WHAT IS RELIGION? 335
It looks as if no issue were possible.
And indeed for irreligious men there is not, and can- not be, any issue from this position ; those who belouj? to the higher, governing classes, even if they pretend to be concerned for the welfare of the masses, will never seriously attempt (guided by worldly aims, they cannot do it) to destroy the stupefaction and servitude in which these masses live, and which make it possible for the upper classes to rule over them. In the same way, men belonging to the enslaved masses cannot, while guided by worldly motives, wish to make their own hard position harder by entering on a struggle against the upper classes, to expose a false teaching and to preach a true one. Neither of these sets of men have any motive to do this, and if they are intelligent they will never attempt it.
But it is otherwise for religious people : men such as those who — however perverted a society may be — are always to be found guarding with their lives the sacred fire of religion, without which human life could not exist. There are times (and our time is such) when these men are unnoticed, when — as among us in Russia — despised and derided by all, their lives pass unrecorded — in exile, in prisons, and in penal battalions — yet they live, and on them depends the rational life of humanity. And it is just these religious men — however few they may be — who alone can and will rend asunder that enchanted circle which keeps men bound. They can do it, because all the disadvantages and dangers which hinder a worldly man from opposing the existing order of society, not only do not impede a religious man, but rather increase his zeal in the struggle against false- hood, and impel him to confess by word and deed what he holds to be divine truth. If he belongs to the ruling classes he will not only not wish to hide the truth out of regard for his own advantageous position, but, on the contrary, having come to hate such advantages, he will exert his whole strength to free himself from them.
