Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/78

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WHAT'S TO BE DONE?
61

that to kill and torment people is bad, but only knew that such or such a monarchy or constitution is desirable.

That will be the case with many who are suffering from the spiritual disease of political obsession, but I think the great majority of people suffering from all the horrors and crimes done by men who are so diseased, will at last understand the terrible deception under which those lie who acknowledge coercive power used by man to man as rightful and beneficent; and having understood this, they will free themselves for ever from the madness and wickedness of either participating in force-using power, or submitting to it; and will understand that each man should do one thing, namely: should fulfil what is demanded of him by the reasonable and beneficent Source, which men call "God," of whose demands no man possessed of reason can fail to be conscious.

I cannot but think that if all men, forgetting their various positions as ministers, policemen, presidents and members of various combative or non-combative parties, would only do the deeds natural to each of them as a human being—not only would those horrors and sufferings cease, of which the life of man (especially the life of Russian people) is now full, but the Kingdom of God would have come upon earth.

If only some people acted so, the more of them there were, the less evil would there be, and the more good order and general welfare.