especially as you cannot but be aware that (particularly in affairs relating to the life of a whole nation) the results attained are generally contrary to those aimed at? And above all, what right have you to do what is contrary to the law of God (if you acknowledge a God), or to the most generally accepted laws of morality (if you acknowledge nothing but the generally accepted laws of morality): by what right do you consider yourselves freed from those most simple, indubitable, human obligations, which are irreconcilable with your Revolutionary (or with your Governmental) acts?"
If your question: What's to be done? is really a question, and not a justification; and if you put it—as you should do—to yourselves, a quite clear and simple answer naturally suggests itself. The answer is that you must do, not what the Tsar, Governor, police-officers, Duma, or some political party demands of you, but what is natural to you as a man, what is demanded of you by that Power which sent you into the world—the Power most people are accustomed to call God.
And as soon as one gives this reply to the question, What's to be done? that stupid, crime-begetting fog is at once dispelled, under whose influence, for some reason, men imagine that they alone, of all men—they (perhaps the most entangled and the most astray from the true path of life) are called on to decide the fate of millions, and for the questionable benefit of these millions to commit deeds which, not questionably but evidently, produce disasters to these millions.
There exists a general law, acknowledged by all reasonable men, confirmed by tradition, by all the religions of all the nations, and by true science. This law is that men, to fulfil their destiny and attain their greatest welfare, should help one another, love one another, and in any case should not attack one another's liberty and life. Yet, strange to say, people appear who assure us that it is quite needless to obey this law, and that there are cases in which one may and should act contrary to it; and that such deviations from the eternal law will bring more welfare, both to individuals
