Social life can be bettered only by individual self-denial.  (Daily Reading, January 19th)

Do what you have to do in life according to divine will, and in that way you will improve the lives of everybody.  (Daily Reading, January 17th)

Fifteen years ago I wrote:

The crushing heaviness of evil is weighing down on men.  They are seeking the way to free themselves.  They know that by uniting their efforts they would be able to lift up this weight and throw it off, but they cannot agree as to how they shall work when everyone is dropping lower and lower and leaving the weight on the shoulders of the rest.  Thus, it is getting heavier and heavier for the greater number, and this weight would have crushed them long ago if men had not been found who thought less of the consequences of their acts than of the agreement of their conduct with the calls of their consciences.

These men are Christians.  They are that because, instead of seeking to attain the external goal for which one must get the consent of all, they see only the internal goal, for the realization of which it is not necessary to agree with anyone.  And yet, here is the foundation of true Christianity.  That is why freedom from the servitude in which we find ourselves at present is impossible for those who seek it in collective effort.  It can only be obtained by the substitution of the law of love, that fundamental principle of Christianity, for the law of violence.

This doctrine says to each individual: You cannot know the end of social life.  You can only picture it as a form of progressive approach towards universal happiness, towards the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth.  On the other hand, you are aware of the aim of personal life: it is the development in each of the greatest amount of love, in order that the Kingdom of God may be realized.  This aim is certain and is easy to approach.  You can be ignorant of the best methods for attaining the external goal.

You can meet obstacles in the way of its realization, but nothing can stop your drawing nearer to inner perfection, which is the increase of love in you and in others.  So it is enough to institute, in the place of the illusory social aim, this individual aim of life.  It is the only sure and accessible aim, and the chains that you thought were fastening you forever will drop immediately, and you will feel yourself absolutely free…

The Christian can ignore the laws established by the State because he has no need of them for himself, or for others; he considers that human life is better assured by the law of love professed by him than by the law of violence that one wants to impose on him…  Having recognized the efficacy of the law of love, he does not consider the law of violence obligatory, and he denounces the other as the most horrible of mistakes…

The profession of true Christianity, which includes the precept of nonresistance to evil by violence, relieves those faithful to this doctrine from any external authority.  Much better, it gives them the possibility of obtaining better conditions in life, those that men seek vainly by changing its external forms.  In reality, these forms change only after the modifications that have arisen in men’s consciences, and in the measure in which this conscience has evolved.

It was not the orders of a government that abolished the murder of children, tortures, or slavery, but the universal conscience that caused these orders.  Since the evolution of conscience determines the changes in the modes of life, the contrary, as well, should happen (or so they say).  As it is more agreeable and easier to modify external forms (because the results are more apparent), this activity is preferred to the one whose aim is to modify conscience.  That is why one is more frequently occupied with the foundation, rather than with the form.

It is often argued in proof of the falsity and lack of realization of the Christian doctrine that, although revealed to men nineteen centuries ago, it has been adopted by them only outwardly.  It is said that, even if it has been known for so long a time, it has not become our rule of conduct.  If so many Christian martyrs have died without making any change in the order of existing things, that clearly shows that the doctrines are false and unattainable.

To think and speak thus is to say that seeds buried in the earth and not sprouting instantly are not good seeds and should be destroyed.  It was inevitable that the Christian doctrine was not embraced in its entire significance at the moment of its construction.

A doctrine ruining the whole order of existing things cannot be accepted immediately and entirely.  That is why it was embraced only in a weakened form.  The great majority of men in that epoch were incapable of assimilating this doctrine by spiritual means.  Experience had to first show them that all digressions from the commandments of the doctrine would be disastrous to them.

The doctrine was therefore accepted as a new outer cult, replacing paganism, but the pagan conditions of life did not undergo any change whatever.  Nevertheless, weakened as it was, this doctrine based on the Scripture could not help but produce a certain result.  In spite of all the efforts of the servants of false Christianity to hide its true meaning, it penetrated little by little into the consciences of men.

This double effort, positive and negative, lasted eighteen centuries.  On the one hand people were drawn further and further away from the possibility of leading reasonable and good lives; on the other hand the doctrine was coming to light more and more under its true aspect.  In our own time we already see the true Christianity, until now understood only by a few minds endowed with religious sentiments, manifested in the form of socialist doctrines, accessible to the simplest being, while social life continues to exist in evident contradiction to this truth.

One trembles before the present horrible condition of human life: taxes, clergy, great landed properties, prisons, guillotines, cannon, dynamite, millionaires, and beggars.  In reality, all these horrors are the result of our own acts.  Not only can they disappear, but they must disappear in order to be in conformity with the new conscience of humanity.  Christ said that He conquered the world, and, as a matter of fact, He has conquered it.  As dreadful as it is, the evil no longer exists, because it has disappeared from the consciences of men.[9]

Today humanity is passing through a transition phase.  Everything is ready for passing from one state to the other.  It needs only a slight push to start this passing, and it can take place at any minute.

The social conscience already condemns the former modes of life and is ready to adopt the new.  The whole world feels it, and is convinced of it.  But inertia and fear of the unknown retard its application in practice, as it has been retarded in theory for a long time.  In such cases, it sometimes needs only one word to make the force called public opinion change the whole order of things at once, and do it without a struggle or violence.

The freeing of men from servitude and ignorance cannot be obtained by revolutions, syndicates, or peace congresses, but simply by the conscience of each one of us, forbidding us to participate in violence and asking us in amazement, “Why are you doing that?”  In order for us to get free of the condition that hides our true mission from us, it is enough for us to ask in fear and indignation how anyone can insist upon our committing such horrible crimes.  And this awakening can take place at any instant.

This is what I wrote fifteen years ago, and I repeat with conviction today that this awakening is about to take place.  Certainly I shall not be there to aid in it.  I am an old man, more than eighty years of age, but I know with certainty, the same as seeing spring follow winter and night come after day, that the time has already come in the life of Christian humanity.

[9] Transcriber’s note – I take this to mean that society no longer regards the enumerated things as evil, which is a truly dreadful state of affairs.