Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/256

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ON ANARCHY
27

them serve the aims of the governments, i.e. oppress and exploit the masses.

Both these issues being firmly closed and impregnable, what remains to be done?

To utilise violence is impossible; it would only cause reaction. To join the ranks of the government is also impossible—one would only become its instrument. One course, therefore, remains—to fight the government by means of thought, speech, actions, life, neither yielding to government nor joining its ranks and thereby increasing its power.

This alone is needed, will certainly be successful.

And this is the will of God, the teaching of Christ.

.....

We have now reached a stage when a man merely good and rational cannot participate in a State, i.e. in England (not to speak of our Russia), cannot be in agreement with landlordism, exploitation by manufacturers, capitalists, with the system in India, flogging, the opium trade, with the extermination of whole races in Africa, with wars and preparations for wars.

The ground upon which man says, "I don't know what the government is, nor why it exists, and I don't want to know; but I do know that I cannot live contrary to my conscience," this point of view is invincible, and to it the men of our time must adhere, in order to make life-pro-