No More Learning

PRINCE. I can't understand what it is you are
driving at. The Judean chief priests and scribes felt offended because they were, and knew them- selves to be, the representatives of those wicked lay
people of which the parable spoke.
MR. Z. But of what was it they were accused in
the parable?
PRINCE. Of not carrying out the true teaching.
POLITICIAN. I think the whole thing is clear
LADY. Do you really think that it suits your age
and position to indulge in such sneering outbursts? Don'tlistentohim,Prince. Webothwanttospeak
seriously. Now tell me this : after all, according to the parable, the husbandmen were destroyed be- cause they had killed the lord's son and heir and this is the main point in the Gospel. Why, then, do you omit it?
PRINCE. I leave it out for the simple reason that
it refers to the personal fate of Christ, which, natur-
ally, has its own importance and interest, but is, after all, inessential to that which is one and the
same for everybody.
The scoundrels lived like mushrooms for
enough.
their own enjoyment, smoked tobacco, drank spirits, ate slaughtered meat, and even treated their god to it : besides which, they got married, took the chair in the courts, and engaged in warfare.
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LADY. Whichis . . . ?
PRINCE. The carrying out of the Gospel teaching, by means of which the Kingdom of God and His
justice are attained.
LADY. Just one second : I feel everything is
nowmixedupinmyhead. . . . Whatisitweare talking about ? Ah ! (To Mr. Z. ) You have the
Gospel in your hand, so you will perhaps tell us what follows the parable in that particular
chapter.
MR. Z. (turning over the pages]. It is also stated
there that it is necessary that those things which be
Caesar's should be rendered to Caesar that the dead ;
will be raised, because God is not a God of the dead, but of the living, and there is further given a proof that Christ is not David's son, but the Son of God. Then the last two verses are against the hypocrisy and vanity of the Scribes.
LADY. You see, Prince, this is also a Gospel teaching; that the State should be recognised in lay matters, that we should believe in the resurrec- tion of the dead, and that Christ is not an ordinary man, but God's Son.
PRINCE. It is impossible to conclude anything
from a single chapter, composed no one knows when or by whom.
LADY. Oh, no !
This I know even without look-
ing up the matter in books, that not only in a single chapter, but in all the four Gospels, a great deal is said both about resurrection and about Christ's
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divinity particularly in St. John's Gospel, which is even read at funeral services.
MR. Z. As to the uncertainty of the origin of the
Gospels, it is now recognised, even by the liberal German critics, that all the four Gospels were com-
posed in the time of the Apostles, that is, in the
first century.
POLITICIAN. Why, even the thirteenth edition
of "La Vie de Jesus''1 I have noticed contains a retractation of what had originally been said about the fourth gospel.
MR. Z. One must not lag behind one's teachers.
But the principal difficulty, Prince, is that whatever our four Gospels may be, whenever and by whomso- ever they were composed, there is no other gospel extant more trustworthy and more in agreement with
your teaching than this.
GENERAL. Who told you it does not exist ? Why,
there is the fifth one, which contains nothing of Christ but the teaching about slaughtered meat and military service.
LADY. And you also? You should be ashamed ofyourself. Rememberthatthemoreyouandyour civil ally tease the Prince, the more support I shall givehimmyself. Iamsure,Prince,thatyouwant to look upon Christianity from its best side, and that your gospel, though not the same as ours, is similar to the books composed in times gone by :
something like "
L'Esprit de M. de Montesquieu,"
L'Esprit
"
de Fenelon," etc. In the same way, you
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"
or your teachers wanted to compose L'esprit de
1'Evangile. " It is only a great pity that nobody of your persuasion has done it in a small book, which could be called " The Spirit of Christianity according to the teaching of so-and-so. " You should have some sort of a catechism, so that we simple folk should not lose the thread in all your variations. Onemomentwearetoldthatthewhole thing is in the Sermon on the Mount; another moment that we must first of all labour in the sweat
ofourbrowinagriculturalwork thoughtheGospel doesnotsaythisanywhere. Genesisdoes,however, in the part where it also speaks of giving birth in
pains this, however, not being a commandment,
but only a grievous necessity. Then we are told that we must give everything we have to the poor,
and the next moment that we must not give any-
thing to anybody, since money is evil, and it is bad to do evil to others, save to ourselves and our family; whilst for the rest we must work. Then
again we are told to do nothing but contemplate. Yet again, that the mission of women is to give birth
to as many healthy children as possible, and then
suddenly that nothing of the kind is necessary. Then that we must not eat meat this is the first
stage, and why the first nobody can tell.
We must
give up now spirits and smoking, now pancakes. Last comes the objection to military service that
all evil is due to it, and that the first duty of a Christian is to refuse doing it; and whoever has not
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been officially recruited is, of course, holy as he is.
Perhaps I am talking nonsense, but this is not my
fault it is absolutely impossible for me to make head or tail of all this.
PRINCE. I also think that we require a sensible summary of the true teaching I believe it is being
prepared now.
LADY. Before it is prepared, tell me briefly what
is, in your opinion, the essence of the Gospel. PRINCE. Surely it is clear enough : it is the great
principle of the non-resistance of evil by force. POLITICIAN. And how do you deduce from this the
smoking ?
PRINCE. What smoking?
wine, meat, and amorous indulgence?
PRINCE. It seems the connection is obvious : all
these vicious habits stupefy the man stifle in him the demands of his intelligence and conscience. This is why soldiers generally go to war in a state of drunkenness.
MR. Z. Particularly to an unsuccessful war. But
wemayleavethisalone. Theruleofnotresisting
evil has its own importance apart from the question whetheritjustifiesasceticlifeordoesnot. Accord-
ing to you, if we do not resist evil by force, evil will
POLITICIAN. Oh, dear me !
I ask what connection is there between the principle of the non-resistance of evil and the rules of abstinence from tobacco,
It follows that evil exists only by our resistance or by those measures which
immediately disappear.
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we take against it, but has no real power of its own.
Properly speaking, there is no evil existing at all, and it appears only owing to our erroneous belief
that it does exist and that we begin to act in accord- ancewiththepresumption. Isn'titso?
PRINCE. No doubt it is.
MR. Z. But if there is no evil existing in reality
how will you explain the startling failure of Christ's
cause in history ? From your point of view, it has,
of course, proved an utter failure, so that no good results can be credited to it, whilst the harm done
has undoubtedly far exceeded its good effects.
PRINCE. Howis that?
MR. Z. A strange question to ask, to be sure ! Well, if you do not understand it we will examine it in a methodical manner. You agree that Christ
preached true good in a more clear, powerful, and consistent way than anybody else, didn't He ?
PRINCE. Yes, He did.
MR. Z. And the true good is not to resist evil by force, that is to resist imaginary evil, as there is no real evil existing.
PRINCE. Yes.
MR. Z. Christ not only preached, but carried out to the last end the demands of this good by suffering without any resistance the torments of crucifixion. Christ, according to you, died and did not rise. Very well. Thousands of His followers suffered the same. Very well again. But now, what has been the result of it all ?
M
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PRINCE. Would you like to see all these martyrs, as a reward of their deeds, crowned by angels with brilliant wreaths and reclining somewhere under the
trees in Elysian gardens ?
MR. Z. Oh no, there is no need to take it that way.
Of course we all, including yourself, I hope, wish all that is best and most pleasant to our neighbours,
both living and dead. But the question is not of our wishes, but of what has actually resulted from the preaching and sacrifice of Christ and His followers.
PRINCE. Resulted for whom ? For themselves ?
MR. Z. What resulted for themselves everybody knows : a painful death. But moral heroes as they
were, they willingly accepted it, not in order to get brilliant wreaths for themselves, but to secure true
benefit for others, the whole of mankind. Now I
ask you, what are the benefits earned by mankind
through their martyrdom? In the words of an old
"
The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. " In point of fact, it is quite true. But your contention is that the Church has been nothing but the distortion and ruin of true Christianity, which was, as a result, entirely forgotten by man- kind, so that it became necessary to restore every-
thing from the very beginning without any guarantee foranygreatersuccess; inotherwords,quitehope-
lessly.
PRINCE. Whyhopelessly?
MR. Z. Because you have admitted yourself that
saying,
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Christ and the first generations of Christians gave all their thoughts and sacrificed their lives for their
cause, and if, this notwithstanding, nothing resulted from their efforts, what grounds have you then for hopingforanyotherresult? Thereisonlyonein- dubitable and permanent end to all such practice of good, the same for those who initiated it, and for those who distorted and ruined it, and for those who
have been restoring it. They all, according to you, died in the past, die in the present, will die in
the future. And from the practice of good, the
preaching of truth, nothing but death ever came, comes, or promises to come. Well, what is the meaning of it all ? Isn't it strange : the non-existent
evil always triumphs and the good always falls
through to nothingness ?
LADY. Do not evil people die as well ?
MR. Z. Very much so. But the point is that the
power of evil is only confirmed by the reign of death, whereas the power of good would, on the
contrary, be disproved. Indeed, evil is obviously more powerful than good, and if the obvious is the
only thing real, then you cannot but admit that the world is the work of the evil power. How some
people, whilst recognising only the obvious reality,
and therefore admitting the predominance of evil over good, maintain at the same time that evil does
not exist, and that consequently there is no need
for fighting it this passes my understanding, and
I expect the Prince to help me in this difficulty. M2
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POLITICIAN. You had better give us first your own method of getting out of it.
MR. Z. It is quite simple. Evil really exists, and
it finds its expression not only in the deficiency of
good, but in the positive resistance and predomin- ance of the lower qualities over the higher ones in
all the spheres of Being. There is an individual evil when the lower side of men, the animal and bestial passions, resist the better impulses of the
soul, overpowering them, in the great majority of
people.
crowd, individually enslaved by evil, resists the salutary efforts of the few better men and eventually
overpowers them. There is, lastly, a physical evil in man, when the baser material constituents of his
body resist the living and enlightening power which binds them up together in a beautiful form of
organism resistandbreaktheform,destroyingthe real basis of the higher life. This is the extreme evil,calleddeath. Andhadwebeencompelledto
recognise the victory of this extreme physical evil as final and absolute, then no imaginary victories
of good in the individual and social spheres could
be considered real successes. Let us, indeed,
imagine that a good man, say Socrates, not only triumphed over his inner forces the bad passions but also succeeded in convincing and reforming his
" socialfoes,inreconstructingtheHellenic politeia. "
Now what would be the use of this ephemeral and superficial victory over evil if it is allowed finally
There is a social evil, when the human
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to triumph in the deepest strata of Being over the
very foundations of life? Because, both for the
reformer and for the reformed there is but one end :
death. By what logic would it be possible to
appraise highly the moral victories of Socrates' good
over the moral microbes of bad passions within him
and over the social microbes of the Athenian agora,
if the real victors would after all be the much worse,
baser, and coarser microbes of physical decomposi-
tion? Here no moral verbiage will protect you
against utter pessimism and despair. POLITICIAN. Wehaveheardthisbefore. Whatis
your remedy against despair ?
MR. Z. Our remedy is one : actual resurrection.
We know that the struggle between good and evil is not confined only to soul or society, but is carried
oninthedeeperspheresofthephysicalworld.
We already have recorded in the past one victory of the
good power of life the personal resurrection of One, and we are looking forward to future victories of the congregate resurrection of all. Here even evil is given its reason or the final explanation of its existence in that it serves to enhance the triumph, realisation, and power of good : if death is more powerful than mortal life, resurrection to external life is even more powerful than both of them. The
Kingdom of God is the kingdom of life triumphing through resurrection in which life there lies the
real, actual, and final good. In this rests all the power and work of Christ, in this His real love to us and
? 166 SOLOVIEV
ours to Him; whereas all the other things are only
the condition, the path, the preliminary steps. Without the faith in the accomplished resurrection
of One, and without cherishing the future resurrec- tion of all men, all talk of some Kingdom of God remains nothing but words, whilst in reality one finds only the Kingdom of Death.
PRINCE. Why that?
MR. Z. Why, because you not only admit with
everybody else the fact of death as such, that is that
men generally died, die, and will die, but you raise this fact to the position of an absolute law, which
does not in your opinion permit of a single excep- tion. But what should we call the world in which
death for ever has the force of an absolute law but the Kingdom of Death ? And what is your Kingdom of God on Earth but an arbitrary and purposeless euphemism for the Kingdom of Death ?
POLITICIAN. I also think it is purposeless, because
it is wrong to replace a known quantity by an un- known one. Nobody has seen God and nobody
knows what His Kingdom may be. But we have
all seen the death of men and animals, and we also
know that nobody in the world can escape this
supreme power of death. What is the good then
of replacing this certain "a" by some unknown
""
x ? Nothing but confusion and temptation for
the "little ones" will ever result from such a substitution.
TRINCE. I don't quite understand what it is that
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we are talking about. Death is, of course, a very
interesting phenomenon. One may perhaps call it even a law, in the sense of a phenomenon which is
universal amongst earthly beings and unavoidable foranyoneofthem. Onemayalsospeakofthe
"
absoluteness of this
hasbeenauthenticallyrecorded. Butwhatmaterial vital importance can all this have for the true Chris-
tian teaching which speaks to us, through our con- science, only one thing : that is, what we must and
what we must not do here and now? It is also obvious that the voice of conscience can refer only towhatisinourpowertodoornottodo. Forthis reason conscience not only remains silent about death, but cannot be anything else. With all its vastness for our human, worldly feelings and desires, death is not controlled by our will, and cannot there- fore have for us any moral significance. In this relation and, properly speaking, it is of course the only important one death is a fact of indifference similar, say, to bad weather. Because I recognise the unavoidable periodical existence of bad weather, and have to suffer from it to a greater or smaller extent, does it follow that for this reason I should,
instead of speaking of the Kingdom of God, speak of the kingdom of bad weather ?
MR. Z. No, you should not; firstly, because it reigns only in St. Petersburg, and we both come here to the Mediterranean and laugh at it; and, secondly,
your comparison is faulty, because even in bad
law," as until now no exception
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weather you are able to praise God and feel yourself in His Kingdom, whilst the dead, as you know from the Bible, do not praise God. I agree for these reasons with his Excellency that it is more appro- priate to call this world the Kingdom of Death than the Kingdom of God.
LADY. Why are you arguing all the time about
titles ? It is so uninteresting. Titles, surely, matter very little. You had better tell me, Prince, what you actually understand by the Kingdom of God and His Truth.
PRINCE. By this I understand the state of men when they act only in accordance with their inner conscience and thus carry out the will of God, which
prescribes them nothing but pure good.
MR. Z. The voice of conscience, however, speaks
ofperformingwhatisdueonlynowandhere. Isn't this the view you hold ?
PRINCE. You are quite correct.
MR. Z. But does your conscience remain silent about those wicked deeds which you may have com- mitted in your youth in relation to people long since dead?
PRINCE. In such cases the meaning of such reminders would be to warn me against repeating similar deeds now.
MR. Z. Well, it is not exactly so, but we need not argue about it. I would only like to indicate anothermoreincontestablelimitofconscience. The moralists have for a long time been comparing the
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voice of conscience with that genius or demon which
accompanied Socrates, warning him against things he should not do, but never giving a positive
indication as to what he should do. Precisely the same may be said of conscience.
PRINCE. Howisthat? Doesnotconsciencesug-
gest to me, say, that I should help my neighbour in case of need or danger?
MR. Z. I am very glad to hear this from you. But if you examine such cases thoroughly you will see that the role of conscience even here remains purely negative : it demands from you only that you should not remain inactive or indifferent in face of your neighbour's need, but as to what and how you should do, this your conscience does not disclose.
PRINCE. Naturally so, because it depends on the circumstances of the case, on my own position, and that of the neighbour whom I must help.
MR. Z. Just so. But weighing and appraising these circumstances isjiot a matter for conscience,
but for your reason.
PRINCE. How can you separate reason from
conscience ?
MR. Z. Youneednotseparatethem,butyoumust
distinguish them. Because just in reality it some- times happens that reason and conscience become
not only separated but even opposed to each other. Should they be one and the same thing, how would it then be possible for reason to be used for acts
not only foreign to morality, but positively immoral ?
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And,youknow,thisdoeshappen. Why,evenhelp can be offered in a way that is approved by reason butisinimicaltomoralconsciousness. Forinstance, I may give food and drink and show other considera- tion to a needy man in order only to make him an
accomplice in a fraud I am preparing, or any other wicked act.
PRINCE. Well, it is, of course, so elementary. But what conclusion do you deduce from it?
MR. Z. The conclusion that if the voice of con-
science, however important it may be for the pur-
pose of warning and reproving you, does not at the
same time give you any positive and practically definite instructions for your conduct ; and if, further,
our good will requires reason as a subsidiary instru- ment, whereas its services prove rather doubtful as
it is equally ready of serving two masters, namely, good and evil, it follows from the above that for
carrying out the will of God and attaining to the
Kingdom of God, a third thing is necessary besides conscience and reason.
PRINCE. Whatis it, then?
MR. Z. Briefly it is the inspiration of good, or the direct and positive action of the good power itself
on us and within us. With this help from above, both reason and conscience become trustworthy assistants of good, and morality itself, instead of
"
thealwaysdoubtful goodconduct,"istransformed
into a real life in the good into an organic growth and development of the whole man of his internal
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and external self, of personality and of society, of nation and of mankind in order to attain to the vital unity of the risen past with the realising future in that external present of the Kingdom of God which will be, though on the earth, the new Earth, joined in love with the new Heaven.
PRINCE. I have nothing to say against such
poetical metaphors, but do not exactly see why men, performing the will of God according to the commandments laid down in the Gospel, are not actuated by what you call "the inspiration of
good. "
MR. Z. They are not; not only because I do not
see in their actions any signs of such an inspiration,
of those free and sweeping impulses of love (God does not measure out the spirit He gives to man);
nor only because I do not see that joyous and
compliant peace arising from possessing those gifts, if even only primary ones, do I fail to see in
you the religious inspiration, but because, properly speaking, you yourself recognise its uselessness for
you. If good is confined only to carrying out the "rule," there is no room left here for inspiration.
Is there? A "rule" is given once and for all, is definiteandthesameforeverybody. Hewhogave
that rule has been dead long since, and, according to you, has never risen to life, so that He has not for us any personal vital existence. Whilst at the same time you see the absolute, primary good, not as a father of light and life, who could breathe light
? 172 SOLOV1EV
and life straight into you, but as a prudent lord, who sent you, his hirelings, to do the work in his vineyard, while he himself lives somewhere abroad and sends his men to you to bring him his rent.
PRINCE. We did not invent that image arbitrarily,
MR. Z. No, you did not, but you do arbitrarily see in it the highest standard of relations between
man and Deity, arbitrarily casting out of the Gospel
much : so long as your lord only imposes duties on you and demands from you compliance with his
will, I do not see how you can prove to me that he is a true lord and not an impostor.
that which is the most essential part of it :
the reference to the son and heir, in which the true standard of relations between man and God is given. You say : the lord, the duties towards the lord, the will of the lord. But I will tell this
PRINCE. This is very funny, really !
But what if I know in my conscience and reason that the
lord's demands express the purest good?
MR. Z. Pardon me, I am not speaking about this.
I do not deny that the lord demands good from you. But how does it follow that he is good him- self?
PRINCE. What else could he be?
MR. Z. 'Tis strange to hear it. I, on the con-
trary, always thought that the goodness of anybody is proved not by what he wants other people to do,
but by his own acts. If this is not clear to you from the standpoint of logic, I will quote you a
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historical example. The Moscow Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, demanded in his well-known letter to Prince Andreas Kurbsky that the Prince should show the greatest goodness, the loftiest moral heroism, by refusing to resist force and meekly accepting the death of a martyr for the cause of truth. This lord's will was a will of good as far as its demands from the other man was concerned. However, it did not prove in the least that the lord who demanded that good was good himself. It is evident that 'though martyrdom for the cause of truth is of the highest moral value, this does not say anything for Ivan the Terrible, as he in that case was not a martyr, but a torturer.
PRINCE. Perhaps. But what do you want to
prove by this?
MR. Z. Simply that until you show me the good-
ness of your lord in his own deeds and not in verbal
precepts to his employees, I shall stick to my opinion that your distant lord, demanding good
from others but doing no good himself, imposing duties but showing no love, never appearing before
your eyes but living incognito somewhere abroad, isnooneelsebutthegodofthisage. . .
GENERAL. Here it is, this damned incognito!
LADY. Oh, do please say no more of this. How frightful the Devil must be with us ! (Crosses
herself? )
PRINCE. One might have anticipated that all the
time!
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MR. Z. I have no doubt, Prince, that you are
genuinely erring when you take the clever impostor for real God. The cleverness of the impostor is a
mitigating circumstance which greatly reduces your
own guilt. I myself could not see through it at once. But now I have no doubts of any kind, so
you will understand with what feeling I must look at what I consider a deceptive and seductive mask
of good.
LADY. Oh, how can you say this. It hurts one's
feelings.
PRINCE. I can assure you, madam, it has not hurt
mine. The question raised here is a general one, and it presents some considerable interest. It is
only strange that my opponent seems to imagine that it can be addressed only to me, and not to him as
well. YoudemandofmethatIshowyoutheper- sonal good deeds of my lord that would prove him to be a power of good and not of evil. Very well. But can you show any good deed of your lord which I should be unable to ascribe to
mine?
GENERAL. You have already heard of one such
deed, by which all the rest stand.
PRINCE. What is it?
MR. Z. The real victory over evil in the real re-
surrection. Only this, I repeat, opens the real Kingdom of God, whereas without it you have only the kingdom of death and sin and their creator, the Devil. Theresurrection,andnotinitsmetaphori-
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cal, but in its literal meaning here is the testimony of the true God.
PRINCE. Well, if you are pleased to believe in such mythology ! But I ask you for facts, which could be proved, and not for your beliefs.
MR. Z. Not so high up, Prince, not so high. We both start from the same belief, or, if you like, mythology, with this difference that I consistently carryitthroughtoitslogicalend; whilstyou,violat- ing logic, arbitrarily stop at the first stage. After all, you do recognise the power of good and its coming triumph over evil, don't you ?
PRINCE. Most emphatically ! MR. Z. Butwhatisit: afactorabelief?
PRINCE. A reasonable belief.
MR. Z. Let us see if it is so. Reason, as we have
been taught at school, amongst other things de- mands that nothing should be accepted without sufficient grounds. Now tell me what sufficient
grounds have you, whilst admitting the power that
good has in the moral development and perfection of man and mankind, not to admit that power
against death?
PRINCE. In my opinion it is for you to answer
why you attribute to good some power beyond the limits of the moral sphere.