Continuing from a previous post: Leo Tolstoy and his book “The Kingdom of God is Within You”. . .
. . . . So much for one misunderstanding of the scientific men, in relation to the import and aim of Christ’s teaching. Another misunderstanding arising from the same source in substituting love for men, the service of humanity, for the Christian principles of love for God and his service.
The Christian doctrine to love God and serve him, and only as result of that love to love and serve one’s neighbor, seems to scientific men obscure, mystic, and arbitrary. And they would absolutely exclude the obligation to love and service of God, holding that doctrine of love for humanity alone, is far more clear, tangible, and reasonable.
Scientific men teach in theory that the only good and rational life is that which is devoted to the service of the whole of humanity. That is for them the import of Christian doctrine, and to that they reduce Christ’s teaching. They seek confirmation of their own doctrine in the Gospel, on the supposition that the two doctrines are really the same.
This idea is an absolutely mistaken one. The Christian doctrine has nothing in common with the doctrine of Positivists, Communists and all the apostles of the universal brotherhood of mankind, based on the general advantage of such a brotherhood. They differ from one another especially in Christianity’s having a firm and clear basis in the human soul, while love for humanity is only a theoretical deduction from analogy. The doctrine of love for humanity is only a theoretical deduction from analogy.
The doctrine of love for humanity is based on the social conception of life. The essence of the social conception of life consists in the transference of the aim of the individual life to the life of societies individuals; family, clan, tribe, or state. The transference to the tribe or nation is more difficult and requires special training. And the transference of the sentiment to the state is the furthest limit which the process can reach.
To love one’s self is natural to everyone, and no one needs any encouragement to do so. To love one’s clan who support and protect one, to love wife, the joy and help of existence, children, the hope and consolation of life, and parents, who have given life and education, is natural. And such love, though far from being so strong as love self, is met with pretty often.
To love—for one’s own sake, through personal pride—one’s tribe, one’s nation, though not so natural, is nevertheless common. Love ones’s own people, though not so natural, nevertheless common. Love of one’s own people who are of the same blood, the same tongue, the same religion as one’s self is possible, though far from being so strong as love of self, or even love of family or clan. But love for state, such as Turkey, Germany, England, Austria, or Russia is a thing almost impossible. And though it is zealously inculcated, it is only an imagined sentiment; it has no existence in reality. And at that limit man’s power of transferring his interest ceases, and he cannot feel any s direct sentiment for that fictitious entity. The Positivists however and all the apostles of fraternity on scientific principles, without taking into understanding the weakening of sentiment in proportion to the extension of it’s object, draw deduction in theory in the same direction. “Since,” they say, “it was for the advantage of the individual to extend his personal interest to the family, the tribe, and subsequently to the nation and the state, it would be still more advantageous to extend his interest in societies. . . to the whole of mankind, and so to live for humanity just as we live for family of the state.
Theoretically it follows, indeed, having extended the love and interest for the personality to the family, the tribe and thence to the nation and the state, it would be still more advantageous to extend interest in societies to the whole of mankind, and so to live for humanity just as parents for the family or the state. For the first post of this series, click “The Kingdom of God is Within You“.
