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And how can we expect to subdue by violence nations whose education, traditions, and even religious training all tend to glorify resistence to the conqueror, and love of liberty as the loftiest of virtues? And how is it possible to extirpate crime by violence in the midst of communities where the same act, regarded by the government as criminal, is transformed into an heroic exploit by public opinion?

Nations and races may be destroyed by violence—it has been done. They cannot be subdued.

The power transcending all others which has influenced individuals and nations since time began, that power which is the convergence of the invisible, intangible, spiritual forces of all humanity, is public opinion.

Violence serves but to enervate this influence, disintegrating it, and substituting for it one not only useless, but pernicious to the welfare of humanity.

In order to win over all those outside the Christian fold, all the Zulus, the Manchurians, the Chinese, whom many consider uncivilized, and the uncivilized among ourselves, there is only one way. This is by the diffusion of a Christian mode of thought, which is only to be accomplished by a Christian life, Christian deeds, a Christian example. But instead of employing this one way of winning those who have remained outside the fold of Christianity, men of our epoch have done just the opposite.

In order to convert uncivilized nations who do us no harm, whom we have no motive for oppressing, we ought, above all, to leave them in peace, and act upon them only by our showing them an example of the Christian virtues of patience, meekness, temperance, purity, and brotherly love. Instead of this we begin by seizing their territory, and establishing among them new marts for our commerce, with the sole view of furthering our own interests-we, in fact, rob them; we sell them wine, tobacco, and opium, and thereby demoralize them; we establish our own customs among them, we teach them violence and all its lessons; we teach them the animal law of strife, that lowest depth of human degradation, and do all that we can to con

ceal the Christian virtues we possess. Then, having sent them a score of missionaries, who gabble an absurd clerical jargon, we quote the results of our attempt to convert the heathen as an indubitable proof that the truths of Christianity are not adaptable to everyday life.

And as for those whom we call criminals, who live in our midst, all that has just been said applies equally 'to them. There is only one way to convert them, and that is by means of a public opinion founded on true Christianity, accompanied by the example of a sincere Christian life. And by way of preaching this Christian gospel and confirming it by Christian example, we imprison, we execute, guillotine, hang; we encourage the masses in idolatrous religions calculated to stultify them; the government authorizes the sale of braindestroying poisons — wine, tobacco, opium; prostitution is legalized; we bestow land upon those who need it not; surrounded by misery, we display in our entertainments an unbridled extravagance; we render impossible in such ways any semblance of a Christian life, and do our best to destroy Christian ideas already established; and then, after doing all we can to demoralize men, we take and confine them like wild beasts in places from which they cannot escape, and where they will become more brutal than ever; or we murder the men we have demoralized, and then use them as an example to illustrate and prove our argument that people are only to be controlled by violence.

Even so does the ignorant physician act, who, having placed his patient in the most unsanitary conditions, or having administered to him poisonous drugs, afterward contends that his patient has succumbed to the disease, when had he been left to himself he would have recovered long ago.

Violence, which men regard as an instrument for the support of Christian life, on the contrary, prevents the social system from reaching its full and perfect development. The social system is such as it is, not because of violence, but in spite of it.

Therefore the defenders of the existing social system are self-deceived when they say that, since violence barely holds the evil and un-Christian elements of society in awe, its subversion, and the substitution of the moral influence of public opinion, would leave us helpless in face of them. They are wrong, because violence does not protect mankind; but it deprives men of the only possible chance of an effectual defense by the establishment and propagation of the Christian principle of life.

"But how can one discard the visible and tangible protection of the policeman with his baton, and trust to invisible, intangible public opinion? And, moreover, is not its very existence problematical? We are all familiar with the actual state of things; whether it be good or bad we know its faults, and are accustomed to them; we know how to conduct ourselves, how to act in the present conditions; but what will happen when we renounce the present organization, and confide ourselves to something invisible, intangible, and utterly unfamiliar?"

Men dread the uncertainty into which they would plunge if they were to renounce the familiar order of things. Certainly were our situation an assured and stable one, it would be well to dread the uncertainties of change. But so far from enjoying an assured position, we know that we are on the verge of a catastrophe.

If we are to give way to fear, then let it be before something that is really fearful, and not before something that we imagine may be so.

In fearing to make an effort to escape from conditions, that are fatal to us, only because the future is obscure and unknown, we are like the passengers of a sinking ship who crowd into the cabin and refuse to leave it, because they have not the courage to enter the boat that would carry them to the shore; or like sheep who, in fear of the fire that has broken out in the farmyard, huddle together in a corner and will not go out through the open gate.

How can we, who stand on the threshold of a shocking and devastating social war, before which, as those who are preparing for it tell us, the horrors of 1793 will

pale, talk seriously about the danger threatened by the natives of Dahomey, the Zulus, and others who live far away, and who have no intention of attacking us; or about the few thousands of malefactors, thieves, and murderers men whom we have helped to demoralize, and whose numbers are not decreased by all our courts, prisons, and executions?

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Moreover, this anxiety lest the visible protection of the police be overthrown, is chiefly confined to the inhabitants of cities that is, to those who live under abnormal and artificial conditions. Those who live normally in the midst of nature, dealing with its forces, require no such protection; they realize how little avails violence to protect us from the real danger that surrounds us. There is something morbid in this fear, which arises chiefly from the false conditions in which most of us have grown up and continue to live.

A doctor to the insane related how, one day in summer, when he was about to leave the asylum, the patients accompanied him as far as the gate that led into the street.

"Come with me into town!" he proposed to them.

The patients agreed, and a little band followed him. But the farther they went through the streets where they met their sane fellow-men moving freely to and fro, the more timid they grew, and pressed more closely around the doctor. At last they begged to be taken back to the asylum, to their old but accustomed mode of insane life, to their keepers and their rough ways, to strait jackets and solitary confinement.

And thus it is with those whom Christianity is waiting to set free, to whom it offers the untrammeled rational life of the future, the coming century; they huddle together and cling to their insane customs, to their factories, courts, and prisons, their executioners, and their warfare.

They ask: "What security will there be for us when the existing order has been swept away? What kind of laws are to take the place of those under which we are now living? Not until we know exactly how our

life is to be ordered will we take a single step toward making a change." It is as if a discoverer were to insist upon a detailed description of the region he is about to explore. If the individual man, while passing from one period of his life to another, could read the future and know just what his whole life were to be, he would have no reason for living. And so it is with the career of humanity. If, upon entering a new period, a program detailing the incidents of its future existence were possible, humanity would stagnate.

We cannot know the conditions of the new order of things, because we have to work them out for ourselves. The meaning of life is to search out that which is hidden, and then to conform our activity to our new knowledge. This is the life of the individual as it is the life of humanity.

CHRISTIAN

CHAPTER XI

PUBLIC OPINION ALREADY ARISES IN OUR SOCIETY, AND WILL INEVITABLY DESTROY THE SYSTEM OF VIOLENCE OF OUR LIFE. WHEN THIS WILL COME ABOUT

The condition and organization of our society is shocking; it is upheld by public opinion, but can be abolished by it — Men's views in regard to violence have already changed; the number of men ready to serve the governments decreases, and functionaries of government themselves begin to be ashamed of their position, to the point of often not fulfilling their duties-These facts, signs of the birth of a public opinion, which, in becoming more and more general, will lead finally to the impossibility of finding men willing to serve governments - It becomes more and more clear that such positions are no longer needed - Men begin to realize the uselessness of all the institutions of violence; and if this is realized by a few men, it will later be understood by all - The time when the deliverance will be accomplished is unknown, but it depends on men themselves; it depends on how much each man is willing to live by the light that is within him.

THE position of the Christian nations, with their prisons, their gallows, their factories, their accumulations of capital, taxes, churches, taverns, and public brothels, their increasing armaments, and their millions

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