Test that life by the measure of what all men have always described as happiness and you will see that this life is terribly unhappy. Indeed, what are the chief conditions of earthly happiness - those which no one disputes?

Conditions of earthly happiness

     One of the first conditions acknowledged by everyone is that man's union with nature should not be infringed - that is to say, that he should live under the open sky, in the light of the sun and in the fresh air, in contact with the earth, with vegetation, and with animals. All men have always considered that to be deprived of those things was a great misfortune. Men confined in prison feel this deprivation more than anything else. But consider the life of people who live according to the teaching of the world: the more they achieve success according to the world's teaching the more are they deprived of this condition of happiness. The higher they climb in the scale of worldly fortune the less do they see of the light of the sun, of the fields and the woods, and of wild or domestic animals. Many of them, almost all the women, live on to old age seeing the rising of the sun only once or twice in their lives, and never seeing the fields and the woods except from a carriage or a railway train, and not only without having sown or planted anything, or fed or reared cows, horses, or hens, but without even having an idea of how those animals are born, grow, and live. These people only see textiles, stone, and wood shaped by human toil, and that not by the light of the sun but by artificial light. They only hear the sounds of machines, vehicles, cannons, and musical instruments; they smell scents and tobacco-smoke; under their feet and hands they have only textiles, stone, and wood; for the most part, on account of their weak digestions, they eat highly-spiced food that is not fresh. Their movements from place to place do not save them from these deprivations. They move about in closed boxes. In the country and abroad, wherever they go, they have the same textiles and wood under their feet, the same curtains hiding the light of the sun from them, the same footmen, coachmen and porters depriving them of contact with the earth, with plants, and with animals. Wherever they may be they are deprived, like prisoners, of this condition of happiness. As prisoners console themselves with a tuft of grass that grows in the prison yard, with a spider or a mouse, so these people sometimes console themselves with puny indoor plants, a parrot, or a monkey, and even these they do not themselves rear.

     Another undoubted condition of happiness is work; in the first place voluntary work which one is fond of, and secondly physical work which gives one an appetite and sound, restful sleep. Again the more good fortune people have secured according to the world's teaching, the more are they deprived of this second condition of happiness. All the fortunate ones of the world, the men in important places and the rich, either live like prisoners, quite deprived of work and vainly struggling with diseases that arise from the absence of physical labour, and still more vainly with the ennui which overcomes them (I say vainly, because work is only joyous when it is undoubtedly needful - and they need nothing), or they do work they hate, as bankers, public prosecutors, governors, or ministers, while their wives arrange drawing-rooms, china, and costumes for themselves and their children. (I say hateful because I have never yet met one of them who praised his occupation, or did it with even as much pleasure as that with which a porter clears away the snow from before the house.) All these fortunate people are either deprived of work or are burdened with work they dislike - that is to say, they find themselves in the position in which prisoners are placed.

     The third indubitable condition of happiness is a family. And again, the further people have advanced in worldly success the less is that happiness accessible to them. Most of them are adulterers, and consciously renounce the happiness of a family, submitting only to its inconveniences. If they are not adulterers, still their children are not a joy to them but a burden, and they deprive themselves of them, trying in every way - often by most tormenting means - to make their marital unions barren. Or if they have children they are deprived of the joy of intercourse with them. By their rules they have to hand them over to strangers, for the most part quite alien people; first to foreigners,^{4 This is a reference to the common Russian practice of having a foreign nurse, governess, or tutor for young children, that they may learn a foreign language in the nursery. - A.M.} and then to the Government instructors;^{5 The Russian schools are State institutions. - A.M.} so that their family only causes them grief, their children from infancy becoming as unhappy as their parents and having only one feeling towards their parents - a desire for their death in order to inherit their property.^{6 The defence of such a life that one often hears from parents is amazing. 'I want nothing', say the parents; 'this kind of life is hard for me, but as I love my children I bear it for their sakes.' That is to say, I know by undoubted experience that our life is unhappy, and therefore . . . I educate my children so that they shall be as unhappy as I am. And therefore, out of my love for them, I place them in the full physical and moral contagion of a town; I hand them over to strangers who have only a mercenary aim in educating them; and so physically, morally, and mentally I take pains to injure my children. And this contention has to serve as justification for the irrational life the parents themselves lead! - L.T.} They are not shut up in prison, but the consequences of their life in regard to their family, are more tormenting than the deprivation of family life to which prisoners are exposed.

     The fourth condition of happiness is free, amicable intercourse with all the different people in the world. And again, the higher the rank attained by men of the world the more are they deprived of this chief condition of happiness: the higher, the narrower and the more restricted is the group of people with whom it is possible for them to associate and the lower in mental and moral development are the few people who form the enchanted circle from which there is no escape. For a peasant and his wife intercourse is open with the whole world of mankind, and if one million people do not wish to have intercourse with him he still has eighty millions of people such as himself, labouring people with whom, from Archangel to Astrakhan, without waiting for visits or introductions, he can at once enter into the closest brotherly relations. For an official with his wife there are hundreds of people on the same level as himself, but those above him do not receive him and those below him are all separated from him. For a rich man of the world and his wife a few dozen worldly families are accessible, all the rest are cut off from him. For a Minister of State, or a millionaire, and his family, there are a single dozen similarly important or wealthy people. For Emperors and Kings the circle is yet more restricted. Is not this a form of imprisonment in which the prisoner can only have intercourse with two or three warders?

     Finally, a fifth condition of happiness is a healthy and painless death. And again, the higher people stand on the social ladder the more are they deprived of this condition of happiness. Take for example a moderately rich man and his wife and an average peasant and his wife: notwithstanding all the hunger and excessive toil which, not by his fault but by the cruelty of man, a peasant has to bear, you will see that the lower the healthier and the higher the sicklier are men and women.

     Count over in your memory the rich men and their wives you have known or now know, and you will notice that most of them are ill. Among them a healthy man, who is not undergoing treatment continually or periodically summer after summer, is as much an exception as is a sick man among the peasantry. All these fortunate people without exception, begin with onanism (which has become in their class a natural condition of development), they all have bad teeth, are all grey or bald at an age when a workman is just reaching his full strength. They are nearly all subject to nervous, digestive, and sexual illnesses from gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery, and doctoring, and those who do not die young spend half their life in being doctored and taking injections of morphia, or are shrivelled cripples unfitted to live by their own exertions and capable of existing only like parasites or like those ants who are fed by slave-ants. Consider their deaths: this one shot himself; that one rotted with syphilis; another old man died from the effects of a stimulant, while another died young from a flogging to which he submitted in his desire for sex-stimulation; one was eaten alive by lice, another by worms; one drank himself to death, another died of over-eating; one from morphia, and another as the result of an abortion. They perish one after another for the sake of the world's teaching. And the crowd throngs after them and seeks, like martyrs, for suffering and destruction.

     One life after another is flung under the chariot-wheels of that god: the chariot passes on tearing them to pieces, and more and more victims, with groans, cries, and curses, fall beneath it!

World's teaching more dangerous than Christ's

     To fulfil the teaching of Christ is hard! Christ says: 'Let him that would follow me leave house, and fields, and brothers, and follow me in God's way, and he shall receive in this world a hundred times more houses, fields, and brothers, and shall also gain eternal life.'⁷ Matthew 19:29 And no one follows him. But the teaching of the world says: 'Abandon house, and fields, and brothers, and go from the village to the rotten town. Live all your life as a naked bath-attendant soaping other people's backs amid the steam, or serve in a money-changer's basement-office all your life counting other people's pence; or live as a public prosecutor, spending your whole life in the courts over law-papers and devoting yourself to making miserable people's fate yet worse; or as a Minister of State, signing unnecessary papers in a hurry all your life; or as a colonel, killing people all your life - live such a monstrous life as this, always ending in a painful death, and you will neither gain anything in this world nor will you receive life eternal.' And everyone follows this course. Christ said: 'Take up your cross and follow me' - that is to say, endure submissively the fate that has befallen you and obey me, God; and no one follows him. But the first abandoned man wearing epaulets^{8 shoulder ornaments for military uniforms - P.R.} and fit for nothing but murder, into whose head it enters, says: 'Take, not a cross but a knapsack and rifle, and follow me to all kinds of torment and to certain death' - and all follow him.

     Having abandoned their families, parents, wives, and children, and having been dressed up like fools and submitted themselves to the authority of the first man of higher rank that they happened to meet: cold, hungry, and exhausted by forced marches, they go like a herd of bullocks to the slaughter; yet they are not bullocks but human beings. They cannot but know that they are being driven to slaughter with the question unanswered - Why? And with despair in their hearts they go: and die of cold, hunger, and infectious diseases, till they are placed under a shower of bullets and cannon-balls and ordered to kill people who are unknown to them. They slay and are slain. And no one of the slayers knows why or wherefore. The Turks roast them alive on the fire, skin them, and tear out their entrails. And again to-morrow someone will whistle, and again all will follow to horrible sufferings, to death, and to obvious evil. And no one considers this hard! Neither those who endure the sufferings, nor their fathers and mothers, consider this difficult. The parents even themselves advise their children to go. It seems to them that not only is this necessary and unavoidable, but that it is also good and moral.

     It would be possible to believe that the fulfilment of Christ's teaching is difficult and terrible and tormenting, if the fulfilment of the world's teaching were easy, safe, and pleasant. But in fact the fulfilment of the world's teaching is much more dangerous and tormenting than the fufillment of Christ's teaching.

     There used, it is said, to be Christian martyrs, but they were the exception; they have been reckoned at 380,000 - voluntary and involuntary, in 1800 years. But count the worldly martyrs, and for each Christian martyr you will find a thousand worldly martyrs whose sufferings are a hundred times more terrible. Those slain in war, during the present century, are reckoned at thirty million.^{9 This book was written in 1884; and the figures relate to the nineteenth century. - A.M.}

     Now these were all martyrs to the world's teaching, who needed not even to follow the teaching of Christ but simply to abstain from following the teaching of the world, in order to have escaped from suffering and death.

     A man need only do what he wishes to do - refuse to go to war - he will be set to dig trenches, but will not be tormented in Sevastopol or Plevna. A man need but disbelieve the world's teaching that he must wear over-shoes^{10 The wearing of over-shoes or galoshes to keep one's feet dry and warm and to be able on entering a house to kick them off and have clean shoes, is here instanced as a sign of distinction from the peasant, who usually wore nothing over his high boots. - A.M.} and a watch-chain and have a drawing-room he does not need, and that he must do all the stupid things demanded of him by the world's teaching, and he will not be exposed to excessive toil and suffering, never-ending cares, and work without rest or aim; he will not be deprived of intercourse with nature, will not be deprived of congenial work, of family, and of health, and will not perish by a senseless and tormenting death.

Christ's teaching practical and simple

     It is not necessary to be a martyr in Christ's name - that is not what he teaches. He only bids us cease to torment ourselves in the name of the world's false teaching.

     Christ's teaching has a profound metaphysical meaning, it has an all-human meaning, and it has the simplest, clearest, and most practical meaning for the life of every single man. That last meaning can be expressed thus: Christ teaches men not to commit stupidities. Therein lies the simplest meaning of Christ's teaching, accessible to all.

     Christ says: Do not be angry,¹¹ See Sermon on the Mount, Matthew Chapters 5-7 - P.R. do not consider anyone your inferior - to do so is stupid. If you get angry and insult people it will be the worse for you. Christ also says: Do not run after women, but unite with one woman and live with her - it will be better for you so. He also says: Do not promise anything to people, or else they will oblige you to do stupid and evil actions. He also says: Do not return evil for evil, or the evil will return to you yet more bitterly than before: like the heavy log suspended over the store of honey, which kills the bear.^{12 The reference is to the practice of hanging a heavy block, or log, over a deposit of honey. When a bear tries to take the honey he knocks himself against the log, which swings back and hits him. The bear then strikes more fiercely at the log, which rebounding, strikes him still more heavily, and so on, until, it is said, the bear is sometimes killed by the blows he receives. - A. M.} He also says: Do not consider men foreign to you merely because they live in another country and speak another language. If you consider them as enemies and they consider you such, it will be worse for you. So do not commit all these stupidities, and it will be better for you.

     'Yes', people reply, 'but the world is so arranged that to resist its arrangements is more painful than to live in accord with them. If a man refuses military service he will be sent to a fortress and perhaps shot. If a man does not safeguard his life by acquiring the property he and his family need, he and they will die of hunger.' So people say, trying to defend the world's arrangement, but they do not think so themselves. They only speak so because they cannot deny the justice of the teaching of Christ in whom they are supposed to believe, and they must justify themselves in some way for not fulfilling that teaching. They not only do not think this, but they have never even thought about the matter at all. They believe the world's teaching and merely employ the excuse the Church has taught them,^{13 When Tolstoy says "Church" he means the established church who asserted themselves "with oaths that they possessed the truth" - P.R.} to the effect that if one fulfils Christ's teaching one must endure great suffering; and therefore they have never even tried to fulfil it. We see the innumerable sufferings people endure for the sake of the world's teaching, but in our time we never see sufferings for the sake of Christ's teaching at all. Thirty millions have perished for the world's teaching in warfare; thousands of millions have pined in a tormenting life for the sake of the world's teaching, while I know not only no millions, but not even thousands or dozens, or even one single man, who has perished by death or by a painful life of hunger and cold for the sake of Christ's teaching. It is only a ridiculous excuse, showing to what a degree Christ's teaching is unknown to us. Not only do we not share it, we have never even seriously considered it. The Church has been at pains to explain Christ's teaching so that it has appeared to us not as a teaching of life but as a bugbear.

     Christ calls men to a spring of water which is there beside them. Men are tormented by thirst, eat dirt, and drink one another's blood, but their teachers tell them that they will perish if they go to the spring to which Christ directs them. And people believe this; they suffer and die of thirst at two steps from the water, not daring to go to it. But it is only necessary to believe Christ, that he has brought blessing on earth and that he gives us who thirst a spring of living water, and to come to him, to see how insidious is the Church's deception and how insensate are our sufferings when salvation is so near at hand. It is only necessary to accept Christ's teaching simply and plainly for the terrible deception in which we all and each are living to become clear.

Life not abundance of possessions

     Generation after generation we labour to secure life by means of violence and by safeguarding our property. Our happiness seems to us to lie in obtaining the maximum of power and the maximum of property. We are so accustomed to this that Christ's teaching, that a man's happiness cannot depend on his power or his estate and that a rich man cannot be happy, seems to us like a demand to make a sacrifice for the sake of future bliss. But Christ did not think of calling us to sacrifice; on the contrary, He teaches us not to do what is worse but to do what is better for us here in this life. Christ, loving men, teaches them to refrain from securing themselves by violence and by property, just as others who love men teach them to refrain from brawling and drunkenness. He says that men, if they live without resisting others and without property, will be happier; and by the example of his own life he confirms this. He says that a man living in accord with his teaching must be prepared to die at any moment by the violence of others, by cold or hunger, and cannot be sure of a single hour's life. And we imagine this to be a terrible demand of sacrifice; but it is only a declaration of the conditions in which every man always and inevitably lives. Christ's disciple must be prepared at any moment for suffering and death. But is not a disciple of the world in the same position? We are so accustomed to our pretense that all we do for the imaginary security of our life - our armies, fortifications, stores, clothes, and doctoring, our property and our money - seems to us something that really and seriously secures our life. We forget, though it is obvious to everyone, what happened to the man who planned to build barns in order to be safe for many years. He died that same night.^{14 Luke 12:15-20 And He said to them, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses." Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: "The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?' So he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink,} and be merry."' But God said to him, 'You fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?'"> Indeed all we do to safeguard our life is just what an ostrich does, standing still and hiding its head in order not to see how it is being killed. We do worse than the ostrich: doubtfully to safeguard our doubtful life in a doubtful future, we certainly destroy our certain life in the certain present.