Endnotes
-
In The Non-Resistant, Vol. I, No. 4, Hopedale, Milford, Mass., Feb. 15, 1845. —Wiener ↩
-
Not a pamphlet, but an article in The Non-Resistant, Vol. I, No. 4, and very imperfectly quoted by Tolstoy. —Wiener ↩
-
To this Tolstoy adds, on his own responsibility: “Why must one, ten, one hundred men not violate God’s law, while very many may?” —Wiener ↩
-
Translated freely, with some omissions. —Tolstoy
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. —Wiener ↩
-
Tolstoy’s translation from the English, which is generally loose, here departs entirely from the text. Tolstoy writes: “If a chief direct you to kill your neighbor’s child, or your father, or your mother, will you obey?” —Wiener ↩
-
A thorough search through bibliographies, catalogues, and libraries has failed to reveal such a book or such an author, and as Tolstoy speaks above of the book as being written, it may be that Tolstoy had a manuscript before him. —Wiener ↩
-
Spirit Wrestlers refers to the Doukhobors; Milkers to the Molokans. —S.E. Editor ↩
-
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 nonresistance 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. —Tolstoy ↩
-
“The verdict of the world is conclusive.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
The reference to “the charming doctor of Galilee” comes from Joseph Ernest Renan’s The Life of Jesus. —S.E. Editor ↩
-
“The church is the community of the faithful established by our Lord Jesus Christ, extending over the whole world and subject to the authority of legitimate ministers, principally our Holy Father—the Pope.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
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 Creed, 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 Creed and the doctrine 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. —Tolstoy ↩
-
“Who are those who are outside of the church? Infidels, heretics, schismatics.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
“The true Church will be known by the Word of God being studied clear and unmixed with man’s additions and by the sacraments being maintained faithfully to Christ’s teaching.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
“Where Christ is, there is the church.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
“It is controversial, I know, the right to categorize as such …” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
“… the tendencies which were so actively opposed by the early Fathers. The very designation of heresy seems an attack on liberty of conscience and of thought. We cannot share these scruples, for it would not amount to anything but to deprive Christianity of all distinctive character.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
“The Church is a free association; there is much to be gained by separation from it. Conflict with error has no weapons other than thought and feeling. One uniform type of doctrine has not yet been elaborated; secondary divergencies arise in East and West with complete freedom; theology is not tied to invariable formulas. If in the midst of this diversity appears a mass of beliefs common to all, is one not right to see in it, not a formulated system, framed by the representatives of scholastic authority, but faith itself in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation? If the same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of belief is found also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we not right to conclude that these tendencies were in flagrant opposition to the fundamental principles of Christianity? And will not this presumption be transformed into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine universally rejected by the church the characteristic traits of one of the religions of the past? To say that gnosticism or ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must boldly deny the existence of Christian thought at all, or any specific character by which it could be recognized. It pretends to be a big tent, but it collapses. No one in the time of Plato would have dared to give his name to a doctrine in which the theory of forms had no place, and one would deservedly have excited the just mockery of Greece in trying to represent Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy. Let us recognize, then, that if a religion and a doctrine exists which is called Christianity, it may have its heresies.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
Impartial History of Church and Heresy. —S.E. Editor ↩
-
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. —Tolstoy ↩
-
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 nonresistance 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 psychological significance. “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. —Tolstoy ↩
-
Not Charles Butt, but Henry Richard. —Wiener ↩
-
Words from Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame, in regard to printing, which will kill architecture. —Tolstoy ↩
-
“Let’s enter the Palace of War.” —S.E. Editor ↩
-
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 laboring 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. —Tolstoy ↩
-
The fact that some nations, the English and the Americans, have not yet any universal military service (though voices in its favor 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 labors for the hire and preparation of murderers. —Tolstoy ↩
-
All the details of this and the preceding cases are authentic. —Tolstoy ↩
-
Two varieties of Russian Old Believers. —S.E. Editor ↩
-
Comically striking in this respect is the naive 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. —Tolstoy ↩
-
“Let the murderers show us the way to abolition by their example.” —S.E. Editor ↩