‘Man need only divert his attention from searching for the solution to outer questions and pose the one, true inner question of how he should lead his life, and all the outer questions will be resolved in the best possible way.

We do not and cannot know what is the essence of common well-being, but we know very well that it can only be achieved through fulfilling the law of goodness that has been revealed to each person.’

‘If only instead of wishing to save the world people wished to save themselves, to liberate themselves rather than humanity, they would be doing so much more for the salvation of the world and the freedom of humanity.’ (Herzen)

In both personal and public life there is only one law: if you wish to improve life, be prepared to sacrifice it.

Go about the business of your life fulfilling God’s will and you can be certain of enhancing the overall improvement of life in the most fruitful way.

‘All that may be true, but it will only be reasonable to abstain from violence when all, or the majority of people, understand how disadvantageous, unnecessary and irrational violence is. Until this happens what can the individual person do? Should he really not defend himself? Should he really leave his life and the fates of those dear to him in the hands of evil and cruel people?’

So the question of what I should do to counteract acts of violence committed before my eyes is always based on the same primitive superstition that it is possible for man not only to know, but to organize, the future in the way he likes. For a man free of this superstition the question does not and cannot exist.

A rogue has raised his knife over his victim. I have a pistol in my hand and kill him. But I do not know, and cannot possibly know, whether the purpose of the raised knife would have been implemented. The rogue may not have carried out his evil intention, whereas I certainly commit my evil deed. Therefore, the only thing that a person can and must do in this and similar instances is what he must always do in all possible circumstances: he must do what he believes he ought to do before God and before his own conscience. A man’s conscience may demand that he sacrifice his own life but not that of another person. The same principle can be applied to the method of counteracting social evil.

Thus, to the question of what a person should do in the face of the evil committed by one, or a number of persons, the answer given by a man free of the superstition that it is possible to foresee, and to employ violence to organize, the conditions of the future, is always the same: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

‘But he steals, robs and murders, and I do not steal, rob or murder. Let him fulfill the law of reciprocity and then ask me to fulfill it,’ is what the people of our world usually say, and with greater conviction the higher their social standing. ‘I do not steal, rob or kill,’ say the governor, the minister, the general, the judge, the landowner, the merchant, the soldier, the policeman. The superstition of a social structure that justifies all kinds of violence has clouded the consciences of today’s people to such an extent that they do not see the continual, never-ending acts of theft and murder that are committed in the name of this superstition of the future order of the world; they see only rare attempts at violence committed by men who are called murderers, robbers or thieves, who cannot justify their violence as being done in the name of welfare.

‘He is a thief, a liar, a robber, he is a murderer and does not observe the rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Who says this? It is said by those very people who do not cease murdering in war and forcing people to prepare for carnage, and who steal and rob from both their own and other nations.

If the law of doing to others as you would have them do unto you has become ineffective against those members of our society called murderers, robbers and thieves, it is only because these people comprise a section of the vast majority of the population who, for generation after generation, have been continually killed, robbed and pillaged by men whose superstition prevented them from seeing the criminality of their actions.

And therefore, to the question of how to relate to those people who attempt to commit all kinds of violence against us, the only answer is: ‘Stop doing unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.’

Not to mention the complete injustice of applying the obsolete law of retribution in certain instances of violence, while the most dreadful and cruel acts of violence, committed by the State in the name of a superstition of organizing the future, are left unpunished; putting this aside, the application of crude retribution for acts of violence committed by those called robbers and thieves is, nevertheless, also blatantly irrational, and leads directly to the opposite of what is intended, since it destroys the tremendous power of public opinion, which is one hundred times more effective in protecting people from all kinds of violence than are gallows and prisons.

And this argument can be applied with striking pertinence to international relations: ‘What must we do when savages come and take away the fruits of our labor and our wives and daughters?’ say those who think only of the possibility of protecting themselves from the very same evil deeds and crimes which, they forget, they are continually committing against other nations. White men speak of the ‘Yellow Peril’, and with far more reason for doing so the Indians, Chinese, and Japanese speak of the ‘White Peril’. For it is only necessary to be free of the superstition condoning violence in order to be horrified by all those crimes that have been, and are, committed by some nations against others, and to feel still more horrified by the moral torpor of the people that results from that superstition and enables English, Russians, Germans and Americans to speak (in the face of the most dreadful crimes they have committed and continue to commit in India, Indochina, Poland, Manchuria and Algeria) not just of the dangers of the violence threatening them, but of the necessity of protecting themselves from it.

The dreadful superstition that it is possible to foresee the future shape of society serves to justify all kinds of violence in the name of that structure. It is enough for a person to free his thoughts, even temporarily, of this superstition and to look sincerely and seriously at the life of the nation for it to become clear to him that acceptance of the need to oppose evil with violence is nothing other than the justification people give to their habitual and favorite vices: vengeance, avarice, envy, ambition, pride, cowardice and spite.