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We live in glorious times… Was there ever so much to do? Our age is a revolutionary one in the best sense of the word – not of physical but moral revolution. Higher ideas of the social state, and of human perfection, are at work. I shall not live to see the harvest, but to sow in faith is no mean privilege or happiness. – W. E. Channing
For the worshippers of utility there is no morality except the morality of profit, and no religion but the religion of material welfare. They found the body of man crippled and exhausted by want, and in their ill-considered zeal they said, “Let us cure this body; and, when it is strong, plump, and well nourished, its soul will return to it.” But I say that that body can only be cured when its soul has been cured. In it lies the root of the disease, and the bodily ailments are but the outward signs of that disease. Humanity today is dying for lack of a common faith, a common idea uniting earth to heaven – the universe to God.
From the absence of this spiritual religion, of which but empty forms and lifeless formularies remain, and from a total lack of a sense of duty and a capacity for self-sacrifice, man, like a savage, has fallen prostrate in the dust, and has set up on an empty altar an idol: utility. Despots and the princes of this world have become his high priests, and from them has come the revolting formulary, “Each for his own alone; each for himself alone.” – Mazzini
When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. – Matthew 9:36
A Revolution is taking place in Russia, and all the world is following it with eager attention, guessing and trying to foresee whither it is tending, and to what it will bring the Russian people.
To guess at and to foresee this may be interesting and important to outside spectators watching the Russian Revolution, but for us Russians, who are living in this Revolution and making it, the chief interest lies not in guessing what is going to happen, but in defining as clearly and firmly as possible what we must do in these immensely important, terrible, and dangerous times in which we live.
Every revolution is a change of a people’s relation towards power.[1] Such a change is now taking place in Russia, and we, the whole Russian people, are accomplishing it. Therefore to know how we can and should change our relation towards power, we must understand the nature of power: what it consists of, how it arose, and how best to treat it.
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[1] Translator’s note – The word “power” occurs very frequently in this article, and is, as it were, a pivot on which it turns. We have been tempted in different places to translate it (the Russian word is vlast) as “government,” “authorities,” “force,” or “violence” according to the context. But the unity of the article is better maintained by letting a single English word represent the one Russian word, and we have followed this principle as far as possible.