Continuing a previous post and the book of the above title by Leo Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (Barnes & Noble, Inc. 122 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10011)
The savage recognizes life only in self and personal desires. Interest in life is concentrated on self alone. The highest happiness is the fullest satisfaction of desires. The motive power of life is personal enjoyment. Religion consists of the propitiating and worshiping gods, whom he imagines as persons living only for their personal aims.
The civilized pagan recognizes life not in self alone and personal desires, but in societies—in the tribe, the clan, the family, the kingdom—and sacrifices personal good for those societies. The motive power of life is glory. Religion consists in the exaltation of the glory of those who are so aligned—the founders of family, ancestors, rulers—and in worshiping gods who are exclusively protectors of clan, family, nation, government.
Those who hold the divine theory of life recognize life not in their own individuality, and not in societies of individualists (in the family, the clan, the nation, the tribe, or the government), but in the eternal undying source of life—in God; and to fulfill the will of God is ready to sacrifice individual, family and social welfare. The motor power of life is love. And religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the principle of the whole—God.
(p.67) The whole historic existence of mankind is nothing else than the gradual transition from personal, animal conception to the social conception of life to the divine conception of life. The whole history of the ancient peoples, lasting through thousands of years and ending with the history of Rome, is the history of the transition from the animal, personal view of life and social view of life. The whole history from the time of the Roman empire and the appearance of Christianity is the history of the transition, through which we are passing now from the social view of life to the divine view of life.
This view of life is the last, and founded upon it is the Christian teaching, which is a guide for the whole of our life and lies at the root of all our activity, practical and theoretic. Yet they of what is falsely called science, the pseudo-scientific, looking at it only in its externals, regard it as something outgrown and having no value for us.
Reducing it to its dogmatic side only—to the doctrines of the Trinity, redemption, the miracles, the Church, the sacraments, and so on—those of science regard it as one of an immense number of religions which have risen among mankind and now, they say, having played out its part in history, it is outliving its own age and is and fading away before the light of science and of true enlightenment.
We come here upon what, in a large portion of cases, forms of grossest errors of mankind. Those on a lower level of understanding, when brought into contact with phenomena of a higher order, instead of making effort to understand what they are talking about, they more confidently and unhesitatingly pass judgment on it.
To the majority of the learned, looking at the living, moral teaching of Christ from the lower standpoint of the state of conception of life, the doctrine appears as nothing but a very indefinite and incongruous combination of Indian *asceticism, Stoic and Neo-platonic philosophy, and insubstantial anti-social visions, which have no significance for our times. Its whole meaning is concentrated for them in its external manifestations—in Catholicism, Protestantism, in certain dogmas, or in the conflict with temporal power. Estimating the value of Christianity by these phenomena is like a deaf man’s judging of the character and quality of music by seeing the movements of the musicians. (*asceticism—severe self-discipline and avoidance of all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons.) ~~~~Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (Barnes & Noble, Inc. 122 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10011 p.66-67
(p.68) The result of this is that all these scientific men, from Kant, Strauss, Spencer, and Renan down, do not understand the meaning of Christ’s sayings, do not understand the significance, the object, the reason of their utterance, do not understand even the question to which they form the answer. Yet, without even taking the pains to enter into their meaning, they refuse, if unfavorably disposed, to recognize any reasonableness in his doctrines; or if they want to treat them indulgently, they condescend from the height of their superiority, to correct them on the supposition that Christ meant to express precisely their own ideas, but did not succeed in doing so. They behave to his teaching much as self-assertive people talk to those whom they consider beneath them, often supplying their companions’ words: “Yes, you mean to say this and that.” This correction is always with the aim of reducing the higher, divine conception of life to the level of the lower, state conception of life.
They usually say that the moral teaching of Christianity is very fine but over exaggerated; that to make it quite right we must reject in it all that is superfluous and unnecessary in our manner of life. “And the doctrine that asks too much and requires what cannot be performed, is worse than that which requires of us what cannot be performed, is worse than that which requires what is possible and consistent with their powers,” these learned interpreters of Christianity maintain, repeating what was long ago asserted, and could not but be asserted, by those who crucified the Teacher because they did not understand him—the Jews.
It seems that in the judgment of the learned men of our time the Hebrew law—a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye—is the law of just retaliation, known to mankind five thousand years before the law of holiness which Christ taught in its place.
It seems that all that has been done by those men who understood Christ’s teaching literally and lived in accordance with such an understanding of it, all that has been said and done by all true Christians, by all Christian saints, all that is now reforming the world in the shape of socialism and communism—is simply exaggeration, not worth talking about.~~~~Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (Barnes & Noble, Inc. 122 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10011 p. 66-68 (continued)
