2. So many victims have been sacrificed upon the altar of the god of force that twenty planets as lai^e as the earth might be peopled with these victims, and has the most insignificant part of the purpose been ever attained thereby?
Nothing has been attained, excepting that the condition of the people has steadily grown worse. And still force remains the deity of the mob. Before its blood-reeking altar mankind seems to have resolved to kneel to the sound of the drum, to the cannonading of guns and the moaning of bleeding humanity. ^. Baltou.
3. "Self preservation is the first law of nature"— maintain the opponents of the law of non-resistance.
"Agreed, what do you infer from it?" I inquire.
"I infer that self defense against everything which threatens with destruction becomes a law of nature. And from this must be deduced that struggle, and as the result of every stru^le, the ruin of the weakest, is a law of nature, and this law beyond doubt justifies war, violence and retribution; so that the direct deduction from and the consequence of the law of self preservation is that self-defense is lawful, and therefore the doctrine of non-employment of force is erroneous, being contrary to natui^ and inapplicable to the conditions of life upon earth."
I agree that self preservation is the first law of nature, and that it leads to self-defense. I admit that following the example of the lower fonns of life human beings fight with one another, injure and even slay one another under the pretence of self-defense and retribution. But I see therein only that human beir.gs, the majority of them unfortunately.
in spite of the fact that the law of their higher human nature is open to them, still continue to live according to the law of animal nature and thus deprive themselves of the most effective means of self-defense which they could use if they only chose to follow the human law of love, instead of the animal law of force,—namely, returning good for evil. A. Balhu.
4. It is clear that violence and murder arouse the wrath of a man, and his first impulse is naturally to oppose violence and murder to violence and murder. Such actions, although akin to animal nature and unreasonable, are not absurd or self-contradictory. It is different, however, with attempts to find excuses for these actions. The moment those who have the ordering of our lives attempt to justify these actions by basing them upon reason, they are compelled to build up a series of cunning and involved fictions in order to hide the senselessness of such attempts.
The principal example of such an excuse is that of an imaginary robber who tortures and slays innocent persons in your presence.
"You mig^t sacrifice your own self for the sake of your belief in the unlawfulness of force, but here you sacrifice the life of another"—so say the defenders of force.
But, in the first instance, such a robber is an exceptional circumstance. Many people may live to be a hundred years old without meeting a robber engaged in slaying innocent people before their very eyes. Why should I base my rule of life on such a fiction? Discussing real life and not fictions, we see something entirely different. We see that other people, and we ourselves, commit the most cruel deeds, not singly like the imaginary robber, but always in league with others, and not because we are criminals, like the rob-
ber, but because we are subject to the superstition of the lawfulness of force. Then again we see that the most creel actions do not proceed from the imaginary robber, but from people who base their rule of life on the supposition of the said robber. A man considering the problems of life cannot help seeing that the cause of evil among men is not in this imaginary robber, but in the human errors, one of the most crael of which is that we may do actual evil in the name of imaginary evil. A man who realizes this and addresses himself to the cause of evil, to the task of eradicating error in himself and in others, will see unfolding before his eyes so vast and fruitful a field that he will never comprehend why he should need the fiction o£ the imaginary robber for his activities.
Ruinous Effects of the Superstition of Force
1. That evil which men think to ward off with force is incomparably less than the harm they do to themselves when defending themselves by force.
2. Not Christ alone, but all the sages of the world. Brahmins, Buddhists, Greeks, taught that rational men should not repay evil with evil, but with good. But men who live by force say that this cannot be done, that this would make life worse instead of better. And they are right, as far as they are concerned, but not as far as those who suffer from force are concerned. In the worldly sense it would be worse for the former, but it would be better for all.
3. The entire teaching of Christ is to love others. To love others means to treat them as you would that others treat you. Since no one wishes to be forcibly dealt with, then treating others as you would be treated by them, you
can under no circumstances use force upon them. To say then, as confessing and practicing the teachings of Qirist, that we Christians may use force on people is like inserting a key into the lock above its proper turning place and claiming that you use the key in accordance with its purpose. Without admitting that under no circumstances man may use force on others, all the teachings of Christ are empty words.
With this conception of his teachings, you can torture, rob, slay millions ill wars, as is now being done by people calling themselves Christians, but you cannot say that you are a Christian.
4. It is hard to follow the doctrine of non-resistance, but is it easy to follow the teaching of struggle and retribution.
To answer this question open the pages of the history of any nation, and read the description of any one of a hundred thousand battles which men have fought in the name of the law of combat. Several thousand million men have been killed in these battles, so that more lives have been lost, more pain has been suffered in any one of these battles than might have been lost in the aggregate in ages of non-resistance to evil. ^ Ballou.
5. The employment of force arouses the resentment of people, and he who uses force for self-defence, not only fails, as a rule, to protect himself, but even exposes himself to greater dangers, so that to use force for self-protection is unreasonable and ineffective.
6. Each act of force merely irritates man, instead of subjugating him. So that it is clear that you cannot correct people by force.
7. If it were asked how man could strip himself en-
tirely of moral responsibility and commit the most evil deeds without a feeling of guilt, a more effective means could not be devised than the superstition that force can promote the well-being of people,
8. The error that some men may by force order the life of others is particularly harmful because men falling into this delusion cease to distinguish good from evil.
9. Force creates only a semblance of justice, but removes man from the possibility of living justly, without violence.
10. Why is Christianity so degraded? Why has morality fallen so low? There is but one cause: belief in the rule of force.
11. We fail to see all of the wickedness of force, because we submit to it.
Force, by its very nature, inevitably leads to murder.
If one man says to another: "Do this, and if you refuse, I will force you to do my will," it can only mean that if you fail to do exactly as I say, I shall in the end kill you.
12. Nothing so delays the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, as the determination of people to establish it by means of deeds contrary to its spirit: namely, by force.
VI.
Only Through Non-Resistance to Evil Will Hiunanity Be Led to Substitute the Law of Love for
the Law of Force
1. The meaning of the words: "You have heard it said. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you: do not resist evil. And if a man strike. . . . /' is perfectly clear and requires no explanation or interpretation. You cannot understand it otherwise but that Christ