the hatred you have already provoked; but use it to accomplish a great and good deed not for your nation alone, but for all mankind. If this social organisation has outlived its day, let the last act done under it be one not of falsehood and cruelty, but of goodness and truth.[1]
TO THE REVOLUTIONISTS.
[By Revolutionists I mean those people—beginning with the most peaceful Constitutionalists and extending to the most militant Revolutionists—who wish to replace the present Governmental authority by another authority, otherwise organised and consisting of other people.]
You, Revolutionists of all shades and denominations, consider the present Government harmful, and in various ways: by organising assemblies (allowed or prohibited by Government), by formulating projects, printing articles, making speeches, by unions, strikes and
- ↑ Regarding the remark in the appeal to the Government referring to salvation "not lying in Dumas elected in this way or that" we will allow ourselves to make a slight reservation taking into consideration the fact that separate statements by Tolstoy are so often interpreted in a perverse sense. By these words he does not at all desire to advise the Government not to concede to the demands of public opinion. On the contrary, at the very time when this appeal was being prepared tor publication we received from Tolstoy a letter in which he expresses himself thus:
"… The general irritation cannot be overcome by force, but the Government, i.e., those people who constitute the Government, are bound before God, before men, and before themselves, to cease all acts of violence—to do all that which is demanded of them, to relieve themselves of their responsibility; to grant legislative assembly and a ballot, universal, equal, direct, and secret, and an amnesty to all political offenders, and everything …"
Hence in the passage referred to in his appeal to the Government Tolstoy only wishes to convey that the gist of the matter lies not in the Duma but in a more radical alleviation of the position of the people.—Editor.
