reveals also the only way along which it can move. And therefore all men must willingly or unwillingly move along the way of truth, some spontaneously accomplishing the task set them in life, others submitting involuntarily to the law of life. Man's freedom lies in the power of this choice.

This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to men that they do not notice it. Some — the determinists — consider this amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it at all. Others — the champions of complete free will — keep their eyes fixed on their hypothetical free will and neglect this which seemed to them such a trivial degree of freedom. This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance of the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems hardly freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing or unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be inevitably forced to carry it out in life. A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain from moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or not. But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And so it is with man. Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness attainable by man. And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of accomplishing the divine work of the life of the world.

According to Christ's doctrine, the man who sees the significance of life in the domain in which it is not free, in the domain of effects, that is, of acts, has not the true life. According to the Christain doctrine, that man is living in the truth who has transported his life to the domain in which it is free — the domain of causes, that is, the knowledge and recognition, the profession and realization in life of revealed truth. Devoting his life to works of the flesh, a man busies himself with actions depending on temporary causes outside himself. He himself does nothing really, he merely seems to be doing something. In reality all the acts which seem to be his are the work of a higher power, and he is not the creator of his own life, but the slave of it. Devoting his life to the recognition and fulfillment of the truth revealed to him, he identifies himself with the source of universal life and accomplishes acts not personal, and dependent on conditions of space and time, but acts unconditioned by previous causes, acts which constitute the causes of everything else, and have an infinite, unlimited significance. 'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' (Matt. xi. 12.) It is this violent effort to rise above external conditions to the recognition and realization of truth by which the kingdom of heaven is taken, and it is this effort of violence which must and can be made in our times.

Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble themselves about the general external conditions in which they are not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste on those material things to that in which they are free, to the recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end at once of the false organization of life which makes men miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future. And then the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that first stage of it for which men are ready now by the degree of development of their conscience. Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is saturated with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a slight effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth already revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds, thousands, millions of men, that a public opinion consistent with conscience may be established, and through this change of public opinion the whole order of life may be transformed. And it depends upon us to make this effort.

Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian truth which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and forces itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending that we do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in what it demands from us above all else; only let us accept and boldly profess the truth to which we are called, and we should find at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the same position as we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread as we do to stand alone in recognizing it, and like us are only waiting for others to recognize it also. Only let men cease to be hypocrites [actors], and they would at once see that this cruel social organization, which holds them in bondage, and is represented to them as something stable, necessary, and ordained of God, is already tottering and is only propped up by the falsehood of hypocrisy, with which we, and others like us, support it. But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to break down the existing organization of life, have we the right to destroy it, without knowing clearly what we shall set up in its place? What will become of human society when the existing order of things is at an end?

'What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we are abandoning? 'Fear will come upon us — a void, a vast emptiness, freedom — how are we to go forward not knowing whither, how face loss, not seeing hope of gain?..... If Columbus had reasoned thus he would never have weighed anchor. It was madness to set off upon the ocean, not knowing the route, on the ocean on which no one had sailed, to sail toward a land whose existence was doubtful. By this madness he discovered a new world. Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply transfer themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better one — it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no one to get humanity's new dwelling ready for it. The future is even worse than the ocean — there is nothing there — it will be what men and circumstances make it." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"

"The first thing we had to settle was the name of the Ashram. I consulted friends. Amongst the names suggested were 'Sevashram' (the abode of service), 'Tapovan' (the abode of austerities), etc. I liked the name 'Sevashram' but for the absence of emphasis on the methods of service. 'Tapovan' seemed to be a pretentious title, because though tapas was dear to us we could not presume to be tapasvins (men of austerity). Our creed was devotion to truth, and our business was the search for and insistence on truth. I wanted to acquaint India with the method I had tried in South Africa, and I desired to test in India the extent to which its application might be possible. So my companions and I selected the name 'Satyagraha Ashram', as conveying both our goal and our method of service.

For the conduct of the Ashram a code of rules and observances was necessary. A draft was therefore prepared, and friends were invited to express their opinions on it. Amongst the many opinions that were received, that of Sir Gurudas Banerji is still in my memory. He liked the rules, but suggested that humility should be added as one of the observances, as he believed that the younger generation sadly lacked humility. Though I noticed this fault, I feared humility would cease to be humility the moment it became a matter of vow. The true connotation of humility is self-effacement [the quality of not claiming attention for oneself]. Self-effacement is moksha (salvation), and whilst it cannot, by itself, be an observance, there may be other observances necessary for its attainment. If the acts of an aspirant after moksha or a servant have no humility or selflessness about them, there is no longing for moksha or service. Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.

There were at this time about thirteen Tamilians in our party. Five Tamil youngsters had accompanied me from South Africa, and the rest came from different parts of the country. We were in all about twenty-five men and women. This is how the Ashram was started. All had their meals in a common kitchen and strove to live as one family." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Five, Chapter Nine, "Founding of the Ashram"

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels. For context: The Gospel in Brief.

"Every man of the present day with the Christian principles assimilated involuntarily in his conscience, finds himself in precisely the position of a man asleep who dreams that he is obliged to do something which even in his dream he knows he ought not to do. He knows this in the depths of his conscience, and all the same he seems unable to change his position; he cannot stop and cease doing what he ought not to do. And just as in a dream, his position becoming more and more painful, at last reaches such a pitch of intensity that he begins sometimes to doubt the reality of what is passing and makes a moral effort to shake off the nightmare which is oppressing him. This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian society. He feels that all that he does himself and that is done around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed to his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and more unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity.

It is not possible that we modern men, with the Christian sense of human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body, with our need for peaceful association and unity between nations, should really go on living in such a way that every joy, every gratification we have is bought by the sufferings, by the lives of our brother men, and moreover, that we should be every instant within a hair's-breadth of falling on one another, nation against nation, like wild beasts, mercilessly destroying men's lives and labor, only because some benighted [in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance, typically owing to a lack of opportunity] diplomatist or ruler says or writes some stupidity to another equally benighted diplomatist or ruler. It is impossible. Yet every man of our day sees that this is so and awaits the calamity. And the situation becomes more and more insupportable.

And as the man who is dreaming does not believe that what appears to him can be truly the reality and tries to wake up to the actual real world again, so the average man of modern days cannot in the bottom of his heart believe that the awful position in which he is placed and which is growing worse and worse can be the reality, and tries to wake up to a true, real life, as it exists in his conscience. And just as the dreamer need only make a moral effort and ask himself, 'Isn't it a dream?' and the situation which seemed to him so hopeless will instantly disappear, and he will wake up to peaceful and happy reality, so the man of the modern world need only make a moral effort to doubt the reality presented to him by his own hypocrisy and the general hypocrisy around him, and to ask himself, 'Isn't it all a delusion?' and he will at once, like the dreamer awakened, feel himself transported from an imaginary and dreadful world to the true, calm, and happy reality. And to do this a man need accomplish no great feats or exploits. He need only make a moral effort. But can a man make this effort?

According to the existing theory so essential to support hypocrisy, man is not free and cannot change his life. 'Man cannot change his life, because he is not free. He is not free, because all his actions are conditioned by previously existing causes. And whatever the man may do there are always some causes or other through which he does these or those acts, and therefore man cannot be free and change his life,' say the champions of the metaphysics of hypocrisy. And they would be perfectly right if man were a creature without conscience and incapable of moving toward the truth; that is to say, if after recognizing a new truth, man always remained at the same stage of moral development. But man is a creature with a conscience and capable of attaining a higher and higher degree of truth. And therefore even if man is not free as regards performing these or those acts because there exists a previous cause for every act, the very causes of his acts, consisting as they do for the man of conscience of the recognition of this or that truth, are within his own control.

So that though man may not be free as regards the performance of his actions, he is free as regards the foundation on which they are preformed. Just as the mechanician who is not free to modify the movement of his locomotive when it is in motion, is free to regulate the machine beforehand so as to determine what the movement is to be. Whatever the conscious man does, he acts just as he does, and not otherwise, only because he recognizes that to act as he is acting is in accord with the truth, or because he has recognized it at some previous time, and is now only through inertia, through habit, acting in accordance with his previous recognition of truth. In any case, the cause of his action is not to be found in any given previous fact, but in the consciousness of a given relation to truth, and the consequent recognition of this or that fact as a sufficient basis for action. Whether a man eats or does not eat, works or rests, runs risks or avoids them, if he has a conscience he acts thus only because he considers it right and rational, because he considers that to act thus is in harmony with truth, or else because he has made this reflection in the past.

The recognition or non-recognition of a certain truth depends not on external causes, but on certain other causes within the man himself. So that at times under external conditions apparently very favorable for the recognition of truth, one man will not recognize it, and another, on the contrary, under the most unfavorable conditions will, without apparent cause, recognize it. As it is said in the Gospel, 'No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.' That is to say, the recognition of truth, which is the cause of all the manifestations of human life, does not depend on external phenomena, but on certain inner spiritual characteristics of the man which escape our observation. And therefore man, though not free in his acts, always feels himself free in what is the motive of his acts — the recognition or non-recognition of truth. And he feels himself independent not only of facts external to his own personality, but even of his own actions.

Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as wrong and censure himself for it. Thus a gambler or a drunkard who does not resist temptation and yields to his passion is still free to recognize gambling and drunkenness as wrong or to regard them as a harmless pastime. In the first case even if he does not at once get over his passion, he gets the more free from it the more sincerely he recognizes the truth about it; in the second case he will be strengthened in his vice and will deprive himself of every possibility of shaking it off.

In the same way a man who has made his escape alone from a house on fire, not having had the courage to save his friend, remains free, recognizing the truth that a man ought to save the life of another even at the risk of his own, to regard his action as bad and to censure himself for it, or, not recognizing this truth, to regard his action as natural and necessary and to justify it to himself. In the first case, if he recognizes the truth in spite of his departure from it, he prepares for himself in the future a whole series of acts of self-sacrifice necessarily flowing from this recognition of the truth; in the second case, a whole series of egoistic acts.

Not that a man is always free to recognize or to refuse to recognize every truth. There are truths which he has recognized long before or which have been handed down to him by education and tradition and accepted by him on faith, and to follow these truths has become a habit, a second nature with him; and there are truths, only vaguely, as it were distantly, apprehended by him. The man is not free to refuse to recognize the first, nor to recognize the second class of truths. But there are truths of a third kind, which have not yet become an unconscious motive of action, but yet have been revealed so clearly to him that he cannot pass them by, and is inevitably obliged to do one thing or the other, to recognize or not to recognize them. And it is in regard to these truths that the man's freedom manifests itself." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"