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WOODROW WILSON—THE PEACEMAKER
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE
PUBLISHERS
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PUBLISHERS' PREFACE
"THE PATHWAY OF LIFE" is Tolstoy's posthumous message to an erring and suffering worid. Never since the days when Christ's message from Heaven brought life and comfort to a war-torn, sinful and suffering world, has mankind been so eager and ripe for a gospel of right living and right thinking as it is to-day, emerging from the titanic struggle which has so deeply stirred its passions and emotions.
Communing with the minds of the great thinkers and teachers of all ages, Tolstoy in the course of his epic career gathered the pearls of wisdom from the spiritual treasuries of many races and many periods in the history of mankind. These lofty thoughts relating to the spiritual aspirations, the temporal requirements and the moral conduct of man, Tolstoy retold in his own language, arranging them under suitable captions, and interspersing them with the expressions of his own attitude to the problems of life. The resulting monumental work is for the first time presented to mankind in these two volumes. Any new presentation of Tolstoy's work commands the respectful attention of the world. But there is healing of wounds and divine inspiration in "THE PATHWAY OF LIFE" that lend it the added preciousness of significant timeliness.
Filled with the yearning to help his fellow-man struggling against sin, error, superstition and temptation, the sage labored on this compilation down to his last days,
reverting to this labor of love even after the distressing fainting spells that preceded his decease, until, very shortly before his death, in "THE PATHWAY OF LIFE," he succeeded in collating the consensus of human wisdom and genius of all lands and all ages into a modem gospel that bears, the self-evident impress of divine truth and immortality.
The publishers reverently offer this work of Tolstoy to thinking humanity.
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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Not by way of apology, but by way of explanation, and for the reader's better understanding, the translator feels justified in forsaking for a moment the position of inobtrusive retirement which is characteristic of good translating and supplementing the publisher's preface with a note of his own.
The collection of thoughts on the spiritual problems of life offered in these volumes contains much material that was obviously not intended by the author for publication in its present form. The general arrangement, the sub-headings and all unsigned paragraphs and essays are Tolstoy's own. Many extracts appear to be credited to philosophers and sages of various tongues and periods, but in rendering these into the Russian language Tolstoy followed the original somewhat vaguely, interpreting the idea rather than translating word for w^rd so that in re-translation the wording frequently does not accurately coincide with the original, and the names following these extracts may be taken to indicate their source merely rather than their literal authorship in every instance.
Here and there the reader will find cruuities in expression and even in phrasing. These may be intentional, for Tolstoy loved to use rough-hewn speech in conveying plain ideas, just as he was plain in personal attire and mode of life; or the crudities may be due to the fragmentary nature of some of the material, the editors
having included many memoranda and jottings that the author had no opportunity to go over and revise. The translator feels content to have resisted the temptation of retouching with a profane brush these slight imperfections that can not mar the grandeur of a temple to him who views it as a whole.
In conclusion a grateful acknowledgment is made of the helpful suggestions offered by Dorothy Brewster, Ph. D., who read the manuscript in the translation.
Archibald J. Wolfe,
ddHJH
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
The sayings in these volumes ак. ^f varied authorship, having been gathered from Brahmmical, Confucian and Buddhist sources, from the Gospeis and the Epistles, and from the works of^ numerous thinkers both ancient and modern. The greater part of these sayings have suffered some alteration in form either as translated or as re-stated by me, and it is therefore hardly convenient to print them over the signatures of their original authors. The best of these unsigned sayings have their source in the minds of the foremost sages of the world and are not my authorship.
Tolstoy.
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CONTENTS
Vol. I.
Faith IS
God 29
The Soul 45
There is One Soul in All 63
Love 77
Sins, Errors and Superstitions 97
Surfeit 113
Sexual Lusts 127
Sloth 143
Covetousness 159
Anger 173
Pride 189
Inequality 199
Force 213
Punishment ..; 235
Vanity 253
False Religions 267
FAITH
FAITH
In order to live right, man must know what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. In order to know this, he needs faith. Faith is the knowledge of what man is, and for what purpose he lives with the world. And such is the faith which has been and is held by all rational people.
I.
What is the True Faith?
1. In order to live right, it is needful to understand what life is, as well as what to do and what not to do in this life. These things have been taught at all times by the wisest and best living men of all races. The teachings of all these wise men, in the main, agree as one. This one doctrine common to all people as to what is the life of man, and how to live it, is the true faith.
2. What is this world which has no limits in any direction, the beginning and the end of which are alike unknown to me, and what is my life in this infinite world, and how must I live it?
Faith alone can answer these questions.
3. True religion is to know that law which is above all human laws, and which is the one law for all the people in the world.
4. There may be many false faiths, but there is only one true faith. Kant.
5. If you doubt your faith, it is no longer faith. Faith is only then a true faith, when you do not even
harbor a thought that what you believe could be untrue.
6. There are two faiths: one being confidence in what is said by people—this is faith in a man or in people; such faiths are many and varied.
And diere is die faith in mj dtpeadtnot on Him wbo fOit me into this world. This is faith in God, and sodi faith is ooe for all people.
IL
The Doctrine of Tne Futfa b Always Ckar and Kmple
1. To hare faith is to trust in what is being revealed to us, without asldi^ why it is so, and what will come out of it. Such is the true faith. It shows us what we are, and what we ought to do because of it, but it does not tell us what win be the outcome if we do that which our faith commands us to do.
If I have faith in God, I need not ask what will be the outcome of my obedience to God, because I know that God is love, and nothing can come from love but what is good.
2. The true law of Ufe is so simple, clear and intelligible that men cannot sedc to excuse their evil life by pleading ^porance of the law. If people five contrary to the law of true life, there b only one thing left for diem to do: to abjure their reason. And this is exacdy what diey do.
3. Some say that the fulfilment of the law of God is difficult. This is not true. The law of Ufe asks nodung of us but to love our nei^^ibor. And to love is not difficult, but pleasant Scavoroda.
4. When a man comes to know the true faith, he is like unto a man lighting a lamp ш a dark chamber. All things become clear, and joy enters his soul.
III.
True Faith is to Love God and Your Neighbor 1. "Love one another, even as I have loved you, thus shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have
love one to another," said Christ. He did not say: "If you believe this or that," but "if you have love." Faith with different people, and in different times, may differ, but love is one and the same at all times and with all people.
2. The true faith is one—to love all that is living.
Ibrahim of Cordova,
3. Love bestows blessedness on people because it unites man with God.
4. Christ revealed to men that the eternal is not identical with the future, but that the eternal, the unseen, dwells within us right now, in this life, and that we attain eternal life when we become one with God, the Spirit in whom all things move and have their being.
We can attain this eternal life through love alone.
IV.
Faith Guides the Life of Man
1. Only he truly knows the law of life who does that which he regards as the law of life.
2. All faith is merely a reply to this question: how must I live in the world not before men, but before Him who sent me into the world?
3. In the true faith it is not important to be able to talk interestingly about God, about the soul, about the past or the future, but one thing alone is essential: to know firmly what you ought to do and what you ought not to do in this life. Kant.
4. If a man does not live happily, it is only because such a man has no faith. This may be the case with entire nations. If a nation does not live happily, it is only because the nation has lost its faith.
5. The life of man is good or evil only as he understands the true law of life. The more clearly man understands the true law of life, the better is his life; the more hazy is his understanding of that law, the worse is his life.
6. In order to escape from that mire of sin, vice and misery wherein th^y live, people have need of one thing alone: they need a faith in which they would live, not as now—each for himself—^but a common life, all acknowledging one law and one purpose. Only then might people repeating the words of the Lord's Prayer: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven," hope that the Kingdom of God will indeed descend upon earth.
Магггт.
7. If any faith teaches that we must give up this life for life everlasting, it is a false faith. To give up this life for life everlasting is impossible, because eternal life is already in this life. Hindu Philosophy.
8. The stronger the faith of man, the firmer his life. The life of man without faith is the life of a beast.
V.
False Faith
1. The law of life, namely to love God and your neighbor, is simple and clear. Every man on attaining reason recognizes it in his heart. Therefore, if it were not for false teachings, all men would adhere to this law, and the Kingdom of Heaven would reign upon earth.
But false teachers, at all times and in all places, taught men to acknowledge as God that which was not God, and as God's law that which was not God's law. And men believed in these false teachings and departed from the true law of
life and from the fulfilment of His true law, and this made their life harder to bear and more unhappy.
Therefore one must not believe any teachings that do not agree with love of God and of your neighbor.
2. It must not be thought that because a faith is ancient, it is therefore true. On the contrary, the longer people live, the more clearly they grasp the true law of life. To think that in our times we must believe in the same things in which our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers had believed is to think that when you are grown to man's estate, the garments of your children still might fit you.
3. We are perturbed because we can no longer believe in that in which our fathers used to believe. We must not let this perturb us, but try instead to establish within us such a faith in which we can believe as firmly as our fathers believed in their faith. Martineau,
4. In order to know the true faith, man must first for a season give up that faith in which he had blindly believed, and then examine in the light of his reason all that which he had been taught since childhood.
5. A laborer who dwelt in the city was proceeding homeward one day after his work was done. As he was leaving his place of employment he met a stranger, and the stranger said: "Let us go together, we are bound for the same place, and I know the road well." The laborer believed him, and they departed together.
They had walked for an hour or more, when the laborer noticed that the road was different from the one he was in the habit of taking into the city. And he said: "I think this is not the right road." And the stranger replied: "This is the only true and the shortest road. Believe me, for I know it well." The laborer believed him and continued to follow him. But the further he went,
the worse the road proved to be, and the more difficult the walking. And he was compelled to spend all his earnings to sustain himself, and still failed to reach home. Yet the further he walked, the more firmly he believed that he was on the right road, and finally he was convinced himself that it was v so. And the reason why he became so convinced was because he did not like to turn back, and always hoped that the road would finally take him to his destination. And he strayed a long, long way from home, and was wretched for a long time.
Thus it is with people who do not listen to the voice of the spirit within themselves, but listen to the voice of strangers regarding God and His law.
6. It is bad not to know God, but it is worse to acknowledge as God that which is not God.
VI.
External Worship
1. True faith is to believe in that <^ne law which befits all the people in the world.
2. True faith enters the heart in stillness and solitude only.
3. True faith consists in living always a good life, loving all men, doing unto others as you would have others do unto you.
This, indeed, is the true faith. And this is the faith that all truly wif^ men and men of saintly life have always taught among all nations.
4. Jesus did not say to the Samaritans: Leave your beliefs for those of the Jews. He did not say to the Jews: Join the Samaritans. But he said to the Jews and to the Samaritans: You are alike in error. Not Garisim, nor yet Jerusalem avails anything. The time will come.
nay, has already come, when men will worship the Father neither in Garisim nor yet in Jerusalem, but true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in the truth, for such are the worshippers whom the Father seeketh.
Jesus was seeking such worshippers in the days of Jerusalem. He is seeking them still in these days.
5. A master had a laborer. The same lived in his master's house and saw the master face to face many times each day. The laborer little by little neglected his labors, and finally grew so lazy that he would do nothing at all. The master noticed this but said nothing and merely turned his face from him whenever he met him. The laborer saw that his master was not satisfied with him, and planned to regain his master's favor without laboring. He sought out his master's friends and acquaintances and begged them to intercede with the master so that he should no longer be angry with him. The Master learned of this, and caUing the laborer said: "Why do you ask people to intercede for you? You have me always with you and you can tell me face to face whatever is needful." But the laborer did not know what to say and departed. And he conceived a new plan: he gathered eggs belonging to his master, caught one of his master's fowls, and took them to him as a present to avert his wrath. And the master said: "First you ask my friends to plead for you, although you can freely speak to me for yourself. Then you mean to propitiate me with presents. But all that you have is mine already. Even if you brought me what is truly yours, I require no presents." Thereupon the laborer adopted a new scheme: he composed verses in his master's honor and standing outside his master's window loudly shouted and sang his verses, calling his master's great, omnipresenti all-powerful father, merciful benefactor.
Then the master summoned the laborer again and said: "You once attempted to please me through others, then brought me gifts of what was my own, and now you have a still more ridiculous plan: you shout and sing concerning me, saying that I am all-powerful, merciful, this and that. You sing and you shout about me, but you do not know me, neither do you seem to want to know me. I need not the pleas of others in your behalf, nor your gifts, nor your praises regarding things you cannot know; all I need of you is your labor."
All God requires of us is good works.
Therein is the entire law of God.
VII.
The Idea of a Reward for a Good Life is Foreign to
True Faith
If a man adheres to a religion merely because he expects all sorts of external future rewards for the fulfilment of the works of his religion, this is not faith, but calculation, and in all cases an erroneous calculation. It is an erroneous calculation, because true faith yields its blessings only in the present, but does not, cannot give any external blessings in the future.
A man set forth to hire himself out as a laborer. And he met two stewards seeking to hire laborers. He told them that he was seeking work. And the two began to invite him each to labor for his master. One said: "Come to my master, for his is a good place. Of course, if you do not please him, he will thrash you and place you in prison; but if you do please him, you cannot have a better life. When your labor is ended, you will live without toiling, enjoying an endless feast with wine, fine meats and entertainments. Only try to please the master, and
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 23
your life will be too wonderful for description." Thus pleaded one of the stewards.
The other steward also invited him to work for his master, but did not tell him how his master would reward him; he did not even mention where and how the laborer would live, whether the task was hard or light, but only stated that his master was good, inflicting no punishments, and that he lived together with his own hired laborers.
And the man thought thus of the first master: **He promises a little too much. In fairness there is no need to promise so much. Tempted by the promise of a life of pleasure, I might find myself very poorly ofT. And the master, doubtless, is very stern, for he punishes severely those who fail to do as he says. I think I will rather go to the second master, for although he promises nothing, they say he is kind and lives in common with his laborers."
The same is true of religious teachings. Some teachers beguile men into good living by terrifying them with threats of punishment and deceiving them with promises of rewards in another world which no one has ever seen. Other teachers teach that love, the principle of life, dwells in the souls of men, and he who unites with it is happy.
3. If you serve God for the sake of bliss everlasting, you do not ser\'e God. but serve your own ends.
4. The principal difference between true and false faith is this: In false faith man desires God to reward him for his sacrifices and prayers. In the true faith man seeks one thing alone: To learn how to please God.
VIII.
Reason Verifies tlie Principles of Faith
1. In order to know the true faith, it is not necessary to suppress the voice of reason, but on the contrary, reason
must be purified and exerted in order that we may examine by it that which is taught by teachers of religion.
2. It is not by reason that we attain faith. But reason is necessary to examine the faith that is taught us.
3. Do not fear to eliminate from your faith all that is superfluous, carnal, visible, amenable to senses, as well as all that is confused and lacking in clearness; the better you purify the spiritual kernel, the more clearly will you grasp the true law of life.
4. Not he is an unbeliever who does not believe all that the people around him believe, but he is truly an unbeliever who thinks and affirms that he believes something which in reality he does not believe.
IX.
The Religious Consciousness of People Strives Constantly After Perfection
1. We must benefit by the teachings of the wise and holy men of old regarding the law of life, but we must examine them by our own reason, accepting all that is in accord with reason, rejecting all that is in conflict therewith.
2. If, in order not to stray from the law of God, man hesitates to leave the faith once adopted by him, he is like unto a man who bound himself with a rope to a post so that he should not lose his way. Lucy Mallory.
3. It is strange that the majority of people believe most firmly in the most ancient religious teachings, which no longer are suitable to our time, but reject all new teachings as superfluous and harmful. Such men forget that if God revealed the truth to the ancients, He still remains the same and can also reveal it to men who lived in latter times and to those who live to-day.
Thoreau.
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
25
4. The law of life cannot change, but people can grasp it more and more clearly, and learn how to fulfill it in life.
5. Religion is not true for the reason that holy men have preached it, but holy men have preached it for the reason that it is true. Lessing,
6. When rain-water flows from the roof-gutter, it seems to us as though it came from it. But rain, indeeo, falleth from above. Even so with the teachings of wise men and holy: We think that the teachings come from them, but they proceed from God.
From Rama-Krishna,
GOD
GOD
Besides all that is corporeal within us, and in the entire universe, we know something incorporeal which gives life to our body and is connected with it. This incorporeal something, connected with our body, we call our soul. The same incorporeal something, but not connected with anything, and giving life to everything that lives, we call God.
I. God is Known of Man From Within
1. The foundation of all faith is in the fact that in addition to what we see and feel in our bodies and in the bodies of other creatures, there is something else that is invisible, incorporeal, yet giving life to us and to everything that is visible and corporeal.
2. I know that there is something within me without which there would be nothing. This is what I call God.
Angelus.
3. Every man meditating on what he is can not help seeing that he is not all, but a specific separate part of something. And having grasped it, man usually thinks that this something from which he is separated is that material world, which he sees, that earth whereon he lives and whereon his ancestors lived before him, that sky, those stars and that sun which he sees.
But if a man gives this subject a little more thought or discovers that the wise men of this world have thought about it, he must realize that the SOMETHING from which men feel themselves separated is not the material world which extends in every direction in space, and also without end in time, but is something else. If a man meditates more deeply on this subject, and learns what the wise
men have always believed rep^rding it, he must realize that the material world which had no beginning and will have no end and which neither has nor can have any limits in space, is not anything real, but is only a dream of ours, and therefore that SOxVlETHING from which we feel ourselves separated, is something that has neither beginning nor end in time or in space, but is something immaterial, something spiritual.
This spiritual something which man acknowledges as his beginning, is the very thing which all the wise men have always called and still are calling God.
4. To know God is possible only within oneself. Until you find God within yourself, you will nowhere find him.
There is no God for him who cannot find Him within himself.
5. I know within me a spiritual being which is apart from everything else. I equally know the same spiritual being, apart from everything else, in other people. But if I know this spiritual being within myself and in others, it can not but exist within itself. This spiritual being within itself we call God.
6. It is not you who jlive; what you call yourself, is dead. That which animates you is God. Angelus.
7. Do not think that you can earn merit with God by works; all works are as nothing before God. It is needful not to earn merit before God, but to be God. Angelus.
8. If we did not see with our eyes, hear with our ears and touch with our fingers, we could know nothing of what is around us. And if we did not know God within ourselves, we should not know ourselves, we should not know that within ourselves which sees, hears and touches the world around us.
9. He who does not know how to become a son of God, will for ever remain on the plane of the animal.
Angelas,
10. If I live a wordly life, I can do without God. But if I only give thought to what I am, where I came fiom, when I was bom, where I will go when I die, I must admit that there is something from which I sprang and to which I am going. I can not deny that I came into this world from something that is incomprehensible to me, and that I am going to something equally incomprehensible to me.
This incomprehensible something from which I c(nic and to which I am going, I call God.
11. They say that God is Love, or that Love is God. They say also that God is Reason, or that Reason is God. Neither is strictly true. Love and Reason are those characteristics of God which we recognize within ourselves, but what He is within Himself we can not know.
12. It is well to fear God, but it is better to love Him. But best of all it is to resurrect Him within. Angelus.
13. Man must love, but one can truly love only that in which there is no evil. And there is only one Being in whom there is no evil: namely God.
14. If God did not love Himself in you, you could never love yourself, God or your neighbor. Angelus.
15. Though men differ as to what is God, none the less all who believe in God, always agree as to what God wants of them.
. 16. God loves solitude. He will enter your heart when He may be there alone, when you think of Him, and of him only. Angelus.
17. The Arabs have a tale about Moses. Wandering in the desert Moses heard a shepherd praying to God. And this is how the shepherd prayed: "God, oh, that I could meet Thee face to face and become Thy servant! With what joy would I wash Thy feet, kiss them, put sandals upon them, comb Thy hair, wash Thy raiment, care for Thy dwelling, bring Thee of the milk of my herd. My heart is longing for Thee." And Moses hearing these words of the shepherd was angry and said: "Thou blasphemer! God has no body. He needs no raiment, nor dwelling, nor the care of servants. Thy words are evil." And the shepherd was saddened. He could not imagine God without body and without bodily needs, and being unable to pray to God and to serve Him as he ought, he fell into despair. Then God said unto Moses: "Why didst Thou turn away from Me my faithful servant? Each man has his own thoughts and his own words. What is good for one, is evil for another. What is poison to thee, may be even as sweet honey to another. Words mean nothing. I see the heart of him who turns to Me."
18. Men speak of God in various ways, but feel and understand Him in the same way.
19. Man can not help believing in God any more than he can help walking on two feet. This belief may assume different forms, it may be suppressed altogether, but without his belief he can not understand himself.
Lichtenberg.
20. Though man may not know that he is breathing air, he knows when he is suffocating that he lacks something without which he can not live. * The same is true of the man who has lost God, although he may not know from what he is suffering.
11.
A Rational Man is Bound to Acknowledge God
1. Some say of God that He dwells in heaven. It is also said that He dwells in man. Both statements are true: He is in heaven, that is, in the limitless universe, and He is also in the soul of man.
2. Sensing the existence within his own individual body of a spiritual and indivisible being—^namely God, and seeing the same God in everything that is living, man asks himself: why has God, a spiritual being one and indivisible, confined Himself within individual bodies of creatures, mine and others? Why has a spiritual being, a Unity, divided itself, as it were, within itself? Why has the spiritual and indivisible become separate and corporeal? Why has the immortal allied itself with the mortal?
And only that man can answer these questions who fulfills the will of Him who has sent him into this world.
"All this is done for the sake of my blessedness," such a man can say, "I thank Him and ask no more questions."
3. That which we call God we see both in the heavens and in every man.
On a wintry night, if you gaze upon the sky and see stars upon stars, and without end, and consider that many of these stars are very much larger than this earth of ours whereon we live, and that behind the stars which we see there are hundreds, thousands, millions of stars as large and larger even, and that there is no end to the stars and the heavens, you must realize that there is something which you can not grasp.
But if we look within our own self, and sense there that which we call our soul, when we see within our own self something that we likewise fail tp grasp, but something which we know more assuredly than anything else, and
through which we know all that is, then we see even in our own soul something still more incomprehensible, something still greater than that which we see in the heavens.
That which we see in the heavens and sense within our own soul is the very thing we call God.
4. At all times and among all peoples there has been a belief in some invisible power sustaining the world.
The ancients called it universal reason, nature, life, eternity; Christians call it Spirit, Father, Lord, Reason, Truth.
The visible, changeable world is like a shadow of this power.
As God is eternal, so is the visible world, His shadow, eternal.
But the visible world is merely the shadow. Only the invisible power—God—truly exists. Scovoroda.
5. There is a being without whom neither heaven, nor earth could exist. This being is serene and incorporeal, his characteristics we call love and reason, but the being itself has no name. It is infinitely remote and infinitely near.
Lao-Tse.
6. A man was asked how he knew that there is a God. He answered: "Does one need a candle to see the sunrise ?"
7. If a man counts himself great, it is a proof that he does not look upon things from the height of God.
Angelus.
8. One may give no thought to the world which is infinite in all directions, or to the soul that is conscious of itself; but if one only gives a little thought to these matters, one can not help acknowledging that which we call God.
9. There is a girl in America, bom deaf, dumb and
blind. She was taught to read and write by the sense of touch. Her teacher was telling her about God, and the child remarked that she had always known about it, but did not know how to call it.
III.
The WUl of God
1. We know God less by our reason than by a feeling akin to that of an infant in his mother's arms.
The infant does not know who is holding him, keeping him warm, feeding him, but knows that someone is doing it, and moreover he not only knows that one, in whose power he is, but loves her. Even so it is with man.
2. The more a man fulfills the will of God, the better he knows Him.
If a man fails altogether to fulfill the will of God, he does not know Him at all, though he might affirm that he knew Him or pray to Him.
3. Even as you must come closer to a thing in order to know it, so you may know God only if you draw nigh unto Him. And to draw nigh unto God it is possible only by good woilcs. And the more a man accustoms himself to live a good life, the more closely he will know God. And the better he knows God, the better he will love his fellow-men. One thing leads to the other.
4. We can not know God. Only this we can know about Him: His law and His will, as related to us in the New Testament. Knowing His law, we draw the conclusion that He exists, who has given the law, but we can not know the lawgiver Himself. We only truly know that we must fulfill the Godgiven law in our own life, and that our life becomes better to the extent that we fulfill His law.
5. Man can not help feeling that something is beitv^
done with his life, that he is someone's instrument. And if he is someone's instrument, there is someone who is working with this instrument. And this someone is God.
6. It is astonishing how I formerly failed to recognize this simple truth that back of this world and the life we are living in it there is Something, there is Someone who knows why this world exists, and why we are in it like bubbles rising to the surface in boiling water, bursting and disappearing.
Yes, something is being done in this world, something is being done with all these living creatures, something is being done with me, with my life. Otherwise, why this sun, these springs, these winters? Why these sufferings, births, deaths, benefactions, crimes, why all these individual creatures who apparently have no meaning for me, and yet live their lives to the utmost, guarding their lives so strenuously, creatures in whose hearts the passion to live is so strongly intrenched ? The lives of these creatures convince me more than anything else that all these things are necessary for some purpose, and that this purpose is rational and good, but is incomprehensible to me.
7. My spiritual "I" is no kinsman to my body, therefore it is in my body not of its own volition, but in accordance with some higher will.
This higher will is what we understand as God and call God.
8. God is neither to be worshipped, nor praised. One can only be silent about Him and serve Him. Angelus,
9. As long as a man sings and shouts and repeats in the presence of others: "Lord, Lord," know that he has not found God. He who has found Him maintains silence.
Rama-Krishna,
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE Ъ7
10. In evil movements one does not feel God, one doubts Him. And salvation is always in one thing alone— and it is sure: cease to think about God, but think of His law only and fulfill it, love all men, and doubts will vanish, and you will find God again.
IV.
God Can Not Be Known By Reason
1. It is possible, and it is easy to feel God in oneself. But to know God as He is, is impossible and unnecessary.
2. It is impossible to recognize by reason that there is a God and that there is a soul in man. It is equally impossible to know by reason that there is no God or that there is no soul. Pascal.
3. Why am I separated from all else, and why do I know that all that exists from which I am separated, and why can I not understand what this All is? Why is my "I" forever undergoing a change? I cannot understand it at all. But I can not help thinking that there is a meaning in it all, I can not help thinking that there is a being to whom all this is clear, who knows why it is all so.
4. Every man may feel God, but no one may know Him. For this reason do not strive to comprehend Him, but strive to do His will, strive to sense Him more and more vividly within yourself.
5. The God whom we have comprehended is no longer God. The comprehended God becc«ies as finite as our own self. God can not be comprehended. He is incomprehensible. Vivekananda,
6. If the sun blinds your eyes, you can not say there is no sun. Neither can you say there is no God, because
your reason is lost and confused when you endeavor to comprehend the beginning and the cause of everything.
Angelus.
7. "Why dost thou ask My name ?" says God to Moses. "If thou canst see back of all that moves what has ever been, is and will be, thou wilt know Me. My name is the same as My being. I am who I am. I am that what is. He who would know My name, does not know Me."
Scovoroda.
8. Reason that may be fathomed, is not the eternal reason; the being that may be named, is not the supreme being. LaO'Tse.
9. To me God is that towards which I am striving, in striving towards which consists my life; and who exists for me for the very reason, and imperatively so, that I may not comprehend Him or name Him. If I could comprehend Him, I could attain to Him, and there would be nothing towards which I could strive, and there would be no life. But I can not comprehend Him, I can not name Him, but withal I know Him, I know the way to Him, and of all things which I know this knowledge is even the most certain.
It js strange that I do not comprehend Him, and withal I am always in fear when I am without Him, and only then am I free from fear when I am with Him. It is still more ^strange that it is needless to know Him better or more closely than I know Him in this present life. I may draw near to Him, and I long to do so, and therein is my life, but approaching Him does not, can not increase my comprehension. Every attempt of my imagination to comprehend (for instance as the Creator, as the Merciful One, or something of that order) only puts me further away from
Him and arrests my approach to Him. Even the pronoun **He" somehow belittles Him.
10. Anything that may be said of God is unlike Him. God can not be expressed in words. Angelus.
V.
Unbelief in God
1. The rational man finds within himself the idea of his soul and of the universal soul—God, and realizing his inability to reduce these ideas to absolute clearness, humbly stops before them and does not touch the veil.
But there have always been, and there still are men of mental refinement and erudition who seek to elucidate the idea of God in words. I do not judge these men. Only they are wrong when they say that there is no God.
I admit that it may happen that men and the cunning exploits of men may for a time convince some that there is no God, but such godlessness can not last. In one way or another man will always need God. If Deity manifested Itself still more clearly than now, I am convinced that men contrary to God would invent new refinements to deny Him. Reason always bows to that which the heart demands.
Rousseau.
. 2. According to the teachings of Lao-Tse, to think that there is no God is like believing that when one blows with the bellows the current proceeds from the bellows and not from the air around, and that the bellows would blow even if there were no air.
3. When men who lead a wicked life say that there is no God, they are right: God is only for those who look in His direction, and draw nigh to Him. For those who
have turned aw«iy from Him and are walking away from Him, there is no God, there can be no God.
4. Two kinds of men may know God: men of a humble heart, whether they are clever or ignorant, and truly wise men. Only proud men, and men of average intelligence do not know God. Pascal,
5. It is possible not to mention the name of God, not to use that expression, but it is impossible not to acknowledge Him. If there be no God, nothing can be.
6. There is no God only for Him who does not seek Him. Seek Him, and He will reveal Himself to you.
7. Moses cries out to God: "Where will I find Thee, О Lord?" God answers: "Thou hast already found Me, if Thou seekest Me."
8. If the thought enters your head that whatever you have believed about God is untrue, that there is no God, be not disturbed, for you may know that this is apt to happen to everybody. Only do not imagine that because you have ceased to believe in God in whom you once believed, it is because there is no God. If you do not believe in the God in whom you once believed, it is because there was something erroneous in your belief.
If the savage ceases to believe in his god of wood, it does not mean that there is no God, but merely that God is not made of wood. We cannot comprehend God, but we can be more and more conscious of Him. So that if we discard a crude notion of God, it is really better for us. It helps us to have a better and a higher consciousness of God.
9. To prove that there is a God I Can there be anything more absurd than the idea of proving the existence of God? To prove the existence of God is like proving that you are living. Prove it to whom? By what argument?
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
41
For what purpose? If there is no God, there is nothing. How can we prove God?
10. God is. We do not have to prove it. Proving that there is a God is a blasphemy; denying His existence is madness. God lives in our conscience, in the consciousness of humanity, in the surrounding universe. To deny God beneath the dome of the starry firmament, over the graves of our loved ones, before the glorious death of a martyr put to death— only a very pitiable, or a very depraved man is capable of doing so. Maesini.
VI.
Loving God
"I do not understand wHat it means to love God. Is it possible to love something incomprehensible and unknown? To love your neighbor, that is intelligible and good, but to love God is a mere phrase." Many people speak and think in this manner. But people who speak and think thus, are gravely in error. They do not understand what it means to love their neighbor, not someone agreeable or useful to them, but all men equally, though they be the most disagreeable and hostile men. Only he can love his neighbor in this manner who loves God, that God who is the same in all men. Thus not the love of God is unintelligible, but the love of fellow-man without the love of God.
THE SOUL
THE SOUL
The intangible, invisible, incorporeal something, which gives life to all that is living, which is per se, we call God. The same intangible, invisible, incorporeal principle, which is separated by the body from all else, and of which we are conscious as self, we call the soul.
I.
What is the Soul?
1. A man who has attained old age has passed through many vicissitudes: he was first an infant, then a child, an adult, an old man. But no matter how he has changed, he always calls himself "I." This "I" has always remained the same. This '*!" was the same in his infancy, in his period of maturity, in his old age. This unchanging "I" we call the soul.
2. If a man imagines that what he sees all around, the infinite universe, is just as he sees it, he is very much in error. All material things man knows only through his individual sense of sight, hearing and touch. Were his senses different, the whole world would appear different. Therefore we do not know, we can not know this material world as it is. Only one thing we truly and fully know, namely our soul.
II.
The "I" is Spiritual 1. When we say "I" we do not refer to our body, but to that by which our body lives. What is then this **Г'? We can not put into words what this "Г* is, but we know it better than anything else that we know. We know that but for this "I" we should know nothing, there would be nothing in the world for us, and we ourselves should not be.
2. When I think about it, it is tiiore difficult for me to understand what my body is than what my soul is. As close as it is to me, the body is something foreign, it is the soul that is MINE.
3. If a man is not conscious of the soul within himself, it does not prove that he has no soul, but only that he has not yet learned to be aware of the soul within himself.
4. Until we have realized what is within us, what good is it to us to know what is beyond us ? And is it possible to know the world without knowing ourselves? Can he who is blind at home, possess sight when he is abroad ^^
Scovoroda.
5. Just as a candle can not bum without a fire, man can not live without a spiritual life. The spirit dwells in all men, but not all men are aware of this.
Happy is the life of him who knows this, and unhappy his life who does not know it. Brahminic rvisdom.
III.
The Soul and the Material World
1. We have measured the earth, the sun, the stars and the depths of the sea, we have penetrated the bowels of the earth in search of gold, we have explored rivers, the mountains of the moon, we have discovered new stars and know their dimensions, we have filled up abysses, we have built cunning machinery: not a day passes, but we have new inventions. Is there a limit to our capabilities? But something, the most important thing is lacking. What that is we do not know ourselves. We are like babes: the infant feels that something is wrong, but what or why, he does not know.
г -f —ГТ
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 47
Something is wrong because we know much that is superfluous, but do not know the most needful thing: our own self. We do not know what dwells within us. If we knew and remembered what dwells within us, our lives would be altogether different. Scovoroda,
2. All that is material ii> this world, we can not know the true nature thereof. Only the spiritual that is within us is fully known to us, namely that of which we are conscious, and which does not depend upon our feelings or our thoughts.
3. There are no limits, there can be no limits to the world in any direction. No matter how distant a thing* may be, behind the most distant there are other objects still more distant. The same is true of time: back of thousands of years that have passed, there had been thousands and thousands of previous years. And therefore it is clear that mail can not possibly grasp what the material world is to-day, what it has been nor what it will be*
What then can man understand ? Only one thing, for which there is no need of either space or time, namely his soul.
4. Men frequently think that only that exists which they can touch with their hands. However, quite on the contrary, only that truly is that can not be seen, heard or touched, what we call "I," our soul.
5. Confucius said: The sky and the earth are great, but they have color, shape and size. But there is something in man that can think of everything and hsLS no color, shape Of size. Thus if the whole world were dead that which is within man could of itself give life to the world.
than wood, wood is more solid than water, water is more solid than air. But that which can not be touched, heard or seen is more solid than anything. One thing has always been, is now and will never be lost. , What is it ?
It is the soul in man.
7. It is well for man to think what he is as regards his body. This body is large as compared with that of the flea, insignificant compared with the earth. It is also well to think that our own earth is a grain of sand compared with the sun, and the sun as a grain of sand compared with Sirius, and Sirius is as nothing compared with still other stars, and so without end.
It is clear that man with his body is nothing compared with the sun and the stars. And to think that we were not even thought of a hundred, a thousand, many thousands of years ago, but other men like unto us were still bom, grew up and died, that of the millions and millions of men such as I nothing remains, neither bones, nor even the dust of bones, and that after me millions and millions of people will live, and that grass will grow from my bones, and that sheep will feed on the grass, and men will eat the sheep, and nothing will remain of me, not a grain of dust, nor even a memory! Is it not clear that I am nothing?
Nothing, indeed, but this nothing has a conception of itself and of its place in the universe. And if it has such a conception, this conception is far from nothing, it is something that is more important than the entire universe, for without this conception within me and within other creatures like me, that which I call the infinite universe would not exist. 'i
"*'" ^ --^ - " ■"
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 49
IV.
The Spiritual and the Material Principles in Man
1. What are you? A man. What sort of man? Wherein do you differ from others ? I am the son of such and such parents, I am old, or young, rich or poor.
Each one of us is a specific individual, different from all other people: man, woman, adult, boy or girl; and in each one of these specific individuals dwells a spiritual being, the same in all of us, so that each one of us is at one and the same time an individual, John or Natalie, and a spiritual being which is the same in all. And when we say: '*! will," it means that John or Natalie will, or sometimes it may mean that the spiritual being, which is the same in all of us, wills something. And thus it may happen that John and Natalie desire one thing, and the spiritual creature that dwells within them does not desire that same thing at all, but wills something entirely different.
2. Someone nears the door. I inquire: "Who is there?" The answer is: "It is I." "What I?" "I who came," is the answer, and a peasant boy enters. He is surprised that anyone should inquire who is meant by "I." He is surprised because he feels within himself that one spiritual being which is one in us all, and wonders why I should inquire about something which should be clear to everybody. His answer refers to the spiritual "I," but my question referred to the little window through which thaJt "I" peeps out into the world.
3. Some say that what we call our self is merely the body, that my reason, my soul and my love, all of these come from the body; we might with as much right assert that what we call our body is merely the food by which the body is nourished. It is true that my body is merely the transformed food that has been assimilated by my body,
■ so THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
and that there would be no body without food, but my body is not the food. Food is requisite for the life of the body, but it is not the body.
The same is true of the sout. It is true that without ttie body there would be no soul, yet my soul is not the body. The body is merely requisite for the soul, but the body is not the soul. If it were not for the soul, I should not know about my body.
The principle of life is not in the body, but in the soul.
4. When we say: "It was, or it will be, or it may be," we speak of bodily life. But besides the bodily life which was and will be, we know of another life, the spiritual life. And the spiritual life is not something that was, or that will be, but something that is right now. This is the real life. Happy is the man who lives this life of the spirit, and not the life of the body.
5. Christ teaches man that there is something within him that raises htm above this life with its vanities, fears and passions. The man who has received the doctrine of Christ shares the experience of the bird that has lived in ignorance of his wings, and suddenly realizes that it has them, and that it may soar, be free and fear nothing.
Conscience is tbt Voice of tiie Soul 1. In each man dwell two creatures: one blind and carnal, and the other seeing and spiritual. The first, the blind creature, eats, drinks, labors, rests, multiplies and performs its functions like clockwork. The other, the seeing, the spiritual creature, does nothing of itself, but merely approves or disapproves what the blind, the animal creature is doing.
The seeing, the spiritual part of man we call conscience.
This spiritual part of man, or conscience, acts like the compass needle. The compass needle moves only when he who is carrying it strays from the path pointed out by the needle. It is the same with the conscience: it is silent as long as the man is doing what is right.
But the moment he strays from the right path, conscience shows him where and how far he had erred.
2. When we hear that a man has committed an evil deed, we say that he has no conscience.
What is then the conscience?
It is the voice of that one spiritual being that dwells in all of us.
3. Conscience is the consciousness of the spiritual being that dwells in all men. And only when it is such consciousness is it the true guide of human life. Otherwise what people call conscience is not the realization of that spiritual being, but the recognition of what men among whom we live consider good or evil.
4. The voice of the passions may be louder than the voice of the conscience. But the voice of the passions is very different from the calm voice of the conscience. And yet no matter how loudly the passions roar, they subside before the still, calm, persistent voice of the conscience. For it is the voice of the Eternal, the Divine that dwells in man. Channing,
5. Kant, the philosopher, remarked that two things excited his wonder above all others: first the stars in the heavens, and second the law of goodness in the soul of man.
6. The genuine good is in your own self, in your soul. He who seeks good without himself is like the shepherd seeking among his herd that lamb which he has sheltered in his own bosom. Hindu wisdom.
VI.
The Divinity of the Soul
1. The first consciousness that awakes in man is that of being apart from all other material things, or the consciousness of his body. Then the consciousness of that which is thus separated, or the consciousness of his soul, and finally the consciousness of that from which this spiritual foundation of life is set apart, the consciousness of All—of God.
And that something which is conscious of having been severed from All, from God, is the one spiritual being that dwells in every man.
2. Xo be conscious of self as a separate being is to be conscious of the existence of that from which one has been separated, to be conscious of the existence of All—of God.
3. Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you. The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself^ John, v, 24-26,
4. A drop of water entering the ocean becomes the ocean. The soul uniting with God becomes God.
Angelus.
5. When a truth is uttered by man it does not mean that the truth came forth from the man. All truth is from God. It merely passes through man. If it passes through one man instead of another it is merely because one has
■ H 4j h w
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE S3
succeeded in making himself so transparent that the truth can pass through him. Pascal.
6. God says: "I was a treasure unknown to anyone. I desired to be known, and I created man." Mohammed.
7. God can not be comprehended by reason. We know that He is, only because we are conscious of Him within, and not because we recognize Him with our minds.
In order to be a true man, man must be conscious of God within.
To ask: "Is there a God ?" is like asking: "Do I exist ?" That whereby I live is God.
8. The body is the food of the soul, it is like the scaffolding used in erecting the structure of true life.
The greatest joy a man may know is the joy of realizing the existence within himself of a free, rational, loving and therefore happy being, in other words the consciousness of God within.
9. If a man does not know himself, it is useless to counsel him to endeavor to know God. This advice may be given only to such a man as knows himself. Before a man may know God, he must know himself.
10. If I melt in God's crucible. He will impress His image upon me. Angelas,
11. The soul is a glass, God is the Light that passes through the glass.
12. Do not think: it is I that live. It is not I that live, but that spiritual being that dwelleth in me. I am only the opening through which this creature appears.
13. There is only I and Thou. If it were not for us two, there would be nothing in this world. Angelus.
14. I know God not when I believe what is said about Him, but when I am as conscious of Him as I am of my own soul.
15. I am to God—another He. He finds in me that which for all eternity remain similar to Him.
16. It is as though man heard always a voice behind him, but had no power to turn his head and to behold him who speaks. This voice speaks in all tongues and guides all men, but no man has ever discovered him who speaks. К only man obeyed this voice to the letter and accepted it so as to keep himself apart from it even in thou^t, he would feel that this voice and himself are one. And the more a man considers this voice as his own self, the better will be his life. This voice will open up to him a life of blessedness, because this voice is the voice of God in man.
Emerson.
17. God desires good to all, therefore if you desire good to all, in other words if you love, God lives within you.
18. Man, do not remain man. Become God, only then will you make of yourself what you oi^ht. Angelus.
19. Some say: Save your soul. Only that can be saved which can perish. The soul can not perish, for it is the only thit^ that exists. The soul must not be saved, but purified from what defiles it and illuminated from what be-n^hts it, so that God may pass more and more freely through it.
20. Some say: "Have you forgotten God?" This is a good question. To forget God is to forget Him who lives within you, and by whom you live.
21. As I need God, so God needs me. Angelus.
22. If you grow weak and it goes hard with you, remember that you have a sout and that you can live in it.
^яхшавапвесаа:
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 55
But we imagine instead that other men like unto ourselves can sustain us. Emerson.
23. You can escape from the most difficult situation the moment you realize that you live not with your body, but with your soul, and remember that there is that within you which is more powerful than anything in the world.
24. He who is united with God, can not be afraid of God. God can not do injury to Himself.
25. Man may ask himself at any time: "What am I ? What am I doing? What am I thinking? What am I feeling at this moment?" And he can immediately reply to himself: **I am doing, thinking, feeling this or that at the present time." But if man ask himself: "What is that within me that is conscious of what I am doing, thinking or feeling?", his only answer can be that it is the consciousness of self. This consciousness of self is what we call the soul.
26. The fish dwelling in a river heard once that people maintained that fish could live only in the water. And the fish were much surprised and began to inquire among themselves, asking, "What is water?" .
One of the wise fish replied: "They say that there is a very wise old fish in the sea, let us swim to him and ask him what is water." And the fish swam out to sea, to where the wise old fish was living, and asked him: "What is water?" And the wise old fish answered: "Water is that wherein and whereby we live. The reason you do not know water is that you live in it and by it." Even so it seems to people at times that they do not know what is God, and yet they live in Him. Sufi.
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
The Life of Man is Not in the Body But in the Soul, Not
in the Body and in the Soul, But in the
Soul Alone
But he that sent me is true; and I spealc to the world those things which I have heard of Him.
They understood not that he spake to them of the Father.
Then said Jes.us unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these thii^. John, viH, 26-28.
To lift up the Son of man is to recognize in our self the spirit that dwells in us and to lift it up above the body.
2. The soul and the body, these two are what man calls his own, the subjects of his perpetual care. But you must know that the true self is not your body, but your soul. Remember this, raise your soul above all flesh, preserve it from the filth of life, do not allow the flesh to suppress it. Then you will lead a good life. Marcus Aurelius.
3. Some say that one must not love oneself. Without loving oneself, there would be no life. The main issue is what to love in oneself; the soul or the body?
4. There is no body so strong and healthy that it does not ail sometimes. There are no riches that can not be lost. There is no power that will not cease. All of these things are unstable. If a man puts the aim of his life upon being strong, rich, influential, even though he attain what he strives for, still will he have anxieties, fears and griefs, for he wilt see that all the things upon which he built his life
must leave him, and he will see himself gradually growing older and nearing dissolution.
What to do then, to avoid fears and anxieties ?
There is only one remedy: to build your life not upon things that are fleeting, but upon things that will not perish, upon the spirit that lives in man.
5. Do what your body asks of you: seek after glory, honors and wealth, and your life will be hell. Do what the spirit within you asks: seek after lowliness, mercy and love and you will not need any paradise. Paradise will be in your soul.
6. There are duties to one's neighbors, and there are duties that every man owes to himself, to the spirit that lives within him. This duty is not to defile it, not to destroy it, not to suppress this spirit, and to cultivate is unceasingly.
7. In wordly matters you are never sure whether to do what you are doing or to forbear, never certain of the outcome of what you undertake. It is different if you live for your soul. If you live for your soul, you will assuredly know what to do, namely that which the soul demands, and you will assuredly know that good will come out of what you are doing.
8. The moment you feel the rise of passions, whims, fear or malice, remember who you are; remember that you are not the body, but the soul, and that which has agitated you will at once subside.
9. All our troubles are due to the fact that we forget that which dwells within us, and that we sell our soul for the mess of pottage of carnal joys.
10. In order to see the true light such as it is, you must become a true light yourself. Angelus.
VIII.
The True Blessedness of Man is Spiritual Blessedness
1. Man lives by the spirit and not by his body. If a man knows this and lays out his life in the spirit and not in the body, though you put him in chains and confine him behind iron bars, still will he be free.
2. Every man knows two lives in his experience; that of the body and that of the spirit. The life of the body, no sooner than it reaches fullness, begins to grow feeble. And it grows more and more so until it reaches dissolution. The life of the spirit, on the other hand, from the day of birth until the moment of death constantly develops and gathers strength.
If a man live the life of the body, his entire life is like the life of a man sentenced to death. But if a man live for his scut, that whereon he bases his happiness gathers strength every day of his life, and death has no terrors for him.
In order to lead a good life it is not necessary to know -.vhere you come from or what will be in the world to come. Think only of that which your soul, and not your body, desires, and you will not need to know where you come from or what will be after death. You will not need to know these things, for you will have the experience of that perfect blessedness for which no questions of the past and of the future exist.
4. When the world came into existence, reason became its mother. He who realizes that the basis of his life is
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59
the spirit, knows that be is beyond all peril. When he closes his lips and locks the portals of his senses at the end of life, he will feel no anxiety. Lao-Tse.
5. An immortal soul requires a task as immortal as itself. And just such a task is assigned to it: endless striving after perfection of self and of the world.
THERE IS ONE SOUL IN ALL
m
THERE IS ONE SOUL IN ALL
All living creatures are separated one from another in their bodies, but that which gives them life is one and the same in all of them.
I.
The Consciousness of the Divinity of the Soul
Unites All Men
1. The doctrine of Christ reveals to men that one and the same spiritual principle dwells in them all, and that they are all brothers, and it unites them thus for a life of happy communion. Lamenais.
2. It is not enough to say that the same kind of a soul lives in every man as in me: it is the same soul that dwells in every man and in me. All human beings are separated one from another by their individual bodies, but they are all joined through the same spiritual principle which gives life to everyone.
3. To be associated with people is a great blessing, but how to be united with all ? Supposing I unite with my relatives, how about the rest of the people? Supposing I unite with all friends, all Russians, all co-religionists. How about people whom I do not know, men of oth^r nationalities and religions ? There are so many men, and they differ so much. What I am to do ?
There is only one remedy, to forget about people, not to worry how to be one with them, but to strive to be one with that one spiritual being that dwells in me and in all men.
4. When I think of those millions upon millions of beings living the same life as I, many thousands of miles away, people whom I shall never know, and who know
nothing about me, I involuntarily ask myself: Is there really no tie between us that binds us, shall we die without knowing one another? This can not be.
Indeed, this can not be. Strange as it may seem, I feel, I know that there is a tie between myself and all the people in the world, living or dead.
What that tie is I can neither understand nor explain, but I know that it exists.
5. I remember that someone told me that there is in every man much that is very good and humane, and also much that is very evil and malicious, and according to his disposition, now this, now the other is manifested. This is perfectly correct.
The sight of suffering evokes not only in different people, but sometimes in the same individual the most contradictory sentiments: sometimes compassion, sometimes something akin to pleasure which may assume the proportions of even malicious joy.
I have noticed in my own self that I have sometimes regarded all creatures with genuine compassion, sometimes with the most thorough indifference, and occasionally with hatred and even with malice.
This clearly shows that there are within us two different and directly contradictory methods of consciousness. One, when we are conscious of being individual beings, when all other creatures seem to be utterly alien, when they all are something else and not I. Then we can feel nothing towards them but indifference, envy, hatred or malice. And the other method of consciousness—is the consciousness of oneness with them. With this method of consciousness all creatures seem to us the same thing as our own "I" and therefore their sight elicits our love. The first method of consciousness separates us as an insurmountable wall, the
other removes the partition and we are fused into one. The first method teaches us to acknowledge that all other creatures are something other than I, and the other teaches us that all creatures are the same "I" that I recognize within myself. Schopenhauer.
6. The more a man lives for the soul the better he realizes his oneness with all living creatures. Live for the body, and you are alone among strangers; live for the soul, and all the world is your kin.
7. A river does not resemble a pool, a pool does not resemble a barrel, a barrel does not resemble a cup of water. But the same water is found in the river, in the pool, in the barrel and in the cup. Likewise all men vary, but the spirit that lives within them is one and the same.
8. Man understands the meaning of life only when he sees himself in every man.
9. Enter into conversation with any man, look search-ingly into his eyes, and you will feel that you are akin to him, you will imagine you had known him somewhere in the past. Why is it so? Because that by which you live is the same in you and in him.
10. In every man dwells that spirit than which there is nothing higher in the world, and therefore no matter what a man may be: statesman or convict, prelate or pauper, they are all equal, for in every one of them dwells that which is above all other things in the world. To value and esteem a nobleman above a pauper is like valuing and esteeming one gold coin more than another because one is wrapped in white and another in black paper. Always remember that the same soul dwells in one man as in yourself, and therefore all men must be treated alike, carefully and respectfully.
11. The principal thing in the doctrine of Christ is that He acknowledged all men to be brothers. In every man he saw a brother and therefore he loved every one, no matter who or what he was. He looked upon the inside, not the outside. He did not look ирюп the body, but saw the immortal soul through the garments of the rich, and through the rags of the beggar. In the most depraved of men He saw something which could transform this fallen man into the greatest saint, as great and as holy as He was Himself. Channing.
12. Children are wiser than adults. The child does not make any distinction about the social status of people, but feels with his whole soul that in every man lives something which is one and the same in him and in all other people.
13. If a man does not see in every neighbor the same spirit which unites him with all the rest of the people in the world, he lives as in a dream. Only he is awake and lives truly who sees himself and God in his neighbor.
II.
One and the Same Spiritual Principle Lives Not Onljr in
All Men, But in All Living Creatures
1. We feel in our heart that the thing by which we live, what we call our true "I," is the same not only in every man, but also in the dog, in the horse, in the mouse, in the hen, in the sparrow, in the bee, and even in a plant
2. If we say that birds, horses, dogs and monkeys are entirely alien to us, we might equally reasonably assert that all savage, black and yellow people are alien to us. And if we consider them aliens, the Ыаск and the yellow people may equally reasonably consider us aliens. Who
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 67
then is our neighbor ? To this there is but one answer: do not ask who is your neighbor, but do unto every creature what you desire to have done unto you.
3. All that is living abhors pain, all that is living abhors death: recognize yourself not only in man, but in every living creature, do not slay, do not cause suffering and death.
All that is living desires the same things as you: recognize yourself in every living creature.
Buddhist Wisdom.
4. Man is higher than animals not because he can torture them, but because he is capable of having compassion with them, and man has compassion with animals because he feels that in them dwells the same thing that dwells in him also.
5. Compassion with living things is most essential to any man who would advance in virtue. He who is compassionate will not injure nor offend, and he will freely forgive. A good man can not be lacking in compassion. And if a man be unjust and mean, such a man will surely be lacking in compassion. Without compassion towards all that is living, virtue is impossible. Schopenhauer.
6. It is possible to lose by degrees that compassion to living creatures which is natural to all men. It is particularly noticeable in hunting. Otherwise kindly people grow accustomed to the chase and learn to torture and kill animals without noticing their own cruelty.
7. "Thou shalt not slay"—does not mean man alone, but all that is living. This commandment was inscribed in the heart of man before being graven on the tablets of the law.
8. Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.
9. If only all men who eat animals had to slay them in person, the greater portion of human beings would refrain from eating meat.
10. We marvel that there should have been men, that there still should be men who slay human beings in order to eat their flesh. The time will come when our grandchildren will marvel that their grandfathers had been in the habit of killing millions of animals every day in order to eat them, although they could satisfy their hunger both wholesomely and pleasantly with the fruits of the earth and without killing.
11. It is possible to lose little by little the habit of compassion even with human beings, and it is also possible to accustom oneself to have compassion even with insects.
The more compassion fills the heart of man, the better it is for his soul.
12. We are all vividly conscious of the fact that there is some one, identical thing in all of us human beings, but that this same thing is also in animals we realize less vividly. Yet if we give a little thought to the life of even these little creatures, we cannot help but realize that the same principle dwells in them also.
13. "But surely we can slay flies or fleas"? "Unwittingly we slay with each movement creatures whom we
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 69
even cannot notice in ordinary life." This is commonly said by those who seek to find excuses for the cruelty of men to animals. Those who speak thus forget that man cannot attain perfection. Even so in the matter of compassion with animals. We cannot live without destroying other creatures, but we can be more or less compassionate. The more compassionate we are with animals, the better it will be for our own souls.
III.
The Better a Man's Life the More Clearly He Realizes
the Oneness of the Divine Principle that
Dwells Within Him
1. It seems to people that they are all separated one from another. Yet if every man lived only his life apart from the others, human life could not continue. Human life is only possible because it is one and the same spirit of God that lives in all men and because they realize it.
2. Others think that only they live truly, and that they are everything, and that all others are as nothing. There are many such people. But there are also reasonable and good men who realize that the life of others, even of animals, is in itself as important as their own. Such men do not live in their "Г* alone, but also in other beings, human and animal. It is easy for such men to live, and it is easy to die. When they die, only that passes away whereby had lived in themselves; that whereby they lived in others remains. Those, however, who live in their own self alone, have a narrow life and a grievous death, for when they come to die, such people think that all whereby they lived is passing away. Schopenhauer.
as in your own self, and for this reason venerate as a holy thing not only your own soul, but also the soul of every man.
4. Why do we feel blest in our soul after all works of love ? Because all works of love demonstrate to us that our true self is not only within our own personality, but also in all things living.
If you live for yourself alone, you live with only a minute particle of your true self. But if you live for others you feel that your "I" is expanding.
Living for self alone, you will feel yourself among enemies, you will leel that the happiness of others obstructs your own happiness. If you live for others, you will feel among friends, and the happiness of everybody else will be your own happiness. Schopenhauer.
5. Man finds his happiness only in serving others. And he finds happiness in serving others because in serving others he unites with the spirit of God that dwells within them.
6. That divine spirit wherel^ we live becomes fully comprehensible to us only if we love our neighbor.
7. All truly good works, in which man forgets himself and thinks solely of the needs of another are wonderful and would be incomprehensible, if they were not so natural and habitual to us. Why, indeed, should a man deprive himself of anything, worry and struggle for some other human being whom he may not know, while there are so many such people in the world ? It can be explained only in this way, that he who benefits another knows that he whom he benefits is not a being separate from himself, but the same being by which he himself lives, only in another form. Schopenhanir.
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 71
8. All that we know we perceive either through our five senses, that is we see, hear or touch things, or by transporting ourselves into other creatures, that is, living their life. If we were to perceive things only through our five senses, the world would be incomprehensible to us. What we know of the world we know because through love we can enter into other creatures and live their lives. People are separated by their bodies and cannot understand one another. But love unites them all. And therein is great blessedness.
9. If you live the life of the spirit all disunion among men causes you spiritual suffering. Why this suffering? Just as bodily pain points to a danger menacing the life of the body, even so spiritual suffering points to a danger menacing the spiritual life of man.
10. An Indian philosopher remarked: "In you and in me, as well as in all creatures, dwells the identical spirit of life, and yet you are ang^ with me, you do not love me. Remember that you and I are one. Whatever you are, you and I are one."
11. No matter how evil, unjust, stupid, or disagreeable a man may be, remember that in ceasing to respect him you break connection not only with him alone, but also with the entire spiritual world.
12. In order to live at peace with all men think of the common bond uniting you, and not of that which separates you from them.
13. It is considered a great and an unpardonable sin to treat with indignity objects of the external worship of men, but it is not considered a sin to treat human beings with indignity. And yet in the most depraved man there dwells something far superior to any objects of external worship, which are only the work of human hands.
14. It is easy to bear sorrows that are not caused by people, but by disease, conflagration, inundation or earthquake. But it is very painful to suffer by reason of the acts of people, one's brothers. We know that people ought to love us, but instead of that they torture us. "All people are the same as I. Why do they cause me pain?" We think. For this reason it is easier to bear sorrows from illness, conflagrations, drouths than those caused by human unkindness.
IV.
Effects of Realizing the Oneness of the Soul in
All Human Beings
1. Do we realize our spiritual brotherhood? Do we realize that one and the same divine principle exists in the souls of all men as in our own? No, we do not yet realize it. And yet this is the one thing that can give us true liberty and happiness. Liberty and happiness cannot be until men realize their oneness. And yet if men were to recognize this basic truth of Christianity, the oneness of the spiritual principle in man, the whole life of man would be changed and such relations would be established among men as we cannot even imagine at the present time. Insults, abuse and oppression which we inflict upon our fellow men would arouse our indignation more than do the greatest crimes of the present day. Yes, we need a new revelation, not of heaven and hell, but of the spirit that dwells within us. Charming.
2. If man sought to distinguish himself from others by attaining wealth, honors or offices, he would be dissatisfied, no matter how he magnified himself, nor would he ever be serene and happy. But if he realized that the same divine principle lives within him as in all other men.
he would immediately attain peace and happiness, no matter in what state he might be, for he would realize that there is something within him that is higher than anything else in the world.
3. The longer men live the better they realize that their life is only then happy and joyous when they recognize their oneness in one and the same spirit that dwells in all.
4. Love provokes love. And it is bound to be so, because God awaking within you, awakes Himself also in the other man.
5. When meeting another, no matter how disagreeable or repulsive he may seem to you, it is well to remember that through hihi you have the chance of communion with that spiritual principle that lives in him, in yourself and in the whole world, and therefore, you must not feel burdened by this communion, but be grateful for it as a blessing.
6. A branch cut off from the trunk is by this same act separated from the tree. Even so a man who quarrels with another man separates himself from all mankind. But the branch is cut off by the hand of a stranger, while man cuts himself off from his neighbor through his own hatred, and does not realize that thereby he cuts himself apart from all mankind. Marcus Aurelius.
7. There is no evil deed committed for which only he who has committed it is punished. We cannot so hide ourselves that the evil within us does not pass into other people. Our deeds, good or evil, are like our children. They live and act no longer in accordance with our will, but of their own accord George Eliot,
8. Ншпап life is hard only because men do not know that the same soul which dwells within them lives also in all people. This accounts for the enmity of men among themselves. This accounts for some being rich, others poor, some being masters, others laborers; this accounts for envy and malice, this accounts for all human suffering.
9. The body of man craves only its own good, and men submit to this deception. And as soon as man lives for his body alone, he disagrees with men and with God and fails to attain the good which he is seeking after.
LOVE
LOVE
The soul of man, being separated by the body from God and from the souls of other creatures, strives to unite with that from which it is separated. The soul unites with God through a constantly growing consciousness of God within and with the souls of other creatures through a constantly growing manifestation of love.
I.
Love Unites Men with God and with Other Creatures
1. Jesus said to the lawyer: **Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and the great commandment."
And the second is like unto it: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Thus spake the lawyer to Christ, and Jesus said: "Thou hast answered right, this do (that is, love God and thy neighbor) and thou shalt live."
2. Woe unto you, ye men of the world. There is grief and worry over your heads and under your feet, to the right of you and to the left of you, and ye are a mystery unto yourselves. And such mysteries will ye remain unless ye become happy and loving as the children. Only then shall ye know Me, and knowing Me ye shall know yourselves, and only then shall ye rule yourselves.
And only then, as ye look out of your soul into the world, all things will be a blessing to you, in the world and within your own selves. Buddhist wisdom.
3. Only perfection can be loved. Therefore, in order to love one of two things is required; either to count that perfect which is imperfect, or to love perfection, that is
God. If we count that perfect which is imperfect, sooner or later the error will be revealed, and the love will cease. But the love of God, that is of perfection, cannot cease.
4. God is love; he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God dwelleth in htm. No man has ever seen God, but if we love one another God dwelleth in us and His love is perfected in us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen? Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God, for God is love. Based upon 1 John. IV.
5. Men can unite truly only in God. In order to unite, men need not walk towards one another, but all must go in the direction of God.
If there were an immense temple in which the light entered only in the center, from above, then in order to meet in that temple all men would have to go towards the light in the center thereof. Even so in the world. Let all men walk in the direction of God, and eventually they will all meet tt^ether.
6. "Beloved, let us love one another; love is of God, and he that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love," said John the Apostle.
To love all men seems difficult. But all things are difficult until you learn how to do them. Men can learn anything: to sew, to weave, to till the soil, to mow, to forge iron, to read and to write. Even so they must learn how to love all people.
And to learn to do this is not difficult, because loving one another has been ingrained in our hearts.
"No man has ever seen God, but if we love one another. He dwelleth in us."
And if God is love and dwelleth in us, it is not difficult to learn to love. We must only strive to be delivered from that which hinders love, to be delivered from that which prevents its outward manifestation. And if you only make a start, you will soon attain the most important and necessary of all sciences: how to love people.
7. There is nothing more joyful than the knowledge that people love us. But curiously enough, in order that people might love us we need not strive to please them, but only to draw nearer to God. Draw nigh to God, give no thought to people, and the people will love you.
8. Do not ask God to unite you. He has made you one already by placing His one and the same spirit in you all. Only cast off the things which divide you, and you will be one.
9. Man imagines that he wills his own good. But this is only seemingly so. It is the indwelling God who wills his good. And God wills the good of all men.
10. He who says that he loves God and loves not his neighbor deceives the people. And he who says that he loves his neighbor and does not love God, deceives himself.
11. It is said we must fear God. This is untrue. We must love God, not fear him. You can not love what you fear. And besides, you can not fear God, because God is love. How can we fear love? Do not fear God, but be conscious of Him within yourself. And if you are conscious of God within, you will fear nothing in the world.
12. Some say that the last day will be the day of judgment, and that the God of goodness will be a God of wrath. Yet from a God of blessings nothing can come but what is good.
V
Whatever faiths there be, there is only one true faith— that God is love. And from love nothing can come but good'.
Do not fear vchether in this life or after it, nothing can be, nothing will be but good. Persian wisdom.
13. To live a Godly life is to be like unto God, To be like unto God, you must fear nothing and desire nothing for self. In order to fear nothing and desire nothing for yt self, you need only love.
^ Some say, look within, and you will have peace. This
is not the entire truth.
Others say: come out of self; strive to foi^et self and seek happiness in pleasures. This also is untrue. This is untrue if alone for the reason that pleasures will not eliminate disease. Peace and happiness are neither within us, nor outside of us, but are in God, and God is both within us and outside of us.
Love God, and you will find in God that which you seek.
II.
Just as the Human Body Craves Food and Suffers When
Deprived of It, so Does the Soul of Man Crave Love and Suffers When Deprived of It
1. All things are drawn to earth and to one another. £ven so all souls are drawn to God and to one another.
So that men might live all as one, and not each for himself, God revealed to them only that which is needful for all, and not that which is needful for each one separately.
And so that men might know what is needful to all and for all. He entered their souls, and in their souls manifested Himself as love.
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 81
3. The troubles of men do not come from poor harvests, from conflagrations, from evil doers, but only from their living their lives apart from one another. And they live apart, because they have no faith in that voice of love which dwells in them and which draws them together.
4. As long as man lives the animal life, it seems to him that if he is separated from other people, it must be so and cannot be otherwise. But as soon as he commences to live the life of the spirit, he finds it strange, deplorable and even painful to be apart from other people, and he will strive to become one with them. And it is love alone that makes people one.
5. Every man knows that he must do those things which unite him with people rather than those which separate him from them; he knows it not because any one has so commanded him, but because the more he unites with people, the better he lives, and, on the contrary, the more he separates from them, the worse is his life.
6. The business of every man's life is to grow better and better every year, every month, every day. And the better men become, the more closely they unite one with another. And the more closely they unite, the better becomes their life.
7. The more I love a person, the less I feel my sep-aratedness from him. It seems as though he is the same as I, I the same as he.
8. If we only firmly held to this rule; to be one with people in the things on which we agree, without demanding their adherence to the things from which they dissent, we would be much closer to Christ than those so-called Christians who keep themselves aloof from men of other religions, demanding their adherence to their own view of the truth.
9. Love your enemies, and you will have no enemies.
10. The path to union is as discernible as a plank thrown across a puddle. The moment you swerve from the path you find yourself in the mire of worldly vanities» quarrels and malice.
III.
Love is Only then Genuine When It Embraces All
1. God wanted us to be happy, and for that reason endowed us with a longing for happiness, but He wanted us to be happy in the aggregate and not as individuals, and for that reason He endowed us with a longing for love. For this reason men will be happy only when they all love one another.
2. The Roman philosopher Seneca asserted that all that is living, all that we see about us, is one body; even as our own hands, feet, stomach and bones, we are all members of one body. We have all been bom alike, we all alike seek our own good, we all understand that it is better for us to help one another, rather than to harm one another. The same love to one another has been implanted in our hearts. We are like stones joined together in an arch and are bound to collapse unless we support one another.
3. Every man strives to do as much good for himself as possible, and the greatest good in the world is to be in loye and harmony with all people. How then can we attain this boon if we feel that we love some people, but do not love others ? We must learn to love those whom we do not love. Man learns the most difficult tasks, he learns to read and write, acquires sciences and crafts. If man only applied himself as assiduously to acquiring love as to learning various crafts, and sciences, he would soon train himself to love all persons, even those who are distasteful to him.
4. If you realize that love is the nK>st important thing in life, you would not on meeting a man debate wherein he could be useful to you, but how and wherein you could be useful to him. Follow this rule, and you will always succeed better than if you took care of yourself alone.
5. If we love those who attract us, who praise us, who do us good, then we love for ourselves, so as to better ourselves. Genuine love is when we love not for ourselves, seeking no benefit for ourselves, but for those whom we love, and when we love not because people are attractive or useful to us, but because we acknowledge in every being that spirit which dwells in us.
Only when we love in this manner can we love those that hate us, our enemies, as Christ taught us to do.
6. We must respect every man, no matter how miserable or ridiculous he may be. We must remember that in every man dwells the same spirit as in us. Even if a man is repulsive, both as to body and as to soul, we must think like this: "There must be such odd people in the world, we must bear with them." But if we show such people that we loathe them, we are in the first instance unjust, and then we challenge their bitter animosity.
Such as he is he cannot alter himself. What else can he do but to fight us like a deadly enemy if we show hostility to him? We would, indeed, be good to him if he ceased to be as he is. But he cannot do this. Therefore, we must be good to every man just as he is, not requiring of him to do that which he cannot do, not requiring him, in other words, to cease to be himself. Schopenhauer.
7. Endeavor to love him whom you once did not love, whom you have condemned, or who may have done you an injury. And if you succeed in doing so, you will learn a
new joy. Even as a bright light dispelling the darlcness, the light of love will shine gloriously and joyously in your heart once you rid yourself of hatred.
8. The best of men is he who loves all and does good to all without distinction, whether they be good or bad.
Mohammed.
9. Why is a disagreement with a fellow man so painful, and hatred of a fellow man still more painful? Because we all feel that the principle which makes us all human beings is the same in all of us, so that when we hate others, we are in discord with that which is one in all, we are in discord with ourselves.
10. "I am weary, I am despondent, I am lonely." Who told you to separate yourself from all people and to shut yourself up in the prison house of your solitary, miserable and futile self ?
11. Act so that you may tell every man: "Do as I do."
Kant.
12. Until I see that the principal precept of Christ, to love your enemy, is observed, I shall not believe that those who call themselves Christians are Christians indeed.
Lcsnng. IV.
Only the Soul May Be Truly Loved
1. Man luves himself. But if in loving himself he loves his. body, he is in error. Such love will bring him nothing but sufferii^s. Loving himself is only then right when man in doing so loves his soul. And the soul is the same in all people. Therefore, if a man loves his soul, he will also love the souls of other people.
2. All men crave one thing and work for it tmceas-
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 85
ingly, namely to live well. Therefore, since the earliest days and in all places saints and sages have taught their fellow men how to live so as to make life good instead of evil. And all these saints and sages, in many climes and different periods, have taught men one and the same doctrine.
This doctrine is brief and plain.
It shows that all men live by the same spirit, that all men are one and the same, but are separated in this life by their bodies, and if they realize that they all live by the same spirit, they must all unite in love. And if men do not realize this, and live by their separate bodies, they are hostile to one another and are unhappy.
Therefore, the whole doctrine consists in doing the things that unite people, and avoiding the things that separate them. It is easy to believe in this doctrine, because it has been implanted in the heart of every man.
3. If a man lives only the life of his body, he imprisons himself. Living for the soul opens the door of this prison and leads man into the joyful life of freedom that is common to all.
4. The body seeks only its own blessing, though the soul be harmed. The soul seeks its own blessing, though the body be harmed. This struggle continues until man realizes that his life is not in the body, but in the soul, and that the body is only the material with which the soul must do its work.
5. If two men start on a journey from Moscow to Kieff, no matter how far they are one from the other, even if one be close to the gates of Kieff, and the other had just left Moscow, eventually they will meet in one place. But no matter how close together they be, if one start
for Moscow and the other for KiefF, they will be always apart.
Even so with the life of men. The saint, if he lives for his soul, and the weakest sinner, if he but live for his soul, live for one and the same thing and sooner or later the two must meet. But if two men dwell together, and one lives for his body, while the other lives for his soul, they will inevitably draw further and further apart.
6. It is hard for people to live without knowing wh\'7d they live. Yet there are people who are so sure that it is impossible to know this that they even boast of it.
But it IS not only possible, it is necessary to know why. The meaning of life is to make the soul more and more independent of the body and to bring it into union with the souls of others and with the principle of all—God.
People think and say that they do not know this only because they do not live in accord with the teachings of all the wise men of the world, and even with the dictates of their own reason and conscience.
V.
Love is a Natural Characteristic of Man
1. It is as natural for a man to love as it is for water to flow downward. Oriental wisdom,
2. A bee obeying the law of its nature must fly, a serpent must creep, a flsh must swim and a man must love. Therefore, if a man instead of loving injures others, he acts as unnaturally as a bird that would swim or a flsh that would fly.
3. A horse seeks safety from its enemy by the speed of its legs. It is unfortunate not when it cannot sing like
a bird, but when it has lost that which is natural to it— the speed of its legs.
The most precious possession of a dog is its scent. If it loses that, it is unfortunate, but not if it is unable to fly.
Even so man is not then unfortunate if he is unable to overpower a bear or a lion or wicked adversaries, but if he loses his most precious, gift, his spiritual nature, his capacity to love. Feel no regrets if a man die, or lose his wealth, if he be without home or estate; none of these things belong to man. But grieve if a man lose his truest possession, his supreme blessing,—his capacity to love.
Epictetus.
4. A girl who was deaf, dumb and blind was taught to read and write by the sense of touch; her teacher endeavored to explain to her the meaning of love, and the little girl answered*; "Yes, I understand, it is that which people always feel one towards another."
5. A Chinese philosopher was asked the meaning of science. He replied: "To know people." He was asked the meaning of virtue. He replied to love people.
6. There is only one unerring guide for all the creatures of the world. This guide is the Universal Spirit which impels every creature to do that which it ought to do. This spirit commands fhe tree to grow up towards the sun; this same spirit in the flower commands it to pass into seed, in the seed commands it to sink into the soil and to grow. In man this Spirit commands him to seek union with other creatures through love.
7. A Hindu philosopher said: "As a mother guards her only child, nursing it, cherishing it, educating it, so thou, Everyman, nurse, cherish and develop within thyself that which is the most precious tning in the world: love
to others and to all living creatures." All faiths teach this: the faith of the Brahmins, of the Jews, of the Buddhists, of the Chinese, of the Christians and of the Mohammedans. Therefore the most necessary thing in the world is to learn to love.
8. Among the Chinese there were three sages—Confucius, Lao-Tse and Mi-Ti, the last of whom is but little know to us. Mi-Ti taught that men should be trained to respect love alone, and not power, wealth or courage. He said: men are trained to esteem wealth and glory above all other things and they care only for the attainment of wealth and glory, but they should be trained to esteem love above all things and to care in their lives for the attainment of love for other people, and to use their utmost endeavors in order to learn to love.
No attention was paid to Mi-Ti. Mendse, a disciple of Confucius, disagreed with Mi-Ti, saying that one cannot live by love alone. And the Chinese listened to Mendse. Five htmdred years passed, and Christ taught the same doctrine as Mi-Ti. Only he brought it out more strongly and clearly. But even now, although they do not dispute the teaching of love, the followers of Christ fail to obey his teaching. But the time is coming, it is coming soon, when men will be unable to avoid obeying this doctrine, because it is implanted in the hearts of all men, and failure to obey it causes men to suffer increasingly.
9. A time must come when men will cease to fight, battle, put people to death, and when they will love one another. This time is bound to come, because the love of fellow men, and not their hatred, has been implanted in the souls of men.
Let us then do all within our power to hasten this time.
VI.
Love Alone Brings True Blessing
1. You crave that which is good? You shall attain that which you seek, if you but crave that good which is good for all. And love alone can yield it.
2. "He who would save his life shall lose it, he who would give his life for the sake of good, shall save it. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?" So spake Christ, and even so spake the pagan Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: "When, О my soul," he addressed himself, "wilt thou obtain mastery over my body? When wilt thou be delivered from all wordly desires and sorrows and cease to require that men serve thee with life or death? When wilt thou realize that the genuine good is always in thy power, that it consists in one thing only, namely, love for all people ?"
3. "He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.
But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness has blinded his eyes. . . . Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him." 1 John,
4. I do not know, and indeed I cannot know, whether this or that religious teacher is right, but that the best thing I can do is to increase the love within me, this I know for a certainty, and can have no doubt on that score. I can have no doubt of that because the increase of love within me immediately increases my happiness.
5. If all men were truly one, that which we understand to be our own individual life (our life apart from others) would not exist as such, because our life is a continued striving for a union of that which is disunited. In this constantly increasing union of that which is disunited is true life and the one true blessing of life.
6. We find everything, but we cannot find ourselves. How strange. Man lives many years in the world and cannot observe when he feels best of all. If he only chanced to observe this, he would clearly comprehend wherein is true happiness. He would clearly comprehend that he feels happy only when there is love in his soul for others.
Evidently we little commune with our own self in solitude, if we have not found this out.
We have corrupted our minds and no longer strive to learn that which is needful for us.
If amid the vanities of life we stopped for a season to look within our own self, we should discover wherein is our true happiness.
Our body IS weak, unclean, mortal, but a treasure is concealed in it, the immortal spirit of God. If we but recognize this spirit within us, we shall' love our fellow man, and if we love our fellow man, we shall attain all that our heart desires: we shall be happy. Scovoroda,
7. Only when man realizes how unstable and miserable is the life of the body, will he realize all the blessedness that love can yield.
8. Material blessings and pleasures of all kinds are attained only at the cost of robbing others. Spiritual benefits and the blessing of love, on the other hand, are attained by increasing the bappines of others.
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9. All our modern improvements, such as railways, telegraphs, and all kinds of machinery, may be useful for the uniting of people, and therefore for the hastening of the Kingdom of God. But the trouble is that men have become fascinated with these improvements and think that if they invent more and more machines they will hasten the Kingdom of God. This is as grievous an error as though a man were to keep plowing the same tract of land over and over again without sowing any seed. In order that all of these things be truly useful, men should perfect their soul, develop love. Without love, telephones, telegraphs, flying machines do not unite people, but on the contrary drive them further and further apart.
10. It is pitiful and absurd to see a man searching for something which is hanging from his own back. And it is equally pitiful and absurd for man to seek blessing without knowing that it consists of the very love which is implanted in his own heart.
Do not look upon the world and the deeds of men, but gaze into your own soul, and you will find therein that blessing which you seek where it is not, you will find love, and having found love, you will see that this blessing is so great that he who possesses it will not crave anything else.
Krishna.
11. When you are disheartened, when you are afraid of people, when your life has become a tangle, say to yourself : Let me cease to worry as to what will become of me, let me love all those with whom I come in contact, and let me be content, come what may. Just try to live like this, and you will see how all things will right themselves, and you will have nothing to fear or to desire.
still more. Do gocxi to your enemies that they may become your friends. Cleobulos,
13. Just as all the water will escape from a vessel if there be a hole in its bottom, so all the joys or love will leave the soul of man if it contain hatred, though he hate but one person only.
14. Some say: "What is the sense of doing good to others if they render evil for good?" But if you love him unto whom you do good, you have already received your reward in your love to him, and you will receive a still greater reward if you bear in love that evil which he renders to you.
15. If a good deed is performed with some end in view, it is no longer a good deed. True love is when you love without knowing why or for what purpose.
16. People frequently think that if they love their fellow men they have acquired merit before God. But the contrary is true. If you love your fellow men, you have not acquired merit before God, but God has granted you something you did not deserve, the supreme blessing of life— love.
17. "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death." 1 John, III, 14.
18. Yes, the time will come, that very time will come soon of which Christ spake longing for it to come, the time will come when men will be proud not of having gained by force dominion over other men and the fruit of their labors, when they will rejoice not in arousing the fear and the envy of others, but will be proud of loving all men, and rejoice in cherishing that feeling of love which delivers them from all evil, in spite of all injuries that may be inflicted upon them by others.
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19. There is a parable concerning love:
There was once a man who never thought or cared for self, but always took thought and care for his fellow men.
And the life of this man was so wondrous that the angels marveled at its goodness and rejoiced in it.
And one of the angels said unto another: "This man is holy, and he is not even aware of it. There be few such men in the world. Let us ask him how we may serve him, what gift he desires that we may bestow upon him." "Let it be so/' replied the other angel. And one of the angels, unseen and inaudible, but very clearly and plainly, said unto the saint: "We have seen your life and its saintliness, and we would know what gift we may bestow upon you. Tell us what you desire—to relieve the needs of all whom you see and whom you pity.»^ We can do so. Or would you have us grant you such power as to deliver others from pain and suffering, so that he with whom- you have compassion shall not die before his time? This also is in our power. Or would you have all people in the world, men, women and children, love you ? We can do this too. Only tell us what your heart desires?"
And the saint replied: "None of these things do I crave. It is for God to deliver men from his visitations; from need and suffering, from pain and untimely death. And as for the love of people, I fear it, I fear that the love of the people might tempt me, might impede me in my one main concern to increase within myself love towards God and towards my fellow man."
And the angels said: "Yes, indeed, this man is holy with true holiness and truly loves God."
Love gives, but seeks nothing in return.
ц
SINS. ERRORS AND SUPERSTTTIONS
■аийа
SINS, ERRORS AND SUPERSTITIONS
Htunan life would be an unceasing source of blessings, if superstitions, errors and sins did not deprive men of the capacity of enjoying these blessings. Sin is an indulgence of bodily passions; errors are incorrect ideas of man's relation to the world; superstitions are false beliefs accepted as a religion.
I.
True Life is Not in the Body, But in the Spint
1. When the plowman fails to guide the plow properly and it slips out of the furrow without picking up that which it should pick up, the Russian peasant terms this ''sin." It is the same in life. Sin is when the man fails to guide his body in the right furrow and it slips and misses doing what it ought.
2. In their youth people who do not know the true aim of life, which is union through love, see their aim in the gratification of their carnal passions. It would not be so bad if this delusion remained a mental delusion; but the gratification of carnal passions defiles the soul, and the man who has defiled his soul through a life of indulgence loses the capacity of seeking his happiness in love. It is as though a man seeking pure water to drink were to defile the cup from which he intended to drink.
3. You wish to give your body as much pleasure as you can. But will your body live long? To care for the blessings of the body is like building a house upon ice. What joy, what security can there be in such a life? Will you not fear that sooner or later the ice will melt? That sooner or later you will have to leave your mortal body?
Move your house to firm soil, work on that which dietH not; improve your soul, free yourself from sins, errors and superstitions. Gr. Scovoroda,
4. The child is not yet aware of his soul and cannot find himself in the predicament of the adult, who hears two conflicting voices within,—one saying: "Eat of it yourself," and the other "give him to eat who asks;" one says "avenge;" the other: "forgive." One says "believe what is told you," the other: "think for yourself."
,t The older a man grows the more frequently he hears these two conflicting voices, one the voice of the body, the other the voice of the spirit. Happy is the man who has trained himself to hear the voice of the spirit, and not the voice of the body.
5. Some men base their life on the indulgence of their belly, others on sexual lust, some on power, others on worldly fame, and they dissipate their energy upon the attainment of these objects, but one thing, and one only is needful, namely to cultivate their soul.
This alone gives them true happiness, that happiness which no one can take away from them.
6. No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew VI, 2A.
7. You cannot at the same time pay heed to your soul and to worldly blessings. If you would have worldly blessings, give up your soul; if you would save your soul, give up worldly blessings. Otherwise you will only wobble between the two, and fail to attain either the one thing or the other.
8. Men would attain freedom by safeguarding their
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body against anything that might curb it or hinder it from carrying out its will. Therein is a grievous error. The very safeguards they use to preserve their body from all hindrances: wealth, honor, and glory fail to give them the freedom they crave, but on the contrary they bind them all the more securely. In order to attain greater liberty, men build themselves a prison out of their own sins, errors and superstitions, and confine themselves therein of their own free will.
9. The purpose of our life in this world is twofold: first to bring our soul to a full growth, second to establish the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. Both purposes arc attained by the same means: by releasing within ourselves that light of the spirit which was put into our soul.
10. The true path is straight and free, and you cannot sttunble if you walk therein. The moment you feel that your feet are enmeshed in the cares of earthly life; know by this same token that you have strayed from the true path.
II.
What are Sins?
1. According to the teachings of the Buddhists there are five principal commandments: First, do not wittingly slay a living creature; second, do not appropriate that which another person believes to be his; third, be chaste; fourth, do not speak untruth; fifth, do not stupefy yourself with intoxicating drink or fumes. Therefore the Buddhists count the following as sins: murder, theft, adultery, drunkenness, lying.
2. According to the teaching of the Gospels there are only two commandments of love: "A lawyer asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" ; i. .
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew ХХП, 35-39.
Therefore in accordance with the Christian doctrine sin is all that is out of harmony with these two commandments.
3. Men are not punished for their sins, but by the sins themselves. And this is the severest and the surest punishment.
It may be that a cheat or a bully lives all his life and dies in luxury and honors, but this does not mean that he has escaped the punishment of his sins. This punishment will not be imposed somewhere where nobody has ever been or ever will be, but it has been exacted right here. Right here is the punishment of man inasmuch as each new sin removes him further and further away from true happiness, which is love, and decreases his joy more and more. Even so a drunkard, whether men punish him for drunkenness or not, is always punished by his drunkenness,— for in addition to his headaches and woes of sobering up, the more he drinks, the more his body and soul deteriorate.
4. If people imagine that in this life they can be free from sin, they are greatly in error. Man may be more or less sinful, but he can never be sinless. A living man cannot be without sin, because the entire life of man consists in ridding himself of sin, and only in this deliverance from sio i$:tHe true blessedness of life.
III.
Errors and Superstitions
1. Man's business in life is to fulfill the will of God. The will of God is to have man augment love in his soul and to manifest it in the world. What can man do to manifest love within himself? Just this one thing: eliminate everything from within that may hinder its manifestation. What hinders the manifestation of love? Sins hinder the manifestation of love.
Thus only one thing is needful for man to fulfill the will of God: to rid himself of sins.
2. To sin is human, to seek excuses for sins is the work of the devil.
3. While a human being has no reason, he lives like an animal, and whether what he does is good or evil, he is blameless. But the time comes when he acquires the capacity of judging what he ought and what he ought not to do. And then it happens that instead of realizing that reason has been granted him to recognize the things which he ought and which he ought not to do, he uses it to find excuses for the evil deeds which yield him pleasure, and to which he has accustomed himself.
This is the thing that leads men into the errors and superstitions from which the world suffers.
4. It is bad for a man to think that he is without sin and does not need to labor with himself. But it is just as bad for him to think that he had been altogether bom in sin and will die in sins, and therefore, there is no need for him to labor with himself. Both delusions are equally harmful.
5. It is bad if man who lives among sinful men fails to see his own sins or the sins of others, but still worse is the
state of man who sees sins of the people among whom he lives, but fails to perceive his own.
6. In the early part of a man's life the body alone develops. And he considers this body to be his own self. Even when the consciousness of his soul awakens within him, he continues to fulfill the desires of his body, which are contrary to the desires of his soul, and thereby he harms himself, falls into error and sin. But the longer he lives, the more loudly speaks his soul, and the further diverge the desires of his body and of his soul. And the time comes when his body ages, its desires grow less and less, but the spiritual "I" grows more and more abundantly. And then the men who had been in the habit of serving their body, in order not to give up their old habit of life, invent errors and superstitions which permit them to keep on sinning. But no matter how much men try to protect their body from their spiritual "I," the latter always conquers, though it be in the last moments of life.
7. Each mistake, each sin committed for the first time, binds you. But at first it binds as lightly as a cobweb. When you commit the sin again the cobweb becomes a thread, then a rope. Constantly repeated, the sin binds you with strong cords and later with chains.
Sin is at first a stranger in your soul, then a guest, and when you have made a habit of it, it becomes the master.
8. That condition of soul under which man fails to realize the evil nature of his deeds prevails when man instead of employing his reason to examine his conduct employs it to excuse his acts when he falls into errors and the superstitions associated therewith.
9. He who sins for the first time always feels his guilt. He who repeats the same sin many times, particularly when
people all around him commit the same sins, falls into error and ceases to feel his sin.
10. Young people commencing life enter upon new and unknown paths, and find on each side unfamiliar byways— smooth, alluring, pleasant. When they swerve into these byways at first they seem so pleasant to walk upon, and it looks as though one could amble along upon them for a long distance and then return at will to the main path, but soon they learn that they cannot find their way back and they stray further and further to their ruin.
11. When a man has committed a sin, and realizes that he has sinned, there are two ways open to him: one is to acknowledge his sin and to try not to repeat it, the other to mistrust his conscience and to inquire what people think of such a sin, and if people do not condemn it, to continue in this sin, without realizing his sinfulness. ,
"They all do it, why should I not do as the rest of the people are doing?"
As soon as a man has entered upon this well beaten path, he will fail to notice how far he has strayed from the path of good life.
12. Errors and superstitions surround man on all sides. To walk amid these perils is like walking through a swamp, constantly sinking and scrambling to safety.
13. "Errors must come into the world," said Christ. I think that the meaning of this saying is that the recognition of truth is not in itself sufficient to turn men from evil and to draw them towards that which is good. In order that the majority of people apprehend the truth, they must be brought, because of errors and superstitions, to the ultimate degree of delusion and of suffering resulting from delusion.
14. Sins are of the body, errors come from the thoughts of people, and superstition from the distrust of one's reason.
15. A well shod man carefully avoids mud, but once he has made a misstep and soiled his boots, he takes less precautions, and when he sees that they have been badly soiled, he boldly walks through the mud, accumulating more and more filth with each step.
Even so a young man, while yet unstained with evil and immoral deeds, is careful and avoids all that is evil, but after making a mistake or two he begins to reason that no matter how careful he is, he is bound to fall, and then he takes up all kinds of vices. Do not follow such example. Have you defiled )^urself ? Purify yourself, and be doubly careful. Have you sinned? Repent, and avoid sin all the more.
16. The sins of the body subside with years, but errors and superstitions, on the contrary, grow stronger with years.
IV.
The Principal Task of a Man's Life is to Rid Himself of
Sins, Errors and Superstitions
1. Man rejoices when his body is released from prison. How should he not rejoice to be released from the sins, errors and superstitions which have held captive his soul ?
2. Imagine men living their animal life alone, without combating their passions, what a terrible life that would be, what hatred among people, what dissoluteness, what cruelty! Only the fact that men know their weaknesses and passions and struggle against their sins, errors and superstitions makes it possible for people to dwell together.
3. The human body confines the spirit that lives in it. But the spirit breaks through and becomes more and more free. Herein is life.
4. The life of man, whether he wills it or not, leads him further and further towards deliverance from sins. The
man who realizes this assists life in this process by his own efforts, and the life of such a man is a happy one, because it is in accord with that which is being done with him.
5. Children have not acquired the habit of sin, therefore, all sin is repulsive to them. Grown up people have already fallen into error, and they sin without it.
6. If man does not acknowledge his sins, he is like unto a tightly corked bottle; for he cannot receive that which would deliver him from sin. To humiliate himself and to repent is to uncork the vessel—^to become capable of deliverance from sin.
7. To repent is to realize your sins and to prepare to combat them, therefore, it is well to repent while you have strength.
Oil must be added to a lamp while it is yet burning.
8. Two women came to an hermit for advice. One believed herself to be a great sinner. While young, she had been unfaithful to her husband, and she never ceased to reproach herself because of it. The other had lived all her life within the law, found no sin with which to reproach herself and was satisfied with herself.
The hermit questioned both women with regard to their life. One confessed her great sin with tears. She considered that sin so great that she expected no forgiveness. The other said that she did not know any special sin that she might have been guilty of. The hermit said to the first woman:
"Go, thou, handmaid of God, behind the wall and find me a large stone, as large as you can lift, and bring it to me." "And thou," he turned to the other woman, "go thou likewise behind the wall and fetch me pebbles, all that thou canst carry."
The women obeyed the commands. One brought a
large stone, and the other a bag filled with pebbles. Thereupon the hermit said further:
"Now I will tell you what to do. Take these same stones back again and replace them where you had taken them from. And then return to me again."
And the women hurried to carry out his command. The first woman easily found the place where she had taken the heavy stone and replaced it where she had found it. But the other woman could not by any means surely remember where she had picked up the various pebbles, and unable to carry out the hermit's command, returned to him.
"It is even so with sins," said the hermit. "Thou didst return the heavy stone on the very spot from which thou hadst taken it, because thou knowest where it came from. And thou wast not able to do likewise, because thou didst not remember whence all the little stones had been taken. And even so it is with sins.
"Thou didst remember thy sin, bearing the reproaches of men and the pangs of thy conscience, thou didst humble thyself, thus delivering thyself from thy sin and its consequences.
"But thou (the hermit turned to the other woman), "sinning in a small way, didst not remember the little transgressions, didst not repent, hast grown used to the life of sin, and condemning the sins of others, didst sink even more deeply in the mire of thine own sins."
9. Man IS bom in sin. All sins come from the body, but the spirit within man struggles against the body. And the whole life of man is a struggle of the spirit against the body. Blessed is the man who finds himself in this struggle not on the side of the body (that body which is bound to be overcome), but on the side of the spirit which is bound to conquer though it be in the last mortal hour.
10. It is a great error to think that one can find deliverance from sin through faith and the forgiveness of people.
Nothing can absolve from sin. One can only realize his sin and strive not to repeat it.
11. Never be scared of sin; do not say to yourself: **I can not help sinning, I am used to it, I am weak." While life lasts, you can always fight sin, and if you don't conquer it to-day, you will to-morrow; if not to-morrow, then the next day; if not the next day, surely before death. But if you refuse to fight, you shirk the principal task of life.
12. You cannot compel yourself to love. But if you do not love, it does not mean that there is no love in you, but that there is something in you that hinders love. You may turn or shake a bottle as you will, but if it be corked, nothing can be poured from it until you remove the cork. It is the same with love. Your soul is filled with love, but this love cannot be manifested, because your sins will not let it pass. Deliver your soul from that which chokes it, and you will love everybody, even those you had considered your enemies, and whom you have hated.
13. Woe to the man who says to himself that he has delivered himself from sin.
14. That is sinless wherein there is no consciousness of oneness with God and with all Spirit life. Thus plants and animals are free from sin. But man is conscious at the same time of animal and of God within, and therefore can not be sinless. We call children sinless, but this is an error. A child is not free from sin. He has less sins than an adult, but he has already his sins of the body. Neither is the saintliest man free from sin. He has fewer sins, than others, but he has sins nevertheless, for without sins there is no life.
15. In order to train yourself to combat sin, it is advisable from time to time to stop doing the things to which you are accustomed, in order to learn whether you are master of your body, or your body is master over you.
V.
The Significance of Sins, Errors, Superstitions and False Doctrines for the Manifestation of Spiritual Life
1. People who believe that God created the world frequently ask: Why did God so create man that he must sin, that he cannot help sinning? It is like asking why God created mothers so that they must bear children in pain, nurse them and bring them up. Would it not have been simpler for God to give infants to mothers all finished, without pangs of child-birth, without nursing, care and fear ? No mother will ask this question, because she loves the child for the very pain it cost her, and the joy of her life is in nursing, raising and caring for it.
Even so with human life: sins, errors, superstitions, the struggle with them and the overcoming of them,—therein is the meaning and the joy of htunan life.
2. It is a heavy burden to man to know about his sins, but it is a great joy to feel that you are being delivered from them. But for the night, we should not rejoice in the light of the sun.' But for sins, man would not know the joy of righteousness.
3. If man had no soul, he would not know the sins of the body, and if it were not for the sins of the body, he would not know that he had a soul.
4. Since man, a rational creature, has been in this world, he has distinguished good from evil, and made use of the experience of those who had gone before in distin-
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guishing good from evil, struggling against evil, seeking the true, good path, and slowly, but resolutely progressing upon this path. And ever obstructing this path, sins, errors and superstitions confronted the people, whispering to them that all this is superfluous, that there is no need to seek anything, that they are as well off without it, and that they should live just as they happen to live.
5. Sins, errors and superstitions are the soil that must cover the seeds of love that they may spring into life.
SURFEIT
лв
SURFEIT
The only true happiness of man is in love. But man loses this happiness when instead of developing the love within him he developes the appetites of his body by humoring the same.
I.
All that is Superfluous is Harmful to the Body
and to the Soul
1. The body must be served only when it demands it. But to employ one's reason in inventing pleasures for the body is to live inside out: forcing the soul to serve the body, instead of the body serving the soul.
2. The less needs the happier is the life. This is an old truth, but one which is far from having been accepted by all.
3. The more you accustom yourself to luxury, the more you fall into servitude, because the more things you require, the more you curtail your freedom. Perfect freedom is in needing nothing at all, and next to it is needing very little. 5-^ John Chrysostom.
4. There are sins against people, and sins against self. Sins against people are due to the failure to respect the Spirit of God in oneself.
5. If you would live the life of peace and liberty, learn not to crave that which you can do without.
6. All that the body needs is easily obtained. Only the unnecessary things are difficult to procure.
7. It is well to have what you desire, but it is still better not to desire more than you have. Menedem.
8. If you are well and have labored unto weariness, your bread and water will taste sweeter to you than all his dainties to a rich man, your bed of straw will feel softer than spring mattresses, and working clothes will caress your body more smoothly than raiments of velvet and furs.
9. If you humor your body too much, you are bound to weaken it, if you overwork it, you are bound to weaken it. But if you must choose one or the other, it is better to tire it than to enervate it, because if you sleep or eat insufficiently, or if you overwork yourself, your body will soon remind you of your error. But if you enervate your body, it will not remind you of your error at (Mice, but much later—through weakness and sickness.
10. Socrates abstained from all foods that are eaten not to appease hunger, but mainly because of their flavor and he urged his disciples to do likewise. He said that excess of food and drink is harmful not only to the body, but also to the soul, and his advice was to leave the table while the desire to eat is still present. He reminded his disciples of Ulysses of old: Circe, the enchantress, failed to bewitch Ulysses only because he refused to overeat, but as soon as his comrades devoured her dainties, she turned them into swine.
11. It seems that rich and well-informed men, men who call themselves educated, should understand that there
' is no good in gluttony, drunkenness and overdressing; but they are just the people who invent dainty foods, intoxicating drinks and all sorts of adornments, and in addition their example ruins and corrupts the laboring people.
"If educated people enjoy luxurious living, it must be the right thing," say the laborers, and in endeavoring to imitate the rich, they ruin their own life.
12. In these days the majority of the people think that
the happiness of life consists in serving the body. It is seen from the fact that the most popular doctrine is the doctrine of the socialists. According to this doctrine, the life of few wants is the life of the beasts, and the growth of human wants is the first mark of an educated man, is tne sign of his consciousness of human dignity. Men of our day so strongly adhere to this doctrine that they ridicule those wise men who see the happiness of man in the diminution of human needs.
13. Consider how the slave longs to live. First of all he yearns to be set at liberty. He thinks that he cannot be free or happy in any other way. He says to himself: If I be given my liberty, I shall immediately attain happiness ; I shall not be compelled to serve and humor my master, I could speak to any man as an equal, I could go where I pleased without asking any man's leave.
But no sooner is he given his freedom, he immediately seeks to curry favor with somebody, in order to secure better food. He is ready to stoop to any indignity for this purpose. And establishing himself near some prosperous man, he relapses into the slavery from which he had so recently desired to escape.
If such a man prospers, he takes a mistress, and enters a state of still more arduous servitude. When he becomes wealthy, he has still less liberty. He begins to suffer and whine. And in moments when he feels particularly burdened, he remembers the days of his slavery and says:
"After all I was not so badly off with my master. I had no worries, I was clad, sbod and fed; when I was ill, I was taken care of. And my service was not so hard. And now how much work I have to do. Once I had one master, now I have many. How many people must I please now I"
Epic fetus.
II.
The Whims of the Body are Insatiable
1. To sustain the life of the body, little is needed, but the whims of the body have no end.
2. The needs of the body, of one body alone are easily filled. Only in the case of a special calamity man lacks raiment to cover his body or a piece of bread to appease his hunger. But no power can procure all the things that a man may crave.
3. The unreasoning child cries and weeps until it is given what its body craves. But as soon as it is given what its body needs, it quiets down and asks no more. Not so with adults, if they live the life of the flesh and not of the spirit. Such men never quiet down and always want something more.
4. To humor the flesh, to give it superfluous things, things in excess of its wants, is a grievous error, because a life of luxury lessens rather than increases the enjoyment derived from food, recreation, sleep, raiment and home. If you eat superfluous dainties, your stomach becomes deranged, and you lose the craving for food and cannot relish it. If you ride where you can walk, if you accustom yourself to soft beds, dainty, highly flavored foods, luxurious furnishings, if you learn to compel others to do for you what you can do yourself, you have no pleasure in resting after labor, in warmth after being chilled, you do not know sound sleep, and you weaken yourself, you diminish, instead of increasing, your measure of happiness, peace and freedom.
5. Men ought to learn from animals how to treat their body. As soon as the animal has what it needs for its body, it is at peace. But man is not satisfied with stilling his hunger, sheltering himself from the weather, warming him-
self; he invents all sorts of delicate foods and beverages, he builds palaces, prepares superfluous raiment, and all sorts of useless luxuries, and in the end lives worse instead of better.
III.
The Sin of Gluttony
1. If men ate only when hungry, and then only simple, clean, wholesome food, they would know no illness, and they could resist passions more easily.
2. The wise man says: Thank God because He has made all needful things easy, and all superfluous things difficult. This is particularly true of food. Food that man requires to be healthy and able to work is simple and cheap: bread, fruit, roots, water. All of this is found ewerywhere. It is only difficult to prepare all sorts of delicacies: for instance ice cream, etc.
All of these dainties are not only difficult to prepare, but are directly harmful. Therefore it is not for those healthy men who eat bread and water and porridge to envy the ailing rich with their cunningly prepared delicacies, but for rich men to envy the poor and to learn to eat as they do.
3. Few die from hunger. Many more die because they eat too daintily and do not labor.
4. Eat to live, do not live to eat.
5. "Only a pot of broth, but plenty of health." That's a good proverb. Go by it.
6. If it were not for greed not a bird would be snared in a fowler's net, and the fowler would catch no birds. The same snare is laid for men. The belly is a chain for the hands and the feet. The slave of the belly is always a slave. If you would be free, first of all shake oflF the dominion of the belly. Fight against it. Eat only to appease hunger, and not to derive pleasure from it.
7. What is more profitable: to spend four hours weekly on the making of bread, and to feed on it the rest of the week, or to spend twenty-one hours each week on the preparation of dainty and tasty foods. What is more precious: the seventeen hours gained or dainty food ?
IV.
The Sin of Eating Meat
1. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras ate no meat. When the historian Plutarch, the biographer of Pythagoras, was asked why Pythagoras had abstained from eating meat he replied that he did not wonder at Pythagoras abstaining from eating meat, but he did wonder that there were still people left who though they might feed on grains, herbs and fruit, persisted in capturing, butchering and eating living creatures.
2. In the oldest days philosophers taught the people not to eat the flesh of animals, but to feed on herbs; the people, however, paid no attention to the sages and persisted in eating meat. But in our times the number of people who consider it sinful to eat meat, and abstain from eating it, is rapidly increasing.
We are surprised to find people eating the flesh of slain humans, and to hear that there are still such cannibals left in Africa. The time will come when we shall wonder that men could slay animals for food.
3. For ten years the cow has fed thee and thy children, the sheep has warmed thee with its wool. What is their reward? To have their throats cut and to be devoured.
4. Thou shalt not kill—does not apply only to the killing of human beings, but also to the killing of any living creature. This commandment was inscribed in the hearts of men before it was graven on the tablets on Mount Sinai.
5. Compassion with animals is so closely associated with goodness of character that it may be confidently affirmed that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man. Schopenhauer.
6. Do not lift your arm against your brother, nor shed the blood of any other creatures inhabiting the earth, whether they be men or domestic animals, beasts or birds of the air; in the depths of your soul a still voice forbids you to shed it, for the blood is the life, and you cannot recall life. Lamartine.
7. The happiness which man derives from feelings oi compassion and mercy towards animals will make up a hundredfold for the pleasure lost through abstinence fnxn the chase and from the use of the flesh of animals.
V.
The Sin of Drugging Oneself with Wine, Tobacco, Opium, etc.
1. In order to live right, man needs before all the exercise of his reason, and therefore he should value his reason most highly, yet men find pleasure in dulling their reason with tobacco, wine, whiskey, opium. Why? Because men desire to lead an evil life, and their reason, when it is not dulled, shows them the wickedness of their life.
2. If wine, tobacco and opium did not dull the reason, and thereby did not give free reign to evil desires, no one would drink bitter beverages or inhale fumes.
3. Why do different people have different habits, but the habits of smoking and drunkenness are the same in all men, р(юг or rich ? It is because the majority of men are discontented with their life, and seek the pleasures of the
flesh. But the flesh can never be satisfied, and men, both poor and rich, seek oblivion in smoking or drunkenness.
4. A man is proceeding at night with the aid of a lantern, and he is barely making headway, he strays and recovers the road. But suddenly he grows weary of it, blows out the lantern and strays at haphazard.
Is it not the same when man drugs himself with tobacco, wine or opium? It is difficult to determine your path in life, so as not to stray, and to find it again, if perchance you have wandered away from it. And yet people, to avoid the trouble of following the true path, extinguish the only light that they have, their reason, by smoking and drinking.
5. When a man overeats, he finds it hard to fight against laziness, when he imbibes intoxicating drinks, he finds it hard to be chaste.
6. Wine, opium and tobacco, are unnecessary to the life of man. Every one knows that wine, tobacco and opium are injurious to the body and to the soul. Yet the labor of millions of people is wasted to produce these poisons. Why do people do this ? Because having fallen into the sin of serving their flesh, and seeing that the flesh can never be satisfied, they have invented such substances as wine, tobacco and opium that stupefy them into forgetting that they lack the things they would have.
7. If a man has set his life upon carnal pleasures, and cannot attain all that he desires, he endeavores to delude himself: he wishes to place himself into the position of imagining that he has that which he craves for; he stupefies himself with tobacco, wine and opium.
8. Drinking or smoking has never inspired anyone to good deeds: labor, meditation, visiting the sick, prayer. But
the majority of wicked deeds are committed under the influence of drink.
Self-stupefaction through drugs is not in itself a crime, but it is a preparation for all sorts of crimes.
9. The trinity of curse: drunkenness, meat eating and smoking.
10. It is hard to imagine what a happy change would come into our lives, if men ceased to stupefy and poison themselves with whiskey, wine, tobacco and opium.
VI.
Serving the Flesh is Injurious to the Soul
1. If one man has much that is superfluous, many others lack necesaries.
2. It is better that the raiment befit the conscience than fit the body only.
3. In order to pamper the flesh, one must neglect his soul.
4. Of two men which is better off: he who nourishes himself with his own labor, merely to preserve himself from being hungry, clothes himself, merely to avoid being bare, houses himself merely to shelter himself from the rain and the cold, or he who through flunkeying, or what is more usual, through craftiness or force, obtains delicate foods, rich raiment and luxurious habitations?
5. It is inexpedient to accustom yourself to luxury, for the more things you need for your body, the more you will have to labor with your body, in order better to feed it, clothe it and house it. This is an error which only those men fail to perceive who by some fraud have arranged it so that others labor for them instead of laboring for themselves, so that in the case of the rich this is not merely inexpedient, but also a great wrong.
6. If we people had not invented luxurious dwellings, apparel and food, all those who are now in need could live without want, and those who are rich without fear for themselves or their riches.
7. Just as the first rule of wisdom is to know oneself, because only he who knows himself can also know others, so is the first rule of mercy to be content with little, because only he who is content with little can be merciful.
Ruskin.
8. To live for one's body only is to do like the servant who took his master's money, and instead of buying therewith things required for his own needs, as his master had commanded, wasted it upon the gratification of his foolish whims.
God gave us His spirit so that we may do the works of God and for our own good. But we waste this spirit upon the service of our body. Thus we both fail to do the works of God and injure our own self.
9. That it is inexpedient for man to indulge his lusts, but expedient always to fight against them, may be determined by any one by own experience, for the more a man indulges the demands of his body, the feebler become his spiritual forces. And vice versa. Great philosophers and saints have been always abstemious and chaste.
10. Just as the smoke expels the bees from the hive, gluttony and drunkenness drive away all the finest spiritual forces. Basil the Great.
11. What does it matter if the body suffer a little from serving the spirit? but woe if the most precious thing in man—his soul—suffer from the passions of the body.
12. Do not destroy your heart by excess of food and dnnk. Mohammed,
13. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," is said in the New Testament. If a man consider his body his treasure, he will employ all his powers to provide it with dainty foods, pleasant accommodations, fine apparel and all sorts of amusements. And the more strength a man expends upon the service of his body, the less he will have left for his spiritual life.
VII.
He Alone is Free» Who is Master of the Desires
of His Body
1. If a man live for his body, and not for his soul, he is like some bird that conceives the notion of walking from place to place on its feeble feet instead of freely flying wherever it pleased by using its wings. Socrates.
2. Dainty foods, rich apparel, luxuries of all sorts— this is what you call happiness. But I think that to desire nothing is the greatest happiness, and in order to approach this highest degree of happiness, you must train yourself to want little. Socrates.
3. The less you indulge the body in matters of food, clothing, housing and amusement, the freer will be your life. And on the contrary, no sooner you begin to try to improve your food, clothing, housing and amusement,—there is no longer a limit to your labors and cares.
4. It is better to be poor than rich, because the rich are more bound up in sin than the poor. And the sins of the rich are more perplexing and entangled, and it is difficult to make head or tail of them. The sins of the poor are simple, and it is easier to be rid of them.
5. No one has ever regretted to hav^ l\\^A. Vc^ -^-jLv^^
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
6. The rich are so used to the sin of serving the body that they fail to see it as sin, and believing that what they do is for the best interest of their children, they train them from infancy in the ways of gluttony, luxury and sloth-fulness, in other words they corrupt them and store up great suffering for them.
7. What happens with the stomach when you overeat, occurs also in matters of amusement. The more men try to increase the pleasure of eating by inventing refined foods, the more is the stomach enfeebled and the pleasure of eating curtailed. The more men try to increase the pleasure of merrymaking by inventing elegant and subtle amusements the more surely they weaken their capacity for genuine enjoyment.
8. Only the body can suffer; the spirit knows no suffering. The feebler is the life of the spirit, the greater is the suffering. So if you would not suffer, live more in the spirit and less for your body.
SEXUAL LUSTS
SEXUAL LUSTS
In all people, men and women alike, dwells the Spirit of God. What a sin it is to look upon the temple of the Spirit of God as upon a means of gratification of desire. Every woman in relation to man should be first of all a sister, and every man to a woman a brother.
L
The Need of Striving After Absolute Chastity
1. It is well to live in honorable matrimony, but it is better never to marry. Few people can do this. But happy are they who can.
2. When people marry, if they can do without marrying, they act like a man who falls without having stumbled. If he stumbled and then fell, he could not help himself, but if he had not stumbled, why fall on purpose? If you can live chastely, without committing sin, it is better not to marry.
3. It is untrue that chastity is contrary to the nature of man. Chastity is possible and yields much more happiness than even a happy marriage.
4. Excess of food is ruinous to good life, but sexual excesses are still more ruinous to good living. And therefore, the less a man yields to the one and to the other, the better it is for his true spiritual life. But there is a great difference between the two. In giving up food altogether man destroys his life, but in abstaining from sexual gratification, man does not cut short his life, nor destroy his species which does not depend upon him alone.
5. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:
But he that is married careth for the thii^ diat are of the world, how he may please his wife.
There is a difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. 1 Cor,, zii, 32-34.
6. If men marry and think that they thereby serve God and man, because they propagate the human species, they deceive themselves. Instead of marrying in order to increase of the number of children in the world, it would be far simpler to sustain and save those millions of young Uves which are perishing from want and n^ect.
7. Although few people may be absoltudy chaste, let every one realize and remember that any man can be more chaste than he has been, and can resume chastity once violated, and the more nearly he approaches to absolute chastity, the more nearly he will attain the state of true blessedness, and the better he will be able to serve the welfare of his fellow-man.
. 7. Some say that if all were chaste the human species would cease to exist. But does not the church teach that the end of the world is bound to come? And science equally shows that some day man's life upon earth, and earth itself, must cease; why then does the idea that the end of the human species might come as the result of good and righteous living arouse so much indignation ?
8. One scientist figured out that if mankind should double itself once every fifty years, in seven thousand years so many descendants would spring even from one pair of parents that only one twenty-seventh part of them would find space on the globe standing shoulder to shoulder.
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 129
To avoid this, one thing alone is needful, and it is affirmed by all wise teachers, as well as implanted in the heart of man, chastity, striving after more and more chastity.
10. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
But I say unto you. That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Matthew, v, 27-28.
These words can mean nothing else but that the doctrine of Christ demands from man that he strive after ob-solute chastity.
"But how can this be?" some may reply. "If you cling to absolute chastity, mankind will cease to exist." But men who speak thus do not consider that pointing to perfection as a goal towards which we must strive, does not mean that we shall reach perfection. It is not given to man to attain perfection in anything. The destiny of man is in striving after perfection.
II.
The Sin of Adultery
1. An unspoilt man is disgusted and ashamed to think or speak of sexual relations. Preserve this feeling. It has not been put in the heart of man without cause. This feeling helps man to abstain from the sin of adultery and to maintain his chastity.
2. People use the same expression when referring to the spiritual love—the love of God and of fellow-man, as they do referring to the carnal love of a man for a woman. This is a grievous error, Th^re is nothing in common be-
tween the two. The first, the spiritual love of God and of fellow-man, is the voice of God, the second—the love between man and woman, is the voice of the animal.
3. The law of God is to love God and your neighbor, that is everybody without distinction. In sexual love man loves an individual woman above all others, and the woman an individual man, and therefore sexual love more than anything else turns man from obeying the law of God.
III.
Misery Caused by Sexual Dissoluteness
1. Until you have destroyed to its very roots your lustful attachment to a woman, your spirit will always be tied to the earthly things as the suckling calf is bound to his mother.
Men caught in the meshes of desire struggle like a hare in a trap. Once enmeshed in lustful passion, they will not free themselves from suffering for a long time.
Buddhist Wisdom.
2. A moth rushes to the flame because it does not realize that it will bum its wings; a fish swallows the worm because it does not know that it means its ruin. But we know that lustful passions will surely entrap and ruin us, and still we yield to them.
3. As the fireflies over a swamp lead men astray into mire, and are lost to view themselves, even so the delights of sexual gratification delude the people. Men go astray, their lives are ruined, and when they come to their senses and look around, that which has ruined their lives is no longer there. Schopenhauer,
IV.
Criminal Attitude of Our Leading Men to the
Sin of Lust
1. In order to realize fully the immortality, the anti-Christian character of the life of Christian people, one need only remember that the status of women living by vice is everywhere sanctioned and regulated.
2. Among rich men there exists a false belief, fostered by a false science, to the effect that sexual intercourse is a condition necessary to health, and as matrimony is not always possible, sexual intercourse without marriage, placing no obligation on man besides payment of money, is something absolutely natural. This conviction is so wide-spread and firm that parents on the advice of physicians lead their children into vice; and institutions whose only reason for existence is to care for the welfare of citizens, permit the maintenance of a caste of women whose bodies and souls must be ruined for the gratification of dissolute males.
3. To argue whether it be good or evil for the health of a man to have sexual intercourse with women, without living with them as man and wife, is like arguing whether it be good or evil for the health of man to drink the blood of other human beings.
V.
Fighting the Sin of Lustfulness
1. As an animal man must fight with other creatures and multiply in order to increase his species; but as a creature endowed with love and reason man must not fight with other creatures, but love them all, and must not multiply, in order to increase his species, but be chaste. The combination of these two opposite inclinations,—the striving to
7
132 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
fight for sexual gratification, and the striving after love and chastity,—fashions the life of man as it should be lived.
2. What must a pure youth and a pure maiden do when their sexual feelings are awakened? What should guide them? They must keep themselves pure and strive more and more after chastity in thought and desire.
What must a youth and a maiden do who have become subject to temptation and are engrossed with thoughts of love whether indefinite or directed to an individual person?
The same. They must not permit themselves to fall, knowing that submitting to temptation will not set them free from it, but will augment it, and they must still strive more and more after chastity.
What must people do when the struggle proves too much for them and they fall?
They must not look upon their fall as upon a lawful pleasure, as is done now when it is sanctioned in marriage, nor as an act of occasional gratification which may be repeated with others, nor yet as a calamity (in the case of unequal partners and unsanctioned by ceremonial), but they must look upon this first fall as the initiation of an indissoluble marriage.
What must a man and a woman do who have entered matrimony ?
Still the same: they must together strive to free themselves from sexual lusts.
3. The principal weapon in combating lust is the man's realization of his spirituality. A man must only remember what he is in order to see sexual lust for what it is: a degrading animal characteristic.
4. Fighting the lust of sex is imperative. But you must know in advance the full strength of the enemy without beguiling yourself with false hopes of a speedy triumph*
The fight against this foe is bound to be hard. Yet do not lose courage. Let there be falls but do not lose courage. The child learning to walk falls a hundred times, is hurt, weeps and rises to its feet only to fall again, but in the end he learns to walk. It is not the fall that is terrible, it is the attempt to excuse the fall. Terrible is that falsehood which attempts to prove these falls to be something necessary, inevitable, or something beautiful and lofty. What if on the way to freedom from defilement, to perfection, we fall because of weakness and stray from the path, let us still endeavor to follow this path. Do not let us say that the defilement is our fate, do not let us philosophize or burst into poetry in self-justification, let us firmly remember that evil is evil, and that we will not commit it.
Nazhiznn.
5. Struggling against sexual lusts is the most difficult of all combats; there is no age or condition, infancy and hoary age alone excepted, when man is free from it. And the adult man and woman who have not reached senility must be always on guard against the foe who is merely awaiting a favorable opportunity for an attack.
6. All passions are bom of thought and are sustained by it. But no passion is sustained and nourished by thought so much as lust. Do not dwell on lustful thoughts, but repel them.
7. Even as in eating man must learn abstinence from animals, who eat only when hungry, and stop when satisfied, so men must learn from animals in sexual matters: to refrain from sexual intercourse until attaining full maturity as the animals do, to engage in it only when irresistibly drawn, and to abstain as soon as the foetus is formed.
8. One of the surest signs that a man truly means to
lead an upright life is a man's austerity with himself in sexual life.
VI.
Matrimony
1. It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Nevertheless to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
/. Cor., vii, 1-2.
2. The Qiristian doctrine does not set down hard and fast rules for all. It merely points to that perfection after which we must strive. It is the same in sexual matters. Perfection is absolute chastity. And every degree of striving by personal effort, to approach perfection is a greater or lesser degree of obeying the doctrine.
3. Marriage is the promise of two persons, a man and a woman, to have children only one from the other. Either of the two failing to carry out this promise, commits a sin which falls back most harshly upon the sinning one.
4. In order to attain a goal one must aim beyond it. And to make a marriage indissoluble, to have both partners remain faithful one to the other, it is necessary for both to aim at chastity.
5. It is a grievous error to think that the marriage ceremony performed on two persons releases the contracting parties from the necessity of sexual abstinence with the object of attaining even in the marriage union an ever increasing degree of chastity.
6. If man, as is the custom with us, sees in sexual intercourse, though it be sanctioned by marriage, a means of gratification, he will inevitably lapse into vice.
7. The essence of a true and valid marriage is to live together, so that children may be brought into the world.
External ceremonies, declarations or agreements do not constitute marriage, but are used by many in order to recognize as marriage only one out of many forms of living together.
8. The true Chiistian doctrine having no basis for the institution of matrimony, the people of our Christian world feel that this institution is not founded on any Christian doctrine, and remaining blind to Christ's ideal of absolute chastity (which the prevailing teachings ignore), they are absolutely without any guidance on the subject of matrimony. This accounts for the otherwise very strange phenomenon that races with religious beliefs on a far lower level than Christianity, having no exact external definitions of marriage, present family principles and marital fidelity of a much more stable order than the so-called Christian nations. Races with religious beliefs inferior to Christianity have well defined systems of concubinage or polygamy, and within certain bounds also polyandry, but they lack that utter dissoluteness manifesting itself in the concubinage, polygamy and polyandry which prevail among Christians and are hidden under the mask of a fictitious monogamy.
9. If a purpose of a meal is to feed the body, he who eats two meals at once, may attain more pleasure, but will fall short of his purpose, for the stomach will not digest both meals. If the purpose of marriage is the family, he who desires more than one wife, or she who desires more than one husband, may obtain more gratification, but will fall short of the principal pleasure justifying matrimony—^namely family life. To feed well and to purpose, man must not eat more than he can digest. A good marriage, if it is to attain its purpose, can only be when the man has no more wives, and the woman has no more hus-
bands than they need for the proper education of their children, which means only when the husband has one wife, and the wife one husband.
10. Christ was asked: Is it lawful for a man to leave one wife and take another? And he said that this ought not to be, that a man and a woman in marriage should be so joined that the twain be one body. And that this was the law of God, and that what God has joined together, no man should put asunder.
But the disciples asserted that it was hard thus to live with a wife. And Jesus told them that man need not marry, but if he did not marry he must live a pure life.
11. In order to make marriage rational and moral, the following is needful:
First, it must not be thought, as is done now, that every human being, male and female, must marry without fail, but on the contrary every human being, man and woman, must endeavor to preserve their purity to the best of their ability so that nothing should hinder them from giving all their powers to the service of God.
Second, to look upon sexual intercourse of one person with another of the opposite sex, no matter who they may be, as the entering upon indissoluble marriage relation.
(Matthew XIX, 4-7).
Thirdly, marriage must not be looked upon as now in the light of a license to satisfy sexual passions, but as a sin, the redemption from which consists in the fulfilment of family obligations.
12. The licensing of two persons of opposite sexes to live together sexually in marriage is not only out of accord with the Christian teaching, but is directly contrary to it.
Chastity according to the Christian doctrine is that perfection towards which a person leading the life of a
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 137
Christian should properly strive. Therefore all that hinders the approach to chastity, such as licensing of sexual relations in marriage, is opposed to the demands of the Christian doctrine.
13. If marriage is looked upon as releasing us with the moment of its conclusion from the necessity of striving after chastity, then marriage instead of curtailing lust encourages it. Unfortunately this is the attitude of the majority of people to marriage.
14. Think ten, twenty, a hundred times before you marry. To bind your life with that of another person in a sexual relation is a matter of great import.
VII.
Children are the Ransom of Sexual Sin
1. If man attained perfection and lived in chastity, mankind would cease to exist, and why, indeed, should it then live on earth, for they would become like angels who neither marry nor are given in marriage, as is told in the New Testament. But as long as men have not attained perfection, they must produce after their kind, so that their descendants, in their striving after perfection, may attain that perfection which men are destined to attain.
2. Marriage, the genuine marriage consisting in the bearing and rearing of children, is an intermediate service of God, serving God through your children. "If I have left undone the things which I ought to have done, here are my children in my place, they will do them."
This is why people who enter married life, the genuine married life having for its object the bearing of children, always experience a feeling of a certain relief and peace. They feel that they transmit a certain part of their obligations to the children that are to come. But this feeling
is lawful only when the parents joined in matrimony endeavor so to rear their children that they become the servants of God and not a hindrance to the work of God. The consciousness that if I have fallen short in yielding myself entirely to the service of God, I can do everything in my power to enable my children to do what I failed to do,—^this consciousness lends a spiritual significance both to married life and to the bringing up of children.
3. Blessed is the childhood, which amid the cruelties of earth, gives us a little glimpse of Heaven. These eighty thousand daily births of which the statistics speak are like currents of innocence and freshness which fight not only against the destruction of the species, but also against human corruption and the general infection with sin. All the good feelings evoked by the sight of the cradle and by childhood are one of the mysteries of Providence; remove this refreshing dew and the whirlwind of selfish passions will sear human society as though with fire.
If we imagined human society as consisting of a billion immortal creatures, whose number could neither increase nor decrease, where should we be, what would become of us, great Lord! We should doubtless become a thousand times more learned, but also a thousand times more evil.
Blessed be childhood for the blessing it gives in itself, and for the good it unwittingly effects by compelling and permitting us to love it. Only thanks to childhood do we see a little of Paradise here on earth. Blessed be also Death. Angels need no birth or death to live, but mankind imperatively, inevitably requires both. Amiel,
4. Marriage is justified and hallowed only through children, inasmuch as though we have failed to do all God wants us to do, we still can serve the cause of God through.
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 139
our children, if we train them right. Therefore, that marriage wherein the contracting parties desire no children is worse than adultery and any depravity.
5. Among the rich children are often looked upon as hindrance to enjoyment, or an unfortunate accident, or as a certain sort of sport if they are born in a predetermined number, and they are brought up not with any regard to those problems of human life which they must face as beings endowed with love and reason, but solely from the point of view of pleasure which they can yield to their parents. Such children are generally brought up by their parents not with any care to prepare them for a worthy activity, but to increase their height, keep them outwardly clean, fair of skin, well fed, handsome, pampered and sensual (and the false science called medicine supports the parents in this attitude). Fine apparel, entertainments, theatres, music, dances, sweetmeats, the entire order of life from pictures on boxes to novels and poems still further excite sensuousness, so that the filthiest sexual vices and diseases are the usual conditions in the youth of these unfortunate children of the rich.
6. The significance of bearing children is lost for people who look upon carnal love as a means of gratification. Instead of being the purpose and the justification of marital relations, they become a hindrance to an agreeable continuance of pleasures, and therefore both in and out of marriage the employment of means of preventing women from having children has grown apace. These people do not only deprive themselves of the sole pleasure and the only redeeming feature of marriage as afforded by the children, but also lose human dignity and semblance.
7. In all animal life, particularly in the bringing forth of children, man ought to be above the animals, but cer-
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
tainly not beneath them. But people are just in this one particular the inferior of animals. In the animal world the male and the female come together only when issue may result. But people, man and woman, come together for pleasure, without thinking whether it will lead to the birth of children or not.
8. It is not our business to argue whether the birth of children is or is not a blessing. Our business is to carry out with regard to them all of the obligations which their birth, fur which we are responsible, imposes upon us.
SLOTH
-m:- h "» ■« ■ J» ■* '
SLOTH
It is unjust to receive from people more than the iaho which you give them. But since you cannot gauge exacti whether you give more than you receive, and since furthe you may at any moment lose your strength, fall prey t disease and be compelled to receive instead of giving, er deavor, while you have the strength, to labor for others a little as possible.
I
If a Man Avails Himself of the Labors of Others, withou Laboring Himself, He Sins Grievously
1. He who will not work, neither let him eat.
Apostle Paul.
2. In making use of anything, remember that it is th \ product of human labor, and if you waste, spoil or destro
anything you waste labor, and sometimes, even human lift
3. He who does not feed himself by his own labo) but compels others to support him, is a cannibal.
Eastern Wisdom.
4. The entire code of Christian morality, in its pra< fe tical application, consists in considering all men as brother
being equal to all, and to carry this out in practice, first с all you must cease inducing others to labor for you, an in the present order of the world you must reduce to minimum your use of the labor and the products of other meaning things procured with money, spend as little mone as possible and live as simply as possible.
5. Do not let another do what you can do yoursel Let every one sweep before his own door. If every ma will do this, the street will be clean.
\
6. What is the sweetest food? The food which you have earned with your own labor. Mohammed,
7. It is a very good thing for a rich man to leave, though it be for a short season, his life of luxury, and to live, though for a brief time, as a laborer, performing with his own hands the tasks usually performed for rich men by hired servants. Let a rich man do this but once, and he will soon realize the great sinfulness of his former ways. Let him live in this fashion for a season and he will realize fully the wrongfulness of the life of the rich.
8. Men have in the habit of considering cooking, sewing and nursing children a task for women and something shameful for a man to engage in. Yet, on the contrary, it is a shameful thing for an idle man to fritter away his time with trifles and to do nothing, while a weary, frequently a weakly woman, on the threshold of childbirth, is cooking, washing and nursing children for him.
9. People living in luxury cannot love others. They cannot love others, because the things they use were made by people whom they compel to render them service, and this service is rendered unwillingly, through sheer necessity, frequently with curses of resentment. If they would love others let them first cease torturing them.
10. A monk was seeking salvation in the desert. Unceasingly he read his prayers, and twice each night he arose from his bed to pray. A peasant supplied him with food. And a doubt entered his mind whether such life was good. And he sought out an aged saint to ask his counsel. He came to the aged saint and told him all about his life, how he prayed, what words he used, how he was wont to break his sleep and lived on alms and asked the saint whether he was doing well. And the saint replied: "All these thou doest well, but go thou and look how the
peasant liveth, the one who brings thy food. Perhaps thou canst learn something from him."
The monk sought out the peasant and spent a day and a night with him. The peasant arose early in the morning and all his prayer was: "O Lord!" Then he labored all day, plowing. At night he returned home and on retiring again uttered his prayer: "O Lord!"
The monk watched the peasant's life for a day and said to himself: "There is nothing that I can learn from him." And he marveled why the saint had sent him to the peasant.
Then he returned to his adviser and told him that he had been to see the peasant, but found nothing instructive. "He does not think of God, and mentions Him only twice a day."
The saint replied: "Take this cup of oil and walk around the village, then come back, but see thou spill not one drop."
The monk did as he was bid and when he returned the saint questioned him:
"How many times didst thou remember God while bearing the cup?"
The monk admitted that he had not remembered him once. "I was only watching to see that I spilt no oil."
And the saint reproved him: "This one cup of oil so engrossed thy mind that thou didst not once think of God. The peasant feeds his family, himself and thee with his labor and care and yet twice he remembered God."
П.
It is Not a Hardship, But a Joy, to Obey the
Command to Labor
L "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy
daily bread." Such is the immutable law of the body.
Just as the law of the woman is to bear her children in pain, so the law of labor is imposed upon man. A woman cannot free herself of that law. If she adopt a child born of another, it will always be a stranger to her and she will lose the joy of motherhood. Even so with the labor of man. If a man eat the bread earned by another, he deprives himself of the joy of labor. Bondareff.
2. Man fears death and is subject unto it. A man without knowledge of good and evil might seem happy, but he irresistibly strives towards that knowledge. Man loves idleness and the satisfaction of his desires without suffering, and yet it is labor and suffering that mean life to him and to his kind.
3. What a dreadful error to think that the soul of man may live the highest life of the spirit, while his body is maintained in idleness and luxury! The body is always the first disciple of the soul. Thoreau.
4. If a man, living alone, releases himself from tlie law of laboring, he executes himself immediately through the weakening and decaying of his body. But if a man releases himself from that law by compelling others to labor for him, he immediately executes himself through the eclipsing and weakening of his soul.
5. Man lives the life of the body and of the spirit. And there is a law of the life of the body and a law of the life of the spirit. The law of the life of the body is labor. The law of the life of the spirit is love. If a man violate the law of the life of the body, the law of labor, he is bound to violate the law of the life -of the spirit, the law of love.
6. No matter how gorgeous may be the attire presented to you by a king, your homespun garments are
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 147
better; no matter how delicate may be the viands of the rich, the bread of-your own table is sweeter. Saadi.
7. If you labor much for others, do not let your labor seem burdensome, seek no praise for it, remember that your labor, if performed for others with love, avails above all things for your true self, your soul.
8. The power of God makes all people equal, taking away from those who have much, giving unto those who have little. Rich men have more things and less joy from them. The poor have fewer things, but more joy. The water from a brook, and a piece of bread taste sweeter to a poor laborer after his toil than the most expensive viands and beverages to a rich idler. The rich man has tasted all things and is bored, he finds no joy in anything. The laborer, after his toil, finds each time new pleasures in food, in drink and in rest.
9. Hell is hidden behind pleasures, Paradise behind labor and privations. Mohammed,
10. Without the toil of the hand there can be no sound body, neither can there be sound thoughts in the head.
11. Would you be always in good humor? Labor until you are weary. Idleness makes men dissatisfied and cross. Laboring beyond measure may produce the same effect.
12. One of the best and purest of pleasures is rest after labor. Kant.
in.
The Best Toil is Tilling the Soil
1. In the course of time all men will recognize that truth which has been already realized by the foremost men of all races that the principal virtue of mankind con-
F!!*S9E
148 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
sists in obeying the laws of the Supreme Being. "Earth thou art, to earth shalt thou return," this is the first law of our life which we acknowledge. And the second law is to cultivate the earth from which we were taken and to which we must return. The tilling of the soil, and the love of animals and plant life which is bound up with it, help the man best of all to realize the meaning of life, and to live it. Ruskin,
2. Agriculture is not merely one of the occupations proper to man. Agriculture is the one occupation proper to all men; agricultural labor gives man the maximum of freedom and the maximum of happiness.
3. To him who does not till the earth, the earth says: "Because thou dost not work me with thy right hand and with thy left, thou shalt always stand before the door of the stranger with other b^gars, thou shalt always live on the offal of the rich." Zarathustra.
4. In our present mode of life the most futile and useless work receives the greatest reward; work in sweat shops, tobacco factories, pharmacies, banks, business offices, or at literature, music, etc., but agricultural labor IS the poorest paid. If money rewards be considered of importance, this is very unjust. But if one considers the joy of labor and its effect upon the health of the body and the fascination of it, such a division of reward is perfectly just.
5. Manual labor, and particularly tilling the soil, is good not only for the body, but also for the soul. Men who do not labor with their hands cannot have a sound idea of things. Such men are forever thinking, speaking,
. listening or reading. Their mind has no rest, is excited and easily wanders. Agricultural labor, on the other hand,
is useful to man because in addition to resting him it enables him to realize simply, clearly and reasonably the place of man in life.
6. I am very fond of peasants. They are not educated enough to reason incorrectly. Montaigne.
IV.
What is Known as Division of Labor is Merely
a Brief for Idleness
1. Lately much has been said to show that the principal cause of success in production is division of labor. We say "division of labor," but this term is incorrect. In our society it is not labor that is divided, but human beings—these are divided into human particles, broken into small pieces, ground into dust: in a factory one man makes only one minute portion of an article, because that tiny fragment of reason which he retains is insufficient to make a complete pin or a complete nail, and is exhausted in the task of pointing the pin or heading the nail. It is true that it is good and desirable to make as many pins daily as possible, but if we realized the material with which we finish them, we would realize how unprofitable it all is. It is unprofitable because we polish them with the dust of the human soul.
It is possible to chain and torture people, to harness them like animals, to kill them like flies in the summer time, and yet these people may remain in a certain sense, perhaps in the best sense, free. But to crush their immortal souls, to choke and transform men into movers of machinery, herein is true slavery. Only this degradation and transformation of men into machines forces the workingmen to fight madly, destructively and vainly for freedom, the true meaning of which they do not understand. Their resentment is not aroused by the pressure of hunger, not by the pangs of
injured pride (these two causes have always had their effect, but the foundations of society have never been as shaky as they are now). It is not that they are not well fed, but that they do not experience any pleasure in the toil whereby they earn their daily bread, and for this reason they look upon wealth as the only source of pleasure.
It is not that these men suffer from the contempt felt for them by the upper classes, but they cannot bear their own self-contempt because they feel that the labor to which they are condemned degrades and depraves them, making them something less than men.
Never have the upper classes shown so much love and sympathy to the lower classes as now, and yet they have never been more hated. Ruskin.
2. Men, like all animals, must labor and toil with hands and feet. Men may compel others to do what they need, but still they must expend bodily energy on something. If men will not perform necessary and reasonable tasks, they will do what is useless and foolish. This is what happens among the wealthy classes.
3. The idle classes justify their idleness by claiming to attend to arts and sciences which are needful to the people. They undertake to provide the laboring people with these things, but unfortunately all that they offer under the name of arts and sciences is false arts and false sciences. So that instead of rewarding the people for their labor, they deceive and corrupt them with their offerings.
4. The European boasts to a Chinaman about the advantages of machinery production. "Machinery saves man from labor," says the European. "To be saved from labor would be a terrible calamity," retorts the Chinaman.
5. Riches may be obtained only in three ways: by
labor, begging or theft. The workingmen get so little for their labor because the share of the beggars and the thieves is too great. Henry George.
6. All men who do not labor themselves, but live by the labor of others, no matter what they may call themselves, as long as they do not labor but take the fruit of the labor of Others, all such men are robbers. And there are three classes of such robbers: some neither see, nor care to see that they are robbers, and rob their brother with equanimity; others feel that they are wrong, but imagine that they can excuse their robberies by the plea of such immaterial labors as they may consider useful to people, and they too continue to rob. Still others, and these, thanks be to God, are growing more numerous, realize their sin and endeavor to set themselves free from it.
V.
The Activities of Men Who Do Not Obey the Law of Laboring are Always Futile and Fruitless
1. The activities of idle men are such that instead of easing the labors of the working people they impose upon them additional burdens.
2. As the horse at the treadmill cannot stop, but must go on, even so is man incapable of doing nothing. Therefore there is as little merit in the fact of a man working as in the horse treading the mill. Not the fact that a man is working is of consequence, but what he is doing is of importance.
3. Man's dignity, his sacred duty and obligation demand that he use his hands and feet for the purpose for which they were given him, that he employ the food which he consumes upon the labor which produces this food, and
not to have them atrophied, or to wash them and cleanse them nor to use them merely as an instrument for conveying food, drink or cigarettes to the mouth.
4. Men who have given up working with their hands may be clever, but seldom are rational. If so much nonsense and foolishness has been written, printed and taught in our schools, if our writings, music, pictures are so refined and hard to understand, it is merely due to the fact that those who are responsible for these things do not toil with their hands and live the life of weakness and idleness.
Emerson,
5. Manual labor is particularly important because it prevents the straying of the mind: giving thought to trifles.
6. The brain of the idler is the favorite resort of the devil.
7. Men seek pleasure, rushing here and there, because they feel the emptiness of their life, but do not yet feel the emptiness of the whim that attracts them for the moment. Pascal
8. No one has ever counted the millions of days of hard, strenuous toil, the hundreds of thousands of lives which are being wasted to-day in our world upon the preparation of amusements. That is why the amusements of our world are so sad.
9. Man, like any other animal, is so made that he must work in order not to perish from hunger and cold. And this work, just as in the case of all animals, is not a torture, but a pleasure, if no one interferes with his work.
But men have so ordered their life that some, without working, compel others to work for them, and bored by this state of affairs think up all sorts of banel and vile things in order to pass away the time; others must work beyond
their strength and are embittered principally because they work for others and not for themselves.
It is not well with either of these two classes. Those wlio will not work, because their idleness ruins their souls; the others, because working to excess they waste their body.
But these latter are still better off than the idlers, for the soul is more precious than the body.
VI.
The Harm of Idleness
1. Do not be ashamed of any labor, even the dirtiest, be ashamed of one thing only, namely: idleness.
2. Do not respect people for their position or wealth, but for the work they do. The more useful this work is, the more respect they are entitled to. But it is different in the world: idle and rich men are respected, and those who perform the most useful of all labors, agriculturists and laborers, are not respected at all.
3. The idle rich seek to throw dust in people's eyes with their display of luxury. They feel that otherwise people would treat them with the contempt they deserve.
4. It is a shame for man to hear the counsel: "imitate the ant in his industry." And it is doubly shameful if he does not follow this counsel. Talmudic teaching.
5. One of the most remarkable delusions is the idea that the happiness of man consists in doing nothing.
6. Eternal idleness should have been included among the tortures of Hell, and they have given it a place among the joys of Paradise. Montaigne,
7. He who idles has always many assistants.
8. "Division of labor" is mostly an excuse for doing nothing, or performing some trifling tasks and shifting on
ЯМРЧЩ
154 THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
the shoulders of others the labor which is necessary. Those who attend to this division of labor always take for themselves such work as seems the most pleasant to them, leaving to others that which appears to them hard.
And strangely enough, they are always deceived, for the work that seems to them the most agreeable, turns out to be the most onerous in the end, and that which they avoided the most pleasant.
9. Never trouble others to do what you can do yourself.
10. Doubts, sorrows, melancholy, resentment, despair— these are the fiends that lie in wait for a man, and the moment he enters upon a life of idleness, they attack him. The surest salvation from these evil spirits is persistent phjrsical labor. When a man takes up such labor, the devils dare not approach him, but merely snarl at him from afar.
Carlyle.
11. The Devil fishing for men uses all sorts of bait. But the idle man needs no bait, he is caught with the bare hook.
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