The Kingdom of God is Within You; What is Art?

Hence, let all men to-day who wish to promote the welfare of mankind direct their efforts toward the development of this consciousness of Christian truth.

But, strange to say, those men who nowadays talk most of the amelioration of human life, and who are the acknowledged leaders of public opinion, declare this to be precisely the wrong thing to do, and that there are more effectual expedients for improving human existence. They insist that any improvement in the conditions of human life must be accomplished, not through individual moral effort, nor through the propagation of truth, but through progressive modifications in the general material conditions of life. Therefore, they say, individual effort should be devoted to the gradual reform of the everyday conditions of life; and seeing that any individual profession of the truth which may happen to be incompatible with the existing order is harmful, because it provokes, on the part of the government, an opposition which prevents the individual from continuing efforts which may be of utility to society.

According to this theory, all changes in the life of mankind proceed from the same causes that control the lives of the brute creation.

And all the religious teachers, like Moses and the Prophets, Confucius, Lao Tze, Buddha, and Christ, preached their doctrines, and their followers adopted them, not because they divined and loved the truth, but because the political, social, and, above all, the economical conditions of the nations in whose midst these doctrines found expression were favorable to their exposition and development.

Therefore the principal activity of a man who wishes to serve the world and to improve the condition of his kind should be directed, according to this theory, not to teaching and profession of the truth, but to the improvement of the outward, political, social, and, above all, economic conditions of life. The change in these conditions may be accomplished by serving the government and introducing liberal and progressive principles, by contributing to the development of commerce, by propagating socialistic principles, but, above all, by promoting the diffusion of science.

According to this doctrine, it is a matter of no consequence whether one profess the revealed truth or not; there is no obligation to live in accordance with its precepts, or to refrain from actions opposed to them, – as, for instance, to serve the government, though one considers its power detrimental; to profit by the organization of capital, though one disapproves of it; to subscribe to certain forms of religion, though one considers them superstitions. Practise in the courts of law, though one believes them to be corrupt; or enter the army, or take the oath of allegiance, or indeed lie, or do anything that is convenient. These things are trivial; for it is a matter of vital importance, instead of challenging the prevailing customs of the day, to conform to them, though they be contrary to one's convictions, satisfied meanwhile to try and liberalize the existing institutions, by encouraging commerce, propagating socialistic doctrines, and generally promoting soi-disant science and civilization. According to this convenient theory, it is possible for a man to remain a landowner, a merchant, a manufacturer, a judge, a functionary paid by the government, a soldier, an officer, and at the same time to be humanitarian, socialist, and revolutionary.

Hypocrisy, formerly growing only out of such religious doctrines as that of original sin, redemption, the Church, has in these latter days, by means of the new theory, gained for itself a scientific basis, and those whose intellectual habit of mind renders the hypocrisy of the Church unendurable, are yet deceived by this new hypocrisy with the cachet of science. If in old times a man who professed the doctrines taught by the Church could with a clear conscience take part in any political crime, and benefit by so doing, provided he complied with the external forms of his faith, men of the present day, who deny Christianity, and view the conduct of life from a secular and scientific standpoint, are every whit as sure of their own innocence, even of their lofty morality, when they participate in and benefit by the evil-doings of government.

It is not alone in Russia, but in France, England, Germany, and America as well, that we find the wealthy landed proprietor, who, in return for having allowed the men who live on his estate and who supply him with the products of the soil, extorts from these men, who are often poverty-stricken, all that he possibly can. Whenever these oppressed laborers make an attempt to gain something for themselves from the lands which the rich man calls his own, without first asking his consent, troops are called out, who torture and put to death those who have been bold enough to take such liberties.

By methods like this are claims to the ownership of land made good. One would hardly imagine that a man who lived in such a wicked and selfish manner could call himself a Christian, or even liberal. One would think that if a man cared to seem Christian or liberal, he would at least cease to plunder and to torment his fellow-men with the aid of the government, in order to vindicate his claims to the ownership of land. And such would be the case were it not for the metaphysical hypocrisy which teaches that from a religious standpoint it is immaterial whether one owns land or not, and that, from the scientific point of view, for a single individual to give up his land would be a useless sacrifice, without any effect on the well-being of mankind, the amelioration of which can only be brought about by a progressive modification of outward conditions.

Meanwhile, your modern landowner will, without the least hesitation or doubt, organize an agricultural exhibition, or a temperance society, or, through his wife and daughters, distribute warm underclothing and soup to three old women; and he will hold forth before the domestic circle, or in society, or as a member of committees, or in the public press, upon the gospel of love for mankind in general and the agricultural class in particular, that class which he never ceases to torment and oppress. And those who occupy a similar position will believe in him and sing his praises, and take counsel together upon the best methods of improving the condition of those very laboring classes they spend their lives in exploiting; and for this purpose they suggest every possible expedient, save that which would effect it, – namely, to desist from robbing the poor of the land necessary for their subsistence.

(A striking example of this hypocrisy was presented by the Russian landowners during the struggle with the famine of last year,[31 - 1892.] a famine of which they were themselves the cause, and by which they profited, not only by selling bread at the highest price, but even by disposing of the dried potato-plants for five roubles a dessiatin, to be used as fuel by the freezing peasants.)

The business of the merchant, again (as is the case with business of any kind), is based upon a series of frauds; he takes advantage of the necessities of men by buying his merchandise below, and selling it above, its value. One would think that a man, the mainspring of whose activity is what he himself in his own language calls shrewdness, ought to feel ashamed of this, and never dream of calling himself Christian or liberal while he continues a merchant. But, according to the new metaphysic of hypocrisy, he may pass for a virtuous man and still pursue his evil career; the religious man has but to believe, the liberal man but to coöperate, in the reform of external conditions to promote the general progress of commerce; the rest does not signify. So this merchant (who, besides, often sells bad commodities, adulterates, and uses false weights and measures, or deals exclusively in commodities that imperil human life, such as alcohol or opium) frankly considers himself, and is considered by others, – always provided he only does not cheat his colleagues in business and knavery, his fellow-tradesmen, – a model of conscientiousness and honesty. And if he spend one per cent of his stolen money on some public institution, hospital, museum, or school, men call him the benefactor of the people on whose exploitation all his welfare depends; and if he gives but the least part of this money to the Church or to the poor, then is he deemed an exemplary Christian indeed.

Take again the factory-owner, whose entire income is derived from reducing the pay of his workmen to its lowest terms, and whose whole business is carried on by forced and unnatural labor, endangering the health of generations of men. One would suppose that if this man professed Christian or liberal principles he would cease to sacrifice human lives to his interests. But, according to the existing theory, he encourages industry, and it would be a positive injury to society if he were to abandon his operations, even supposing he were willing to do so. And, too, this man, the cruel slave-driver of thousands of human beings, having built for those injured in his service minute houses, with gardens six feet in extent, or established a fund, or a home for the aged, or a hospital, is perfectly satisfied that he has more than atoned for the moral and physical jeopardy into which he has plunged so many lives; and he continues to live calmly, proud of his work.

We find that the functionary, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, who performs his duties to gratify his selfishness or ambition, or, as is more usually the case, for the sake of the stipend, collected in the shape of taxes from an exhausted and crippled people, – if, by a rare exception, he does not directly steal from the public treasury, – considers himself, and is considered by his equals, a most useful and virtuous member of society.

There are judges and other legal functionaries who know that their decisions have condemned hundreds and thousands of unfortunate men to be torn from their families and thrown into prison. There these hapless beings are locked up in solitary confinement, or sent to the galleys, where they go desperate and put an end to themselves by starving themselves to death, by swallowing glass, or by some such means. And who knows what the mothers, wives, and children of these men suffer by the separation and imprisonment, and the disgrace of it, – who have vainly begged for pardon for their sons, husbands, brothers, or that their lot may be a little alleviated. But the judge or other legal functionary is so primed with the current hypocrisy that he himself, his colleagues, his wife, and his friends are all quite sure, despite what he does, that he is a good and sensible man. According to the current philosophy of hypocrisy, such a man performs a duty of great importance to the public. And this man, who has injured hundreds or thousands of human beings, who owe it to him that they have lost their belief in goodness and their faith in God, goes to church with a benevolent smile, listens to the Bible, makes liberal speeches, caresses his children, bestows moral lessons upon them, for their edification, and grows sentimental over imaginary suffering.

Not only these men, their wives and children, but the entire community around them, all the teachers, actors, cooks, jockeys, live by preying upon the life-blood of the working-people, which in one way or another they absorb like leeches. Every one of their days of pleasure costs thousands of days in the lives of the workers. They see the suffering and privation of these workmen, of their wives and children, of their aged and feeble. They know what punishments are visited upon those who attempt to resist the organized system of pillage, but so far from abandoning or concealing their luxurious habits, they flaunt them in the faces of those whom they oppress and by whom they are hated. All the while they assure themselves and others that they have the welfare of the working-man greatly at heart. On Sundays, clad in rich garments, they drive in their carriages to churches where the mockery of Christianity is preached, and listen there to the words of men who have learned their falsehoods by heart. Some of these men wear stoles, some wear white cravats; they all preach the doctrine of love for one's neighbor, a doctrine belied by their daily lives. And they have all grown so accustomed to playing this part that they really believe themselves to be what they pretend.

This universal hypocrisy, which has become to every class of society at the present day like the air it breathes, is so familiar that men are no longer exasperated by it. It is very fitting that hypocrisy should signify acting or playing of a part. It has become so much a matter of course that it no longer excites surprise when the representatives of Christ pronounce a blessing over murderers as they stand in rank holding their guns in the position which signifies, in military parlance, "for prayers," or when the priests and pastors of various Christian sects accompany the executioner to the scaffold, and, by lending the sanction of their presence to murder, make men believe it compatible with Christianity. (One minister was present when experiments in "electrocution" took place in the United States.) At the International Prison Exposition recently held in St. Petersburg, where instruments of torture, such as chains, and models of prison-cells for solitary confinement, – means of torture worse than the knout or the rod, – were on exhibition, sympathetic ladies and gentlemen went to see them, and seemed greatly entertained.

No one marvels to find liberal science insisting upon the equality, fraternity, and liberty of men on the one hand, while on the other it is striving to prove the necessity of armies, executions, custom-houses, of censorship of the press, of legalized prostitution, of the expulsion of foreign labor, of the prohibition of emigration, and of the necessity and justice of colonization established by the pillage and extermination of whole races of so-called savages, etc.

They talk of what will happen when all men shall profess what they call Christianity (by which they mean the different conflicting creeds); when every one will be fed and clothed; when men will communicate with one another all over the world by telegraph and telephones, and will travel in balloons; when all working-men will accept the doctrine of socialism; when the trade unions will embrace many millions of men and possess millions of money; when all men will be educated, will read the papers, and be familiar with all the sciences.

But what good will this do if after all these improvements men are still false to the truth?

The miseries of men are caused by disunion, and disunion arises from the fact that men follow not truth, but falsehood, of which there is no end. Truth is the only bond by which men may be united; and the more sincerely men strive after the truth the nearer they approach to true unity.

But how are men to be united in the truth, or even approach it, if they not only fail to proclaim the truth which they possess, but actually think it useless to do so, and pretend to believe in something which they know to be a lie? In reality no improvement in the condition of mankind is possible while men continue to hide the truth from themselves, nor until they acknowledge that their unity, and consequently their welfare, can be promoted only by the spirit of truth; until they admit that to profess, and to act in obedience to the truth as it has been revealed to them, is more important than all things else.

Let all the material progress ever dreamt of by religious and scientific men be made; let all men accept Christianity, and let all the improvements suggested by the Bellamys and Richets, with every possible addition and correction, be carried out; and yet if the hypocrisy of to-day still flourishes, if men do not make known the truth that is within them, but go on pretending to believe what they know to be untrue, showing respect where they no longer feel it, their condition will never improve; on the contrary, it will become worse. The more men are raised above want, the more telegraphs, telephones, books, newspapers, and reviews they possess, the more numerous will be the channels for the diffusion of falsehood and hypocrisy, and the more at variance and miserable will men become, – and it is even so at the present time.

Let all those material changes take place, and still the position of humanity will in no way be improved by them; but let every man, so far as he is able, begin at once and live up to his highest ideal of the truth or, at the least, cease to defend a lie, then indeed should we see even in this year of 1893 such an advance in the establishment of the truth upon earth, and in the deliverance of mankind, as could hardly be hoped for in a hundred years.

It was not without reason that the only harsh and denunciatory words that Christ uttered were addressed to hypocrites. It is neither theft, nor robbery, nor murder, nor fornication, nor fraud, but falsehood, that particular hypocritical falsehood, which destroys in men's conscience the distinction between good and evil, which corrupts them and takes from them the possibility of avoiding evil and of seeking good, which deprives them of that which constitutes the essence of a true human life, – it is this which bars the way to all improvement. Those men who do evil, knowing not the truth, inspire in the beholder compassion for their victims and repugnance for themselves, but they only injure the few whom they molest. Whereas those men who, knowing the good, yet pursue the evil, wearing all the while the mantle of hypocrisy, commit a wrong, not only against themselves and their victims, but also against thousands of other men who are deceived by the falsehood under which they conceal the wrong.

Thieves, robbers, murderers, rogues, who commit acts which they themselves, as well as other men, know to be evil, serve as a warning to show men what is evil, and make them hate it. Those, however, who steal, rob, torture, and murder, justifying themselves by pretended religious, scientific, or other motives, like the landowners, merchants, factory-owners, and government servants of the present time, by provoking imitation, injure not only their victims, but thousands and millions of men who are corrupted by their influence, and who become so blinded that they cannot distinguish the difference between good and evil.

One fortune acquired by trading in the necessaries of life or in articles that tend to demoralize men, or by speculations in the stock exchange, or by the acquisition of cheap lands which subsequently rise in value by reason of the increasing needs of the people, or by the establishment of factories that endanger human health and human lives, or by rendering civil or military service to the State, or by any occupation that tends to the demoralization of mankind, – a fortune acquired in any of these ways, not only permitted, but approved by the leaders of society, when, furthermore, it is supported by a show of charity, surely demoralizes men more than millions of thefts, frauds, or robberies, – sins committed against the laws of the land and subject to judicial prosecution.

A single enforcement of capital punishment, ordained by men of education and wealth, sanctioned by the approval of the Christian clergy, and declared to be an act of justice essential to the welfare of the State, tends far more to degrade and brutalize mankind than hundreds and thousands of murders committed in passion by the ignorant. A more demoralizing scene than the execution suggested by Jukovsky, calculated as it is to excite a feeling of religious exaltation, it would be difficult to conceive.[32 - See vol. iv. of the works of Jukovsky (a Russian poet).]

A war, even of the shortest duration, – with all its customary consequences, the destruction of harvests, the thefts, the unchecked debauchery and murders, with the usual explanations of its necessity and justice, with the accompanying glorification and praise bestowed upon military exploits, upon patriotism, devotion to the flag, with the assumption of tenderness and care for the wounded, – will do more in one year to demoralize men than thousands of robberies, arsons, and murders committed in the course of centuries by individual men carried away by passion.

The existence of one household, one not even extravagant beyond the ordinary limits, esteeming itself virtuous and innocent, which yet consumes the production of enough to support thousands of the men who live near in poverty and distress, has a more degrading influence on mankind than innumerable orgies of gross shopkeepers, officers, or workmen who are addicted to drink and debauchery, and who smash mirrors and crockery by way of amusement.

One solemn procession, one religious service, or one sermon from the pulpit, embodying a falsehood which the preacher himself does not believe, does infinitely more harm than thousands of frauds, adulterations of food, etc.

Men talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees; but the hypocrisy of our contemporaries far surpasses the comparatively harmless sanctimoniousness of the Pharisees. They at least had an outward religious law, whose fulfilment may perhaps have prevented them from discerning their duty toward their neighbors; indeed, those duties had not then been distinctly defined. To-day there is no such law. (I do not consider such gross and stupid men as even now believe that sacraments or absolution of the Pope can free them from sins.) On the contrary, the law of the gospel, which in one form or another we all profess, makes our duties perfectly plain. Indeed, those precepts which were but vaguely indicated by certain of the prophets have since been so clearly formulated, have grown to be such truisms, that the very school-boys and hack writers repeat them. Therefore men of our times cannot feign ignorance concerning them.

Those men who enjoy the advantages of the existing system, and who are always protesting love for their neighbor, without suspicion that their own lives are an injury to their neighbors, are like the robber who, caught with an uplifted knife, his victim crying desperately for help, protests that he did not know that he was doing anything unpleasant to the man whom he was in the act of robbing and about to murder. Since the denial of this robber and murderer would be of no avail, his act being patent to all observers, it would seem equally futile for our fellow-citizens, who live by the sufferings of the oppressed, to assure themselves and others that they desire the welfare of those whom they never cease to rob, and that they had not realized the nature of the methods by which their prosperity had been attained.

We can no longer persuade ourselves that we do not know of the one hundred thousand men in Russia alone who have been shut up in galleys or in prisons for the purpose of securing to us our property and our peace; and that we do not know of the existence of those courts of law at which we preside, to which we bring our accusations, which sentence those men, who have attacked our property or our lives, to the galleys, to imprisonment, or to exile, where human beings, no worse than they who have pronounced judgment upon them, become degraded and lost; nor that we do not know that everything that we possess has been won and is preserved at the expense of murder and violence. We cannot shut our eyes and pretend that we do not see the policeman, who, armed with a revolver, paces before our window, protecting us while we are eating our excellent dinner, or when we are at the theater seeing a new play; nor do not know of the existence of the soldiers who will appear armed with guns and cartridges whenever our property is menaced. We know perfectly well that if we finish our dinner, see the new play to its end, enjoy a merry-making at Christmas, take a walk, go to a ball, a race, or a hunt, we owe it to the policeman's revolver or the ball in the soldier's musket, which will pierce the hungry belly of the disinherited man who, with watering mouth, peeps round the corner at our pleasures, and who might interrupt them if the policeman or the soldiers in the barracks were not ready to appear at our first call. Hence, as the man who is caught in the act of robbery in broad daylight cannot deny that he threatened his victim with a knife for the purpose of stealing his purse, it might be supposed that we could no longer represent to ourselves and to others that the soldiers and policemen whom we see around us are here, not for the purpose of protecting us, but to repulse foreign enemies, to assure public order, to adorn by their presence public rejoicings and ceremonies. We cannot pretend we do not know that men are not fond of starving to death. We know that they do not like to die of hunger, being deprived of the right to earn their living from the soil upon which they live, that they are not anxious to work ten to fourteen hours a day underground, standing in water, or in over-heated rooms, twelve or fourteen hours a day, or at night, manufacturing articles which contribute to our pleasures. It would seem impossible to deny what is so evident, and yet it is what we do deny.

It cannot be denied that there are people of the wealthy class, and I am glad to say that I meet them more and more frequently, particularly in the younger generation and among women, who, on being reminded by what means and at what a price their pleasures are obtained, instantly admit the truth of it, and with bowed heads exclaim: "Ah, do not tell us of it! If it is as you say, one cannot live!" If, however, there are some who are willing to admit their sin, though they know not how to escape from it, still, the majority of men nowadays have become so confirmed in hypocrisy that they boldly deny facts that are patent to every one who has eyes.

"It is all nonsense," they say. "No one forces the people to work for the landowners or in the factories. It is a matter of mutual accommodation. Large properties and capital are indispensable, because they enable men to organize companies and provide work for the laboring classes, and the work in mills and factories is by no means so dreadful as you represent it. When real abuses are found to exist, the government and society in general take measures to abolish them and to render the labor of the working-men easier and more agreeable. The working-classes are used to physical labor, and are not as yet capable of doing anything else. The poverty of the people is caused neither by the landowners nor by the tyranny of the capitalists; it springs from other causes, – from ignorance, disorder, and intemperance. We, the governing classes, who counteract this state of poverty by wise administration; and we, the capitalists, who counteract it by the multiplication of useful inventions; and we, the liberals, who contribute our share by instituting trade unions and by diffusing education, – these are the methods by which we promote the welfare of the people, without making any radical change in our position. We do not wish all to be poor like the poor; we wish all to be rich like the rich.

"As to torturing and killing men for the purpose of making them work for the rich, that is all sophistry; the troops are sent out to quell disturbances when men, not appreciating their advantages, rebel and disturb the peace essential for the general welfare. It is equally necessary to restrain malefactors, for whom prisons, gallows, and the like are established. We are anxious enough to abolish them as far as possible ourselves, and are working for that purpose."

Hypocrisy, which nowadays is supported by two methods, the quasi-religious and the quasi-scientific, has attained such proportions, that if we did not live in its atmosphere continually, it would be impossible to believe that humanity could sink to such depths of self-deception. Men have reached so surprising a state, their hearts have become so hardened, that they look and do not see; listen, and do not hear or understand.

For a long time they have been living a life that is contrary to their conscience. Were it not for the aid of hypocrisy they would be unable so to live, for such a life, so opposed to conscience, can only continue because it is veiled by hypocrisy.

And the greater the difference between the practice and the conscience of men, the more elastic becomes hypocrisy. Yet even hypocrisy has its limits, and I believe that we have reached them.

Every man of the present day, with the Christian consciousness that has involuntarily become his, may be likened to a sleeper who dreams that he is doing what even in his dream he knows he ought not to do. In the depths of his dream-consciousness he realizes his conduct, and yet seems unable to change his course, and to cease doing that which he is aware he should not do.

Then, in the progress of his dream, his state of mind becoming less and less endurable, he begins to doubt the reality of what has seemed so real, and makes a conscious effort to break the spell that holds him.

The average man of our Christian world is in exactly the same strait. He feels that everything going on around him is absurd, senseless, and impossible; that the situation is becoming more and more painful, that it has indeed reached the crisis.

It is impossible that we of the present age, endowed with the Christian conscience that has become a part of our very flesh and blood as it were, who live with a full consciousness of the dignity of man and the equality of all men, who feel our need for peaceable relations with each other and for the unity of all nations, should go on living in such a way. It is impossible that all our pleasures, all our satisfactions, should be purchased by the sufferings and the lives of our brethren; impossible that we should be ready at a moment's notice to rush upon each other like wild beasts, one nation against another, and relentlessly destroy the lives and labor of men, only because one foolish diplomatist or ruler says or writes something foolish to another.

It is impossible; and yet all men of our time see that this is what does happen every day, and all wait for the catastrophe, while the situation grows more and more strained and painful.

And as a man in his sleep doubts the reality of his dream and longs to awaken and return to real life, so the average man of our day cannot, in the bottom of his heart, believe the terrible situation in which he finds himself, and which is growing worse and worse, to be the reality. He longs to attain to a higher reality, the consciousness of which is already within him.

And like this sleeper, who has but to make the conscious effort to ask himself whether it be a dream, in order to transform its seeming hopelessness into a joyous awakening, our average man has but to make a conscious effort and ask himself, "Is not all this an illusion?" in order to feel himself forthwith like the awakened sleeper, transported from an hypocritical and horrible dream-world into a living, peaceful, and joyous real one.

And for this he has no need of any heroic achievement; he has only to make the effort prompted by his moral consciousness.

But is man able to make this effort?

According to the existing theory, one indispensable from the point of view of hypocrisy, man is not free and may not change his life.