teaching can men attain the ideal which has now arisen in their consciousness, and towards which they are striving.
All other attempts at the abolition of power and at organising, without power, a good life amongst men are only a futile expenditure of effort, and do not bring near the aim towards which men are striving, but only remove them from it.
V
This is what I wish to say to you, sincere people, who, not satisfied with egotistic life, desire to give your strength to the service of your brothers. If you participate, or desire to participate, in governmental activity, and by this means to serve the people, then consider: What is every Government resting on power? And having put this question to yourself, you cannot but see that there is no Government which does not commit, does not prepare to commit, does not rest upon, violence, robbery, murder.
An American writer, little known—Thoreau,—in his essay on why it is men's duty to disobey the Government, relates how he refused to pay the Government of the United States a tax of one dollar, explaining his refusal on the grounds that he does not desire his dollar to participate in the activity of a Government which sanctions the slavery of the negroes. Can not, and should not, the same thing be felt in relation to his Government, I do not say by a Russian, but by a citizen of the most progressive State—the United States of America, with its action in Cuba and the Philippines, with its relation to negroes and the banishment of the Chinese; or of England, with its opium, and Boers; or of France, with its horrors of militarism?
Therefore, a sincere man, wishing to serve his fellow-men, if only he has seriously realised what every Government is, cannot participate in it otherwise than on the strength of the principle that the end justifies the means.
But such an activity has always been harmful for those in whose interests it was undertaken, as well as for those who had recourse to it.
The thing is very simple. You wish, by submitting to the
