Tolstoy: The Kingdom of God Is within You

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Constance Garnett (T) · Living the Life Series · 223 pages

At 223 pages the longest document in the section: Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You complete in Constance Garnett's translation, with the translator's and the author's prefaces, prefaced in turn by a short section from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. A note by the series editor and a full contents page open the file. It is one of four Tolstoy items in this section, with The Kreutzer Sonata, The Science of Life and the tale in the Down to Earth series.

The title page belongs to Blavatsky rather than to Tolstoy, and it explains why the two are bound together: Three preliminary rules for candidates to chelaship, the rules being non-resistance to evil, forgiveness, and charity to all — described as prerequisites to chelaship, with a passage from her on the topsy-turvy value of words and deeds in social life. Tolstoy's book then follows in nine long chapters, and its argument is historical before it is ethical. The first chapter maintains that the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force has been professed by a minority of men from the very foundation of Christianity, and reproduces catechisms of non-resistance in evidence. The second answers criticisms of the doctrine from believers and unbelievers alike; the third and fourth argue that Christianity has been misunderstood by believers and by men of science respectively. The remaining chapters press the contradiction between our life and our Christian conscience, examine the attitude of men of the present day to war and the significance of compulsory military service, and conclude that the doctrine must inevitably be accepted and that accepting the Christian conception of life would emancipate men from the miseries of what Tolstoy calls our pagan life.

Read the full text (PDF, 4.2 MB, 223 pages)