by Leo Tolstoy
Long before he had read the manuscript to the end, Julius had entered with his whole soul into communion with those who had inspired it – as often happens to men who read a book (that is, another person’s thoughts) with a sincere desire to discern the truth. He read on, guessing in advance what was coming, and not only agreed with the thoughts expressed in the book but seemed to be expressing them himself.
He experienced that ordinary, but mysterious and significant phenomenon, unnoticed by many people: of a man, supposed to be alive, becoming really alive on entering into communion with those accounted dead, and uniting and living one life with them.
Julius’s soul united with him who had written and inspired those thoughts, and in the light of this communion he contemplated himself and his life. And it appeared to him to be all a terrible mistake. He had not lived, but had only destroyed in himself the possibility of living by all the cares and temptations of life.
‘I do not wish to ruin my life. I want to live and to follow the path of life!’ he said to himself.
He remembered all that Pamphilius had said to him in their former conversations, and it all now seemed so clear and unquestionable that he was surprised that he could have listened to the stranger and not have held to his intention of going to the Christians. He remembered also that the stranger had said to him: ‘Go when you have had experience of life!’
‘I have now had experience of life, and have found nothing in it!’ thought Julius.
He also recalled the words of Pamphilius: that whenever he might go to the Christians, they would be glad to receive him.
‘No, I have erred and suffered enough!’ he said to himself. ‘I will give up everything and go to them and live as it says here!’
He told his wife of his plan, and she was delighted with it. She was ready for everything. The only difficulty was to decide how to put the plan into execution. What was to be done with the children? Were they to be taken with them or left with their grandmother? How could they be taken? How, after the delicacy of their upbringing, could they be subjected to all the difficulties of a rough life? The slave-girl proposed to go with them, but the mother was afraid for the children, and said that it would be better to leave them with their grandmother and to go alone. And to this they agreed.
All was decided. Only Julius’s illness delayed the execution of their plans.
VII
IN that state of mind Julius fell asleep. In the morning he was told that a skilful physician was visiting the town and wished to see him, promising him speedy relief. Julius willingly consented to see him, and the physician proved to be none other than the stranger whom he had met when he started to join the Christians. Having examined his injuries the physician prescribed certain potions of herbs to strengthen him.
‘Shall I be able to work with my hands?’ inquired Julius.
‘Oh yes! You will be able to write and to drive a chariot.’
‘But hard work – digging?’
‘I was not thinking of that,’ said the physician, ‘because it cannot be necessary for a man in your position.’
‘On the contrary, it is just what is wanted,’ said Julius, and he told the physician that since he had last seen him he had followed his advice and had experienced life; and that life had not given him what it promised, but on the contrary had disillusioned him, and that he now wished to carry out the intention he had then spoken of.
‘They have evidently employed all their deceptions and have enchanted you so that in spite of your position and the responsibilities that rest upon you – especially in regard to your children – you still do not see their error.’
‘Read that!’ was all Julius said in reply, handing him the manuscript he had been reading.
The physician took the manuscript and looked at it.
‘I know this,’ he said. ‘I know this deception, and am surprised that such a man as you should be caught by such a snare.’
‘I don’t understand you. Where is the snare?’
‘It is all tested by life! These sophists and rebels against men and gods propose a way of life in which all men will be happy, and there will be no wars or executions, no poverty or depravity, no strife or anger. And they insist that this condition will come about when all men fulfil the law of Christ – not to quarrel, nor yield to lust, nor take oaths, nor do violence, nor take arms against another nation. But they deceive themselves and others by taking the end for the means.
‘Their aim is not to quarrel, not to bind themselves by oaths, not to be wanton, and so forth, and this aim can only be attained by means of public life. But what they say is as if a teacher of archery should say: “You will hit the target when your arrow flies to it in a straight line.” The problem is how to make it fly straight. And that result is attained in archery by having a taut bow-string, a flexible bow, and a straight arrow. It is the same in life. The best life, in which men have no need to quarrel, to be wanton, or to commit murder, is attained by having a taut bow-string (the rulers), a flexible bow (the power of government), and a straight arrow (the justice of the law). But they, under pretext of living a better life, destroy all that has improved or does improve it. They recognize neither government, nor the authorities, nor the laws.’
‘But they say that if men fulfil the law of Christ, life will be better without rulers, authorities, and laws.’
‘Yes, but what guarantee is there that men will fulfil it? None! They say: “You have experienced life under rulers and laws, and life has not been perfected. Try it now without rulers and laws and it will become perfect. You cannot deny this, for you have not tried it.” But this is the obvious sophistry of these impious people. In saying that, is it not in effect as though a man should say to a farmer: “You sow your seed in the ground and cover it up, and yet the harvest is not what you would wish. I advise you to sow in the sea. It will be better like that – and you cannot deny my proposition, for you have not tried it”?’
‘Yes, that is true,’ said Julius, who was beginning to waver.
‘But that is not all,’ continued the physician. ‘Let us assume the absurd and impossible. Let us assume that the principles of the Christian teaching can be poured into men like medicine, and that suddenly all men will begin to fulfil Christ’s teaching, to love God and their fellows, and to fulfil his commandments. Even assuming all that, the path of life inculcated by them would still not stand examination. Life would come to an end and the race would die out. Their Teacher was a young vagabond, and such will his followers be, and according to our supposition such would the whole world become if it followed his teaching. Those living would last their time, but their children would not survive, or hardly one in ten would do so. According to their teaching all children should be alike to every mother and to every father, whether they are their own children or not. How will these children be looked after, when we see that all the devotion and all the love implanted in mothers hardly preserves their own children from perishing? What will happen when this devotion is replaced by a compassion shared by all children alike? Which child is to be taken and preserved? Who will sit up at night with a sick and malodorous child except its own mother? Nature has provided a protection for the child in its mother’s love, but the Christians want to deprive it of that protection, and offer nothing in exchange! Who will train a son, who will penetrate into his soul like his father? Who will defend him from dangers? All this they reject! All life – that is, the continuation of the human race – is made away with.’
‘That also is true,’ said Julius, carried away by the physician’s eloquence.
‘Yes, my friend, have nothing to do with these ravings. Live rationally, especially now that you have such great and serious and pressing responsibilities. It is a matter of honour for you to fulfil them. You have reached the second period of your doubts, but go on and your doubts will vanish. Your first and evident duty is the education of your children, which you have neglected. You must train them to be worthy servants of their cou
ntry. The existing political structure has given you everything you have, and you must serve it yourself and give it worthy servants in the persons of your children, on whom you will thereby also confer a benefit. Another obligation you have is the service of the community. You are mortified and discouraged by your accidental and temporary failure. But nothing is achieved without effort and struggle, and the joy of triumph is great only when the victory has been hardly won. Leave it to your wife to amuse herself with the babble of the Christian writers. You should be a man, and bring up your children to be men. Begin to live with the consciousness of duty, and all your doubts will fall away of themselves. They were caused by your illness. Fulfil your duty to the State by serving it and by preparing your children for its service. Set them on their feet, so that they may be able to take your place, and then peacefully abandon yourself to the life which attracts you. Till then you have no right to do so, and were you to do so you would encounter nothing but suffering.’
VIII
WHETHER it was the effect of the medicinal herbs or the advice given him by the wise physician, Julius speedily recovered, and his plans of adopting a Christian life now appeared to him like ravings.
After staying a few days the physician left the city. Soon afterwards Julius left his sick bed and began a new life in accord with the advice he had received. He engaged teachers for his children and supervised their studies himself. He spent his own time on public affairs and soon acquired great influence in the city.
So a year passed, and during that time Julius did not even think about the Christians. But at the end of the year a legate from the Roman Emperor arrived in Cilicia to suppress the Christian movement, and a trial was arranged to take place in Tarsus. Julius heard of the measures that were being undertaken against the Christians, but he paid no attention to them, not thinking that they related to the commune in which Pamphilius was living. But one day as he was walking in the forum to attend to his duties, a poorly dressed elderly man approached him whom he did not at first recognize. It was Pamphilius. He came up to Julius leading a child by the hand, and said:
‘Greetings, friend! I have a great favour to ask of you, but now that the Christians are being persecuted I do not know whether you will wish to acknowledge me as your friend, or whether you will not be afraid of losing your post if you have anything to do with me.’
‘I am not afraid of anyone,’ replied Julius, ‘and as a proof of it I ask you to come with me to my house. I will even neglect my business in the forum to have a talk with you and help you. Come with me. Whose child is that?’
‘He is my son.’
‘I need not have asked. I recognize your features in him, and I also recognize those light-blue eyes, and need not ask who your wife is. She is the lovely girl I saw you with several years ago.’
‘You have guessed right,’ replied Pamphilius. ‘She became my wife soon after you saw us.’
On reaching the house, Julius called his wife and handed the boy over to her, and then led Pamphilius to his luxurious private room.
‘You can speak freely here,’ he said. ‘No one will hear us.’
‘I am not afraid of being heard,’ replied Pamphilius. ‘My request is not that the Christians who have been arrested should not be judged and executed, but only that they should be allowed to announce their faith in public.’
And Pamphilius told how the Christians who had been seized by the authorities had succeeded in sending word from their prison to the community telling of their condition. Cyril the Elder, knowing of Pamphilius’s relations with Julius, had sent him to intercede for the Christians. They did not ask for mercy. They looked upon it as their vocation to testify to the truth of Christ’s teaching, and they could do this equally well by suffering martyrdom as by a life of eighty years. They would accept either fate with equal indifference, and physical death, which must inevitably overtake them, was as welcome and void of terror now as it would be fifty years hence. But they wished by their death to serve their fellow-men, and therefore Pamphilius had been sent to ask that their trial and execution should be public.
Julius was surprised at Pamphilius’s request, but promised to do all in his power to aid him.
‘I have promised to help you,’ he said, ‘out of friendship, and because of the particular feeling of tenderness you have always aroused in me, but I must say that I consider your teaching most senseless and harmful. I can judge of this because some time ago, when I was ill, disappointed, and low-spirited, I myself once again shared your views and came very near to abandoning everything and joining your community. I know now on what your error is based, for I have myself experienced it. It is based on love of self, weakness of spirit, and sickly enervation. It is a creed for women, not for men.’
‘But why?’
‘Because, while you recognize the fact that discord lies in man’s nature and that strife results therefrom, you do not wish to take part in that strife or to teach others to do so; and without taking your share of the burden you avail yourselves of the organization of the world, which is based on violence. Is that fair? Our world owes its existence to the fact that there have always been rulers. Those rulers took on themselves the trouble and all the responsibility of defending us from foreign and domestic foes, and in return for that we subjects submitted to them and rendered them honour, or helped them by serving the State. But you, out of pride, instead of taking your part in the affairs of the State and rising higher and higher in men’s regard by your labours and to the extent of your deserts – you in your pride at once declare all men to be equal, in order that you may consider no one higher than yourself, but may reckon yourself equal to Caesar. That is what you yourself think and teach others to think. And for weak and idle people that is a great temptation! Every slave, instead of labouring, at once considers himself Caesar’s equal. But you do more than this: you deny taxes, and slavery, and the courts, and executions, and war – everything that holds people together. If people listened to you, society would fall to pieces and we should return to primitive savagery.
‘Living under a government you preach the destruction of government. But your very existence is dependent on that government. Without it you would not exist. You would all be slaves of the Scythians or the barbarians – the first people who happened to hear of your existence. You are like a tumour which destroys the body but can only nourish itself on the body. And a living body resists that tumour and overcomes it! We do the same with you, and cannot but do so. And in spite of my promise to help you obtain your wish, I look upon your teaching as most harmful and despicable: despicable because I consider it dishonourable and unjust to gnaw the breast that feeds you – to avail yourselves of the advantages of governmental order, and to destroy that order by which the State is maintained, without taking part in it!’
‘If we really lived as you suppose there would be much justice in what you say,’ replied Pamphilius. ‘But you do not know our life, and have formed a false conception of it. The means of subsistence which we employ are obtainable without the aid of violence. It is difficult for you, with your luxurious habits, to realize on how little a man can live without privation. A healthy man is so constituted that he can produce with his hands far more than he needs for his subsistence. Living together in a community we are able by our common work to feed without difficulty our children, our old people, and the sick and weak. You say of the rulers that they protect people from external and internal enemies – but we love our enemies, and so we have none. You assert that we Christians stir up in the slave a desire to be Caesar, but on the contrary, both by word and deed we profess one thing: patient humility and labour, the humblest of labour, that of a working man. We neither know nor understand anything about political matters. We only know one thing, and we know that with certainty, that our welfare lies solely in the good of others, and we seek that welfare. The welfare of all men lies in their union with one another, and union is attained not by violence but by love. The violence of a brigand infl
icted on a traveller is as atrocious to us as the violence of an army to its prisoners, or of a judge to those who are executed, and we cannot intentionally participate in the one or the other. Nor can we profit by the labour of others enforced by violence. Violence is reflected on us, but our participation in violence consists not in inflicting it but in submissively enduring its infliction on ourselves.’
‘Yes,’ said Julius, ‘you preach about love, but when one looks at the results it turns out to be quite another thing. It leads to barbarism and a reversion to savagery, murder, robbery, and violence, which according to your doctrine must not be repressed in any way.’
‘No, that is not so,’ said Pamphilius, ‘and if you really examine the results of our teaching and of our lives carefully and impartially, you will see that not only do they not lead to murder, robbery, and violence, but on the contrary those crimes can only be opposed by the means we practise. Murder, robbery, and all evils, existed long before Christianity, and men have always contended with them, but unsuccessfully, because they employed means that we deplore, meeting violence by violence; and this never checks crime, but on the contrary provokes it by sowing hatred and exasperation.
‘Look at the mighty Roman Empire. Nowhere else is such trouble taken about the laws as in Rome. Studying and perfecting the laws constitutes a special science. The laws are taught in the schools, discussed in the Senate, and reformed and administered by the most educated citizens. Legal justice is considered the highest virtue, and the office of Judge is held in peculiar respect. Yet in spite of this it is known that there is now no city in the world so steeped in crime and corruption as Rome. Remember Roman history: in olden times when the laws were very primitive the Roman people possessed many virtues, but in our days, despite the elaboration and administration of law, the morals of the citizens are becoming worse and worse. The number of crimes constantly increases, and they become more varied and more elaborate every day.
