‘Man possesses a certain tendency to believe that he is not seen when he sees nothing, like children who close their eyes in order not to be seen.’ (Lichtenberg)

People of our times believe that the absurdity and cruelty of our lives, with the insane wealth of few and the embittered poverty of the majority, and the arms and wars, is seen by no one and that nothing prevents us from continuing such a life.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

People of the Christian world, having accepted under the guise of Christian teaching a perversion of it compiled by the Church, which replaced paganism and at first partially satisfied people by its new forms, have ceased with time to believe in this perverted Church Christianity, and have finally reached the point where they are left without any kind of religious understanding of life, or guidance for conduct resulting from it. And since, without this understanding of life and behavioral guidance common, if not to all, then to the majority of people, human life is bound to be irrational and wretched, the longer such an existence continues among the peoples of the Christian world, the more irrational and wretched their life becomes. And today life has reached such a level of irrationality and wretchedness that it cannot continue in its previous forms.

The majority of the working people, deprived of land and consequently of the possibility of enjoying the fruits of their labor, hate the landowners and capitalists who hold them in servitude. The landowners and capitalists, knowing how the workers feel about them, fear and detest them and hold them in servitude with the help of organized governmental force. And as the situation of the workers continues to deteriorate, their dependence on the rich increases; and as the rich grow richer their power, fear and loathing of the working populace increases in equal proportion. And there is the same steady increase in the arming of nation against nation, and the expenditure of more and more of the servile worker’s labor on land, water, submarine and air forces, with the sole purpose of preparing for international wholesale killings. And these killings has been, and are, committed, and cannot but be committed, since all the Christian peoples (not individually, but as nations) are united in States that hate both one another and the other non-Christian States, and are prepared to attack one another at any moment. Moreover, there is not one large Christian State which, following some unnecessary patriotic tradition, does not hold one or several smaller nations in its power against their will, compelling them to participate in the life of the larger State they hate: Austria, Prussia, England, Russia, France, with their subject nations: Poland, Ireland, India, Finland, Caucasus, Algeria, etc. Thus, apart from the growing hatred between poor and rich and between the large nations, there is an ever-increasing hatred between the oppressed nations and their subjugators. What is worst of all is that all this hatred, which is so contrary to human nature (as for instance between the larger nations and between the subjected and the subjugators), is not only not condemned like all other malicious sentiments between people, but, quite the opposite, it is praised and elevated as laudable service and virtue. The hatred of the oppressed workers for the rich and powerful is extolled as love of liberty, brotherhood and equality. The hatred of the Germans for the French and the English, and of the English for the Yankees, and of the Russians for the Japanese, etc., and vice versa, is considered the virtue of patriotism. Likewise, and even more highly valued, is the patriotic hatred the Poles have for the Russians and Prussians, and the Prussians for the Poles and Finns, and vice versa.

That is not all. All these expressions of malice do not even demonstrate that the life of the Christian nations cannot continue in this direction. These evil sentiments could be incidental, temporary phenomena if among these nations there were some kind of religious guiding principle shared by all. But there is not; there is nothing even resembling a common religious guiding principle among the Christian nations of the world. There is the lie of Church religion, and not just one but various different ones contending with one another: the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and so forth; there is the lie of science, again, several different ones contending with one another; there is the lie of politics on both an international and a party level: there are the lies of art, of traditions and customs. There are a great many widely differing lies, but there is no guidance, no moral guidance, stemming from a religious outlook on the world. And the people of the Christian world live like animals, guided in life by nothing other than personal interests and mutual strife; and they are only differentiated from animals by the fact that since time immemorial animals have kept the same stomachs, claws and fangs, while humanity moves, ever more rapidly, from dirt roads to railroads, from horses to steam, from spoken sermons and letters to the printing press, telegraph and telephone; from sailing boats to ocean liners; from side arms to gunpowder, cannons, machine guns, bombs and bomber planes. And life with telegraphs, telephones, electricity, bombs and airplanes, and with enmity between all peoples, who are guided not by some unifying spiritual principle but by alienating animal instincts, and who use intellectual faculties for their own pleasure, is becoming more and more futile and calamitous.

(Source: Translated from Russian by EarthlyFireFlies and Wikisource.)