“THE NON-ACTING”

by Leo Tolstoy

Translated from the Original Russian and edited by Leo Wiener

Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University

1893

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(a) The editor of a Parisian periodical, the Revue des Revues, assuming, as he writes in his letter, that the opinion of two famous writers concerning the present attitude of minds might be interesting to me, sent me two clippings from French newspapers. One of these contains Zola’s speech, the other Dumas’s letter to the editor of the Gaulois. I am very thankful to Mr. Smith for his message.

Both these documents, on account of the reputation of their authors, and their timeliness, and chiefly on account of their oppositeness, are of profound interest, and I want to express the few thoughts which they evoked in me.

It is difficult in the current literature to find, in a more succinct, powerful, and striking form, the expression of those two very fundamental forces from which the resultant for the motion of humanity is composed: one, the dead force of inertia, which strives to retain humanity on the road which it has already traversed; the other, the living force of reason, which draws it toward the light.

1 This article was in 1896 rewritten by Tolstoy in French, and was published by his French translator, Halpérine-Kaminsky, and also in the Cosmopolis. The important changes are given here in the notes marked F.

The order of the passages in the French version is as follows:

a, k, l, m, c, e, d, g, h, q, o, s, p, r, v; aa, cc, ee, dd, gg, ii, jj, ll, kk, mm, qq, ss, uu, rr, oo, ww, xx, zz. The other passages are omitted in the French.

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Zola does not approve of this, that the new teachers of youth propose to them to believe in something indefinite and vague, and he is quite right, but, unfortunately, he, on his side, proposes to them another belief, a belief in something far more vague and indefinite, in science and labour.

(b) Zola considers the question as to what the science is in which we must never stop believing to be quite solved and subject to no doubt.

(c) To work in the name of science—But the trouble is that the word “science” has a very broad and little-defined meaning, so that what some people regard as science, that is, a very important business, is considered by others, by far the greater number of men, by all the working people, as unnecessary foolishness. It cannot be said that this is due to the ignorance of the working people, who are unable to understand all the profundity of science—the learned themselves constantly deny one another. One set of scholars consider philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, political economy, the science of sciences, while other scholars, the natural scientists, consider all that a most trifling, unscientific business; and, on the other hand, what the positivists consider to be the most important sciences are regarded by the spiritualists, the philosophers, and the theologians as useless, if not harmful, occupations. More than that: in one and the same branch every system has among its very priests its ardent defenders and adversaries, who are equally competent and who express diametrically opposite opinions.

We all know that what was considered to be exclusively science and a very important matter by the Romans, what they prided themselves on, without which they considered a man to be a barbarian, was rhetoric, that is, an exercise which we now make fun of and consider not only no art, but simply foolishness. We know also that what was considered to be art and the most important business in the Middle Ages, scholasticism, we make fun of now. And I think it does not take any special daring of thought in order, from the vast amount of knowledge which in our world is regarded as an important business and is called science, to foresee at which of these our descendants, reading the description of the seriousness with which we busied ourselves with our rhetorics and scholastics, that in our time were regarded as science, will also shrug their shoulders.

(d) In our time people, having freed themselves from one kind of superstition without being cognizant of it, have fallen into other superstitions, not less groundless and harmful than those from which they have just freed themselves. Having freed themselves from the superstitions of the obsolete religions, people have fallen into scientific superstitions. At first it seems that there can be nothing in common between the beliefs of the Egyptians as to there being a bird Phoenix and the beliefs of our time as to the world having resulted from the revolution of matter and the struggle for existence, as to criminality arising from heredity, as to the existence of micro-organisms in the shape of commas, which cause all diseases, and so forth. There would seem to be nothing in common between these beliefs, but that only seems so.

We need only in imagination transfer ourselves to the mental condition of the ancient Egyptian, when his beliefs were offered to him by his priests, to convince ourselves that the bases on which he accepted his beliefs and those on which at present all kinds of scientific propositions are accepted by the men of our time are not only similar, but also absolutely identical.

As the Egyptian really did not believe in the Phoenix, but in this, that there are men who incontestably know the highest truth accessible to men, and that, therefore, it is good to believe in them, so also the men of our time believe, not in the Darwinian theory of heredity and in the commas, but in what is given out to them as the truth by the priests of science, the foundations of whose activity remain as mysterious to the believers as were for the Egyptians the activities of their priests.

I venture to say also that I have more than once observed that, as the ancient priests lied and gave out as the truth whatever occurred to them, without its being verified by anyone but their own priests, so also do the so-called men of science, frequently.

(e) Zola’s whole discourse is directed against the teachers of youth, who invite them to return to the obsolete beliefs, and Zola considers himself to be their adversary. In reality, those against whom he arms himself and those whom he champions, that is, the representatives of science, are men of the same camp.

(f) If they properly analyzed each other’s tendencies, they would find no cause for quarrels, “querelles d’amoureux,” as Dumas says. Both seek their bases of life, its prime movers, not in themselves, not in their reason, but in the external human forms of life: some, in what they call religion; others, in what they call science. Some, those who look for salvation in religion, take it from the tradition of the ancient knowledge of other men, and want to believe in this alien and ancient knowledge; others, those who look for salvation in what they call science, do not take it from their own knowledge, but from the knowledge of other men, and believe in this other knowledge. The first see the salvation of humanity in a corrected, mended, or purified Catholicism; the others see it in the aggregate of that most accidental, varied, and unnecessary knowledge which they call science and consider to be something self-acting and beneficent and, therefore, inevitably certain to correct all the defects of life and give to humanity the highest accessible good. The first seem to be intent on not seeing that what they wish to re-establish is only an empty chrysalis, from which the butterfly has long ago flown away, to lay eggs in another place, and that this reconstruction will not only fail to remove the calamities of our time, but will even increase them, by turning people’s eyes away from the real work. The second do not want to see that what they call science, being a fortuitous collection of some kind of knowledge which at the present time has interested a few idle men, can either be an innocent pastime for rich people, or, at best, an instrument of evil or good, according to whose hands it shall be in, but is unable in itself to mend anything. In reality, in the depth of their hearts, neither of them believes in the reality of the means which they propose, and both alike only try to turn their own eyes and those of other men away from the abyss before which humanity is standing already and into which, continuing to walk on the same road, it must inevitably fall. The first see this distractive means in mysticism; the others, whose representative Zola is, in the stultifying action of work for the sake of science.

The difference between the two is this, that the first believe in the ancient wisdom, the lie of which has been pointed out, and the second believe in the new wisdom, the lie of which has not yet been made manifest, and which, therefore, inspires a few naive people with a certain tremor of awe. (g) However, the superstition in the latter case is hardly less than in the first. The only difference is this, that one is the superstition of the past, the other the superstition of the present.

(h) And so, to follow the advice of Zola, by devoting one’s life to the service of what in our time and world is considered science, is not that dangerous? (i) What if I shall devote all my life to the investigation of phenomena, like those of heredity according to Lombroso’s teaching, and of Koch’s liquid, and of the formation of humus by means of the actions of worms, and of Crookes’s fourth condition of matter, and so forth, (j) and suddenly I learn before death that what I devoted my whole life to were foolish and even harmful trifles, while life was only one?

(k) There is a little-known Chinese philosopher, Lao-tse (the best translation of his book, The Book of the Way of Virtue, is that by Stanislas Julien). The essence of Lao-tse’s teaching is this, that the highest good of individual men, and especially of the aggregate of men, of nations, can be acquired through the knowledge of “Tao”—a word which is translated by “path,” “virtue,” “truth”; but the knowledge of “Tao” can be acquired only through non-acting, “le non-agir,” as Julien translates it. All the misfortunes of men, according to Lao-tse’s teaching, are due, not so much to their not having done what is necessary as to their doing what they ought not to do. And so men would be freed from all personal and especially from all social misfortunes—it is the latter that the Chinese sage has more especially in mind—if they practised non-acting (*s’ils pratiquaient le non-agir*).

(l) I believe that he is quite right. Let each man work zealously. But at what? The gambler on the Exchange, the banker, returns home from the Exchange, where he has worked zealously; the manufacturer returns from his establishment, where thousands of men ruin their lives in manufacturing mirrors, tobacco, whiskey. All these men work, but can we encourage them in their work? But perhaps we ought to speak only of men working for science.

(m) I constantly receive from all kinds of authors all kinds of pamphlets, and frequently books, with artistic and scientific studies.

One has definitely settled the question of Christian gnoseology; another has printed a book on the cosmic ether; a third has settled the social question; a fourth, the political question; a fifth, the Eastern question; a sixth edits a periodical devoted to the investigation of the mysterious forces of the spirit and of Nature; a seventh has solved the problem of the knight.

All these men work for science assiduously and zealously, but I think that the time and labour, not only of all these writers, but even of many others, have not only been wasted, but have also been harmful. They have been harmful, in the first place, because in the preparation of these writings thousands of men have manufactured the paper and the type, have set type and printed, and, above all, have fed and clothed all these workers of science, (n) and also because all these authors, instead of feeling their guilt toward society, as they would if they played cards or blindman’s buff, continue with a calm conscience to do their useless work.

(o) Who does not know those cruel men, hopeless as regards the truth, who are so busy that they never have any time, especially no time to find out whether anybody wants the work over which they are working with such zeal, or whether it is not harmful? You say to them, “Your work is useless or harmful for such and such a reason—wait, we shall discuss the matter”; but they do not listen to you, and answer with irony, “You have time to discuss the matter, since you have nothing to do, (p) but I am working on an investigation of how many times such and such a word is used by such and such an ancient author, or on the definition of the forms of the atoms, or on telepathy,” and so forth.

(q) Besides, I have always marvelled at that strange opinion, which has taken root more especially in Western Europe, that work is something like a virtue, and long before reading this idea, as clearly expressed in Zola’s discourse, I frequently marvelled at the strange significance ascribed to work.

It is only the ant in the fable, a being deprived of reason and of strivings after the good, that could have thought that work was a virtue, and that could pride itself on it.

Zola says that work makes man good; but I have observed the opposite: conscious work, the ant-like pride in one’s work, makes cruel, not only the ant, but also man.

(r) The greatest malefactors of humanity have always been very busy, never for a moment remaining without an occupation or amusement.

But even if industry is not an obvious vice, it can in no way be considered a virtue. Work can no more be a virtue than eating. Work is a necessity, the deprivation of which produces suffering, but it is by no means a virtue.

The exaltation of work is as monstrous as would be the exaltation of eating to the rank of a virtue. The significance ascribed to work in our society could have arisen only as a reaction against idleness, raised to the attribute of nobility and even now considered as a distinction among the rich and uneducated classes. Work, the exercise of one’s organs, is always a necessity for man, as is proved both by the calves who gambol about the pole to which they are tied, and by the men of the wealthy classes, the martyrs of gymnastics and of all kinds of games—cards, chess, lawn tennis, and so forth—who are not able to find any more sensible exercise for their organs.

Work is not only no virtue, but in our falsely organized society it is for the most part a means of moral anaesthetics, something like smoking or drinking, for the purpose of concealing from oneself the irregularities and viciousness of our life.

(s) “I have no time to talk with you about philosophy, morality, religion; I have to edit a daily with half a million subscribers; I have to build the Eiffel Tower, to organize the Chicago Exposition, to cut the Panama Canal, (t) to write the twenty-eighth volume of my works, to paint a picture, to write an opera.”

(u) If the men of our time did not have the excuse of their all-absorbing work, they would be unable to live as they now live. Only thanks to the fact that with their trifling and for the most part harmful work they conceal from themselves those contradictions in which they live—thanks only to that are they able to live as they do.

It is as such a means that Zola represents work to his hearers. He says directly: “This is only an empirical means for passing an honourable and almost peaceful life. But is that little, is it little to acquire good physical and moral health and to avoid the danger of a dream, by solving by work the question of the greatest happiness accessible to man?”

(v) Such is the advice given by Zola to the youth of our time.

(aa) Something quite different is said by Dumas. The chief difference between Dumas’s letter and Zola’s discourse, to say nothing of the external difference, which is this, that Zola’s discourse is directed to the youth and seems to curry favour with them (bb) (which has become a universal and disagreeable phenomenon of our time, as also the currying of favour with women by authors), (cc) while Dumas’s letter is not directed to the youth and does not make them compliments, but on the contrary points out to them their constant error of self-confidence, and so, instead of impressing upon the youth that they are very important personages and that the whole strength is in them—which they must by no means think, if they want to do something sensible—instructs not only them, but also adults and old people in very many things—the chief difference is this, that Zola’s discourse puts people to sleep, retaining them on the path on which they are travelling, assuring them that what they know is precisely what they ought to know; while Dumas’s letter wakes people, pointing out to them that their life is not at all what it ought to be, and that they do not know the chief thing which they ought to know.

(dd) Dumas, too, believes as little in the superstition of the past as in the superstition of the present. But for the very reason that he does not believe in the superstition of the past, nor in the superstition of the present, he thinks for himself, and so sees clearly, not only the present, but also the future, as those saw it who in antiquity were called “seeing” prophets. Strange though it must seem to those who, reading the works of authors, see only the external side of their authorship, and not the author’s soul, the same Dumas who wrote La Dame aux Camélias, L’Affaire Clémenceau, and so forth, now sees the future and prophesies about it. No matter how strange this may seem to us, who are accustomed to imagine a prophet in skins of animals and in the wilderness, prophecy remains prophecy, even though it is not uttered on the banks of the Jordan, but is printed on the banks of the Seine in the printing office of the Gaulois, and Dumas’s words are indeed a prophecy and bear in themselves the chief symptoms of a prophecy: in the first place, these words are the very opposite of the universal disposition of the men among whom they are uttered; in the second, the men who hear these words, in spite of themselves and not themselves knowing why, agree with them; and, in the third, which is most important, the prophecy contributes to the realization of what it predicts.

(ee) The more people will believe in this, that they may be led by something external, which acts of itself, in spite of their will, to a change and amelioration of their lives, the more difficult will this change and amelioration be. In this does the chief defect of Zola’s discourse lie. But, on the contrary, the more they will believe in what Dumas predicts, namely, that inevitably and soon there will come the time when all men shall love one another and, abandoning themselves to this love, shall change all their present life, the quicker this time will arrive. In this does the chief merit of Dumas’s letter consist. (ff) Zola advises men not to change their lives, but only to intensify their activity in the direction once started upon, and thus keeps them from changing their lives, while Dumas, by predicting an internal change of human sentiments, inspires them to change them.

(gg) Dumas predicts that men, having tried everything, will finally, in a very short time, go seriously about the application to life of the law of the “love of one another,” and will, as he says, be seized “by a madness, an insanity” of love. (hh) He says that amidst the phenomena which appear so threatening he sees already the signs of that new nascent disposition of love among men; that the armed nations no longer hate one another; that in the struggle of the wealthy classes with the poor there is no longer manifested the triumph of the victors, but the sincere compassion of the victors for the conquered and dissatisfaction and shame on account of the victory; he sees, above all, he says, centres of love-attraction form, growing like a snowball, and inevitably sure to attract everything living, which so far has not yet united with them, and he sees that by thus changing the disposition love will destroy all the evil from which people suffer.

(ii) I think that, even if we may disagree as to the nearness of the change which Dumas predicts, or even the possibility itself of such a love-infatuation of men for one another, no one will dispute the fact that, if this happened, humanity would be freed from the great majority of misfortunes which beset and menace it now. (jj) It cannot be denied that, if men did what thousands of years ago was prescribed not only by Christ, but also by all the sages of the world, that is, if, though unable to love one another as themselves, men did not do to one another what they do not want that others should do to them, if men abandoned themselves to altruism instead of egoism, if the structure of life from being individualistic were changed to a collectivistic one, as the men of science express the same idea in their bad jargon, the lives of men, instead of being miserable, would become happy. More than that: everybody recognizes the fact that life, continued on those pagan foundations of the struggle on which it is proceeding now, will inevitably bring humanity to the greatest misfortunes, and that this time is near at hand. Everybody sees that the more fully and the more energetically they shall take the land and the products of labour away from one another, the more envenomed they will become and the more inevitably will the people from whom everything has been taken away seize from the robbers what for so long a time they have been deprived of, and cruelly repay them for all their privations. (kk) Besides, all the men of our world recognize the obligatoriness for themselves of the religious Christian law of love, or the worldly law, based on the same Christian law, of respect for another’s life and for man’s personality and rights.

(ll) Men know all this, and, in spite of it, arrange their lives contrary to their advantage and security, and to the law which they profess.

(mm) Apparently there is some hidden, but important cause, which keeps people from fulfilling what is advantageous for them, what would free them from an obvious danger, and what they recognize as a religious and moral law, which is binding on them. It is certainly not for the purpose of deceiving one another that the love of one another has been extolled among them for so many centuries and is now preached from thousands of different religious and lay pulpits. It has long been time to decide that the love of one’s neighbour is an advantageous, useful, and good thing, and on its basis to build up life, or, recognizing that love is an unrealizable dream, to stop talking of it. But people still fail to do either; they continue to live contrary to love and to extol it. They evidently believe that love is possible, desirable, and proper for them, but are unable to realize it. What is the cause of it?

All the great changes in the life of one man or in the life of the whole of humanity begin and are achieved in thought only. No matter what external changes may take place in the lives of men, no matter how men may preach the necessity of changing their sentiments and acts, the lives of men will not change, unless a change takes place in their thoughts. But let a change take place in thought, and sooner or later, according to the importance of the change, it will take place in the feelings and actions and lives of men, and just as inevitably as the ship changes its direction after the turn of the rudder.

Beginning with the first words of His preaching, Christ did not say to men: “Do this way or that way, have such or such feelings,” but He said to men: “Bethink yourselves, change the comprehension of life.”

He did not say to men, “Love one another” (this He said later to His disciples, men who understood His teachings), but He said to all men what had been said before by His predecessor, John the Baptist: “Repent,” that is, bethink yourselves, change your comprehension of life, metanoeite, bethink yourselves, else you will all perish. “The meaning of your life cannot consist in this: that each of you should seek the separate good of his personality, or the good of a certain aggregate of men,” He said, “because this good, acquired at the expense of other personalities, families, nations, who are seeking the same with the same means, is obviously not only unattainable, but must inevitably bring you to perdition. Understand that the meaning of your life can be only in the fulfilment of the will of Him who sent you into it and demands of you, not the pursuit of your personal aims, but of His end, which consists in the establishment of union and love among all beings, in the establishment of the kingdom of God,

(nn) when the swords shall be forged into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks, and the lion shall lie with the lamb, as the prophets expressed it. Change your comprehension of life, or else you will perish,” said He.

But men have paid no attention to Christ and have not changed their comprehension of life, and have retained it until the present. And it is this false conception of life, which men have retained, in spite of the complexity of the forms of life and the development of the consciousness of the men of our time, that is the cause why men, comprehending the whole beneficence of love, the whole perilousness of life, which is opposed to it, recognizing it as the law of their God or the law of life, are none the less unable to follow it.

Indeed, what chance has a man of our life, who assumes the aim of his life to lie in his personal or domestic or national good, which is attained only by a tense struggle with other men striving for the same, to love those who are always in his way, and whom he must inevitably ruin in order that he may attain his own ends?

(oo) For a change of feelings and acts to take place, there must first of all take place a change of thoughts. For a change of thoughts to take place, a man must necessarily stop and turn his attention to what he must understand. For people who, with cries and the rumble of wheels, are borne to the precipice, to hear what is being shouted by those who want to save them, they must first of all stop. (pp) Else, how will a man change his thoughts, his conception of life, if he shall without cessation, with infatuation, and even urged on by men who assure him that this is necessary, work on the basis of the same false conception of life which he ought to change?

Men’s sufferings arising from the false conception of life have become so acute, the good given by the true comprehension of life has become so clear and obvious to all, that, for men to change their life in conformity with their consciousness, they must in our time undertake nothing, do nothing, but must only stop, cease doing what they have been doing, concentrate themselves, and think.

(qq) The men of our Christian world are in the condition in which men would be, if they were tugging at a light load and kept pulling in opposite directions, only because in their hurry they do not have the time to come to an agreement.

(rr) If in former times, when the wretchedness of the pagan life and the good promised in love had not yet been made so clear, people were able unconsciously to maintain slavery, executions, and wars, and with sensible arguments to defend their position, this has become absolutely impossible at present; the men of our time can live a pagan life, but they cannot justify it. (ss) The men of our Christian world need only stop for a moment in their activity, consider their position, apply the demands of their reason and heart to the conditions of life which surround them, in order that they may see that their whole life is in contradiction to their conscience, reason, and heart.

Ask each man of our time, separately, what he is guided by and what he considers it is necessary to be guided by in his life, and nearly every one will tell you that he is guided by justice, if not by love; (tt) that he personally, recognizing either the obligatoriness of the Christian teaching, or the moral worldly principles, which are based on the same Christianity, submits to these conditions of life only because they are necessary for other people; ask another, a third, and they will say the same. (uu) And they are all sincere. According to the quality of their consciousness, the majority of the men of our time ought long ago to have lived as Christians among themselves. See how they live in reality: they live like beasts.

(vv) And thus the majority of the men of the Christian world live a pagan life, not so much because they wish to live thus, as because the structure of life, which at one time was necessary to men with an entirely different consciousness, has remained the same and is supported by the turmoil of life, which gives them no time to bethink themselves and to change it according to their consciousness.

(ww) Men need but stop for a time doing what they are advised to do by Zola and by his supposed adversaries, by all those who, under the pretext of a slow and gradual progress, wish to retain the existing order—stop stultifying themselves with false beliefs and, above all, with incessant, self-satisfying work in matters which are not justified by their consciences—and they will see at once that the meaning of their life cannot be the obviously deceptive striving after the individual, domestic, national, or political good, which is based on the struggle with others; they would see that the only possible, sensible meaning of life is the one which more than eighteen hundred years ago was revealed by Christianity to mankind.

(xx) The feast has long been ready and all have long ago been called to it; but one has bought land, another is getting married, a third is examining his oxen, a fourth is building a railroad or a factory, or is busy with missionary work in Japan or India, or preaches, or introduces “Home Rule” bills or a military law, or overthrows it, or passes an examination, or writes a learned work, a poem, a novel. They have all no time, no time to come to their senses, to bethink themselves, to look at themselves and at the world, and to ask themselves: “What am I doing? What for? It cannot be that the force which brought me into the world, with my qualities of mind and love, should have produced me with these for no other purpose than to deceive me, for no other purpose than that I, imagining that for the attainment of the greatest good for my perishing personality I may dispose of my own life, and of that of others, as I please, should convince myself at last that the more I try to do so, (yy) the worse it is for me, my family, my country, and the more I depart from the demands of love and reason which are implanted in me and which do not for a moment cease putting forth their demands, and from the true good. It cannot be that these highest qualities of my soul should be given me only to act as fetters on the legs of a captive, by interfering with me in the attainment of my aims. And is it not more likely that the force which has sent me into the world has produced me with my reason and my love, not for any accidental momentary ends, which are always contrary to the ends of other beings (which it could not do, since I and my aims did not yet exist when it produced me), but for the attainment of its own ends, to cooperate with which these fundamental qualities of my soul are given me? And so would it not be better for me, instead of persisting in following my own will and the will of other men, who are opposed to these higher qualities and who bring me to these misfortunes, once and for all to recognize as the aim of my life the fulfilment of the will of Him who sent me and in everything and always, in spite of all other considerations, to follow only those indications of reason and love which He has implanted in me for the fulfilment of His will?”

Such is the Christian conception of life, which begs for recognition in the soul of every man of our time. To realize the kingdom of God, it is necessary for all men to begin to love one another without distinction of personalities, families, nationalities. For people to be able to love one another in this way, it is necessary for their life-conception to be changed. For their life-conception to be changed, it is necessary for them to come to their senses, and for them to come to their senses, they must first stop for a little while in that feverish activity to which they are devoted in the name of affairs demanded by their pagan conception of life; they must, at least for a time, free themselves from what the Hindoos call “samsara,” that turmoil of life which more than anything else keeps people from understanding the meaning of their existence.

The wretchedness of the pagan life and the clearness and diffusion of the Christian consciousness have reached such a point in our time that people need but stop in their turmoil in order at once to see the senselessness of their activity, and the Christian conception would as inevitably form itself in their consciousness as water freezes in the cold, as soon as it is not stirred.

(zz) People need only make this life-conception their own, and their love of one another, of all men, of everything living, which now is to be found in them in a latent form, will as inevitably be manifested in their activity and become the prime mover of all their acts, as now, with the pagan conception of life, there is manifested love toward oneself, toward the family exclusively, toward one’s nation exclusively.

This Christian love need only be manifested in men, and the old forms of life will fall of themselves, without the least effort, and there will be new forms of the blissful life, the absence of which presents itself to men as the chief obstacle in the realization of what their reason and heart have long been demanding.

If people employed but one-hundredth part of the energy which now they apply to the performance of all kinds of material, unjustifiable acts, which, therefore, bedim their consciousness, in the elucidation of this same consciousness, and for the fulfilment of what it demands of them, then much more quickly and much more simply than we can imagine it there would be established the kingdom of God, which He demands of them, and men would find the good which was promised to them.

“Seek ye the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

August 9, 1893.