The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies

Read his "Idiot Son," "A Night with the Daughter" (L'Ermite), "The Sailor and His Sister" (Le Port), "Field of Olives," La Petite Roque, the English Miss Harriet, Monsieur Parent, L'Armoire (the girl that fell asleep in the safe), "The Marriage" in Sur l'Eau, and the last expression of everything, Un Cas de Divorce. What Marcus Aurelius said, trying to find means with which to destroy in imagination the attractiveness of this sin, Maupassant does in glaring, artistic pictures, which upset one completely. He wants to laud love, but the more he knew of it, the more he cursed it. He cursed it for the calamities and sufferings which it brings with it, and for the disappointments, and, above all, for the simulation of true love, for the deception which is in it, and from which man suffers the more, the more he abandons himself to this deception.

The mighty moral growth of the author, during his literary activity, is written in indelible characters in these exquisite short stories and in his best book, Sur l'Eau.

And not merely in this discrowning, this involuntary and, therefore, so much more powerful discrowning of sexual love, do we see the author's moral growth; we see it also in all those higher and ever higher demands which he makes on life.

Not only in sexual love does he see the inner contradiction between the demands of the animal and of the rational man, – he sees it in the whole structure of the world.

He sees that the world, the material world, such as it is, is not only not the best of worlds, but, on the contrary, might have been quite different, – this idea is strikingly expressed in Horla, – and does not satisfy the demands of reason and of love; he sees that there is a certain other world, or at least there are the demands for such a world, in man's soul.

He is tormented, not only by the irrationality of the material world and the absence of beauty in it, but also by its lack of love, by its disunion. I know of no more heartrending cry of despair of an erring man who recognizes his loneliness, than the expression of this idea in the exquisite story, Solitude.

The phenomenon which more than any other tortured Maupassant, and to which he frequently returned, is the agonizing state of loneliness, the spiritual loneliness of a man, that barrier which stands between a man and others, that barrier which, as he says, is felt the more painfully, the closer the bodily contact.

What is it that tortures him? And what would he have? What destroys this barrier, what puts a stop to this loneliness? Love, not love of woman, of which he is tired, but pure, spiritual, divine love. And it is this that Maupassant seeks; toward this saviour of life, which was long ago clearly revealed to all, that he painfully tugs at the fetters with which he feels himself bound.

He is not yet able to name what he is seeking, he does not want to name it with his lips alone, for fear of defiling his sanctuary. But his unnamed striving, which is expressed by his terror in the presence of solitude, is so sincere that it infects us and draws us more powerfully than many, very many sermons of love, which are enunciated with the lips alone.

The tragedy of Maupassant's life consists in this, that, living in surroundings that are terrible because of their monstrousness and immorality, he by the force of his talent, that unusual light which was in him, broke away from the world-conception of his circle, was near to liberation, already breathed the air of freedom, but, having spent his last strength in this struggle, perished without becoming free, because he did not have the strength to make this one last effort.

The tragedy of this ruin consists in the same in which it even now continues to consist for the majority of the so-called men of our time.

Men have in general never lived without an explanation of the meaning of the life they live. Everywhere and at all times there have appeared advanced, highly gifted men, prophets, as they are called, who have explained to men this meaning and significance of life, and at all times the men of the rank and file, who have no strength to make this meaning clear to themselves, have followed that explanation of life which their prophets revealed to them.

This meaning was eighteen hundred years ago simply, lucidly, indubitably, and joyously explained by Christianity, as is proved by the life of all those who have accepted this meaning and follow that guide of life which follows from this meaning.

But there appeared men who interpreted this meaning in such a way that it became nonsense. And people are in a dilemma, – whether to recognize Christianity, as it is interpreted by Catholicism, Lourdes, the Pope, the dogma of the seedless conception, and so forth, or to live on, being guided by the instructions of Renan and his like, that is, to live without any guidance and comprehension of life, surrendering themselves to their lusts, so long as they are strong, and to their habits, when the passions have subsided.

And the people, the people of the rank and file, choose one or the other, sometimes both, at first libertinism, and then Catholicism. And people continue to live thus for generations, shielding themselves with different theories, which are not invented in order to find out the truth, but in order to conceal it. And the people of the rank and file, especially the dull ones among them, feel at ease.

But there are also other people, – there are but a few of them and they are far between, – and such was Maupassant, who with their own eyes see things as they are, see their meaning, see the contradictions of life, which are hidden from others, and vividly present to themselves that to which these contradictions must inevitably lead them, and seek for their solutions in advance. They seek for them everywhere except where they are to be found, in Christianity, because Christianity seems to them to have outlived its usefulness, to be obsolete and foolish and repellent by its monstrosity. Trying in vain to arrive by themselves at these solutions, they come to the conclusion that there are no solutions, that the property of life consists in carrying within oneself these unsolved contradictions. Having arrived at such a solution, these people, if they are weak, unenergetic natures, make their peace with such a senseless life, are even proud of their condition, considering their lack of knowledge to be a desert, a sign of culture; but if they are energetic, truthful, and talented natures, such as was Maupassant, they cannot bear it and in one way or another go out of this insipid life.

It is as though thirsty people in the desert should be looking everywhere for water, except near those men who, standing near a spring, pollute it and offer ill-smelling mud instead of water, which still keeps on flowing farther down, below the mud. Maupassant was in that position; he could not believe, – it even never occurred to him that the truth which he was seeking had been discovered long ago and was near him; nor could he believe that it was possible for a man to live in a contradiction such as he felt himself to be living in.

Life, according to those theories in which he was brought up, which surrounded him, and which were verified by all the passions of his youthful and spiritually and physically strong being, consists in enjoyment, chief of which is woman and the love of her, and in the doubly reflected enjoyment, – in the representation of this love and the excitation of this love in others. All that would be very well, but, as we look closely at these enjoyments, we see amidst them appear phenomena which are quite alien and hostile to this love and this beauty: woman for some reason grows homely, looks horrid in her pregnancy, bears a child in nastiness, then more children, unwished-for children, then deceptions, cruelties, then moral sufferings, then simply old age, and finally death.

And then, is this beauty really beauty? And then, what is it all for? It would be nice, if it were possible to arrest life. But it goes on. What does it mean, – life goes on? Life goes on, means, – the hair falls out and grows gray, the teeth decay, there appear wrinkles, and there is an odour in the mouth. Even before everything ends, everything becomes terrible and disgusting: you perceive the pasty paint and powder, the sweat, the stench, the homeliness. Where is that which I served? Where is beauty? And it is all. If it is not, – there is nothing. There is no life.

Not only is there no life in what seemed to have life, but you, too, begin to get away from it, to grow feeble, to look homely, to decay, while others before your very eyes seize from you those pleasures in which was the whole good of life. More than that: there begins to glint the possibility of another life, something else, some other union of men with the whole world, such as excludes all those deceptions, something else, something that cannot be impaired by anything, that is true and always beautiful. But that cannot be, – it is only the provoking sight of an oasis, when we know that it is not there and that everything is sand.

Maupassant lived down to that tragic moment of life, when there began the struggle between the lie of the life which surrounded him, and the truth which he was beginning to see. He already had symptoms of spiritual birth.

It is these labours of birth that are expressed in his best productions, especially in his short stories.

If it had been his fate not to die in the labour of birth, but to be born, he would have given great, instructive productions, but even what he gave us during the process of his birth is much. Let us be grateful to this strong, truthful man for what he gave us.

Vorónezh, April 2, 1894.

THE END

1

In The Non-Resistant, Vol. i., No. 4, Hopedale, Milford, Mass., Feb. 15, 1845.

2

Not a pamphlet, but an article in The Non-Resistant, Vol. i. No. 4, and very imperfectly quoted by Tolstóy.

3

To this Tolstóy adds, on his own responsibility: "Why must one, ten, one hundred men not violate God's law, while very many may?"

4

Translated freely, with some omissions. —Author's Note. I fail to find this Catechism in any of Ballou's writings accessible in and about Boston. The nearest approach to these questions and answers is found scattered throughout his Christian Non-Resistance, in Its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended, Philadelphia, 1846.

5

Tolstóy's translation from the English, which is generally loose, here departs entirely from the text. Tolstóy writes: "If a chief direct you to kill your neighbour's child, or your father, or your mother, will you obey?"

6

A thorough search through bibliographies, catalogues, and libraries has failed to reveal such a book or such an author, and as Tolstóy speaks above of the book as being written, it may be that Tolstóy had a manuscript before him.

7

I know but one piece of writing, not a criticism in the strict sense of the word, but an article which treats the same subject, and which has my book in view, that departs from this common definition. It is Tróitski's pamphlet (Kazán) The Sermon on the Mount. The author obviously recognizes Christ's teaching in its real significance. He says that the commandment about non-resistance to evil means what it does, and the same is true of the commandment about swearing; he does not deny, as others do, the significance of Christ's teaching, but unfortunately he does not make from this recognition those inevitable deductions, which in our life beg for recognition in connection with such a comprehension of Christ's teaching. If it is not right to resist evil and to swear, every man will naturally ask: "How about military service?" And to this question the author gives no answer, though an answer is demanded. And if it cannot be answered, it is best not to speak at all, because silence produces error. —Author's Note.

8

Khomyakóv's definition of the church, which has some currency among Russians, does not mend matters, if we recognize with Khomyakóv that the Orthodox is the one true church. Khomyakóv asserts that the church is an assembly of men (of all, both the clergy and the congregation) united in love, and that the truth is revealed only to those who are united in love (Let us love one another, so that in agreement of thought, and so forth), and that such a church is the one which, in the first place, recognizes the Nicene symbol, and, in the second, after the division of the churches, does not recognize the Pope and the new dogmas. But with such a definition of the church there appears a still greater difficulty in harmonizing, as Khomyakóv wants to, the church which is united in love with the church which recognizes the Nicene symbol and the justice of Photius. Thus Khomyakóv's assertion that this church, which is united in love and so is holy, is the church as professed by the Greek hierarchy, is still more arbitrary than the assertions of the Catholics and of the ancient Orthodox. If we admit the concept of the church in the sense which Khomyakóv gives to it, that is, as an assembly of men united in love and in truth, then everything a man can say in relation to this assembly is, that it is very desirable to be a member of such an assembly, if such exists, that is, to be in love and truth; but there are no external signs by which it would be possible to count oneself or another in with this holy assembly, or to exclude oneself from it, as no external institution can correspond to this concept. —Author's Note.

9

The unity of this life-conception is not impaired by the fact that so many various forms of life, as that of the tribe, the family, the race, the state, and even the life of humanity, according to the theoretical speculations of the positivists, are based on this social, or pagan, life-conception. All these various forms of life are based on the same concept that the life of the personality is not a sufficient aim of life and that the meaning of life can be found only in the aggregate of personalities. —Author's Note.

10

Here, for example, is a characteristic judgment of the kind in an article of an American periodical, Arena, October, 1890. The article is entitled "A New Basis of Church Life." In discussing the significance of the Sermon on the Mount, and especially its non-resistance to evil, the author, who is not obliged, like the ecclesiastic writers, to conceal its meaning, says: "Christ actually preached complete communism and anarchy; but we must know how to look upon Christ in His historical and psychologic significance." [This sentence is not in the English article. —Tr.] "Devout common sense must gradually come to look upon Christ as a philanthropic teacher who, like every enthusiast who ever taught, went to an Utopian extreme of His own philosophy. Every great agitation for the betterment of the world has been led by men who beheld their own mission with such absorbing intensity that they could see little else. It is no reproach to Christ to say that He had the typical reformer's temperament; that His precepts cannot be literally accepted as a complete philosophy of life; and that men are to analyze them reverently, but, at the same time, in the spirit of ordinary, truth-seeking criticism," and so forth. Christ would have liked to speak well, but He did not know how to express Himself as precisely and clearly as we, in the spirit of criticism, and so we will correct him. Everything He said about meekness, sacrifice, poverty, the thoughtlessness for the morrow, He said by chance, having been unable to express himself scientifically. —Author's Note.

11

Not Charles Butt, but Henry Richard.

12

Words from Victor Hugo's novel, Notre Dame, in regard to printing, which will kill architecture. —Author's Note.

13

The fact that in America there exist abuses of power, in spite of the small number of troops, not only does not contradict, but even supports this proposition. In America there is a smaller army than in other countries, and so there is nowhere a lesser oppression of the oppressed classes, and nowhere can we foresee so soon the abolition of the abuses of power and of the power itself. But in America itself there have of late, in proportion as the labouring classes become more unified, been heard voices asking more and more frequently for an increase of the army, although America is not threatened by any external attack. The higher ruling classes know that fifty thousand soldiers will soon be insufficient, and, no longer depending on Pinkerton's army, they feel that the security of their position lies only in an increase of the army. —Author's Note.

14

The fact that some nations, the English and the Americans, have not yet any universal military service (though voices in its favour are already heard), but only the enlistment and hire of soldiers, does in no way change the condition of slavery in which the citizens stand relative to the governments. Here everybody has to go himself to kill and be killed; there everybody has to give his labours for the hire and preparation of murderers. —Author's Note.

15

All the details of this and the preceding cases are authentic. —Author's Note.

16

Comically striking in this respect is the naïve assertion of the Russian authorities in doing violence to other nationalities, the Poles, Baltic Germans, Jews. The Russian government practises extortion on its subjects, for centuries has not troubled itself about the Little Russians in Poland, nor about the Letts in the Baltic provinces, nor about the Russian peasants who have been exploited by all manner of men, and suddenly it becomes a defender of the oppressed against the oppressors, those very oppressors whom it oppresses. —Author's Note.

17

Thus I know of the following protest of students, sent to Paris, which was not accepted by a single newspaper:

"OPEN LETTER TO THE FRENCH STUDENTS

"Lately a group of Moscow students of law, with the university authorities at their head, took it upon themselves to speak in behalf of all the student body of Moscow University in respect to the Toulon festivities.

"We, the representatives of the association of student societies, protest in the most emphatic manner possible both against the arrogation of this group and substantially against the exchange of civilities between it and the French students. We, too, look with ardent love and profound respect upon France, and we do so, because we see in it a great nation, which formerly used to appear before the whole world as the herald and proclaimer of great ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity; and which was also the first in the matter of bold endeavour for the materialization of these great ideals, – and the best part of the Russian youth has always been ready to welcome France as the leading champion for the best future of humanity; but we do not consider such festivities as those of Kronstadt and Toulon a suitable occasion for such civilities.

"On the contrary, these festivities signal a sad but, let us hope, temporary phenomenon, – the disloyalty of France to its former great historic rôle: the country, which once called the whole world to break the fetters of despotism and offered its fraternal aid to every nation that revolted for the sake of its freedom, now burns incense before the Russian government, which systematically trigs the normal, organic, and vital growth of the national life, and mercilessly crushes, without stopping at anything, all the strivings of Russian society toward the light, toward freedom, and toward independence. The Toulon manifestations are one of the acts of that drama which is presented by the antagonism – the creation of Napoleon III. and Bismarck – between two great nations, France and Germany. This antagonism keeps all of Europe under arms, and makes the Russian absolutism, which has always been the stay of despotism and arbitrariness against freedom, of the exploiters against the exploited, the executor of the political destinies of the world. A sensation of anguish for our country, of pity for the blindness of a considerable part of French society, such are the sensations evoked in us by these festivities.

"We are fully convinced that the young generation of France will not be carried away by the national Chauvinism, and that, prepared to struggle for that better social structure toward which humanity is marching, it will know how to render to itself an account of the present events and to take the proper stand about them; we hope that our fervent protest will find a sympathetic echo in the hearts of the French youth.

"The union council of twenty-four united Moscow student societies." —Author's Note.