It is quite true that it is difficult for a man of our times to stand aside from all participation in governmental violence.But the fact that not every one can so arrange his life as not to participate in some degree in governmental violence does not at all show that it is not possible to free one's self from it more and more.Not every man will have the strength to refuse conscription (though there are and will be such men), but each man can abstain from voluntarily entering the army, the police force, and the judicial or revenue service; and can give the preference to a worse paid private service rather than to a better paid public service.Not every man will have the strength to renounce his landed estates (though there are people who do that), but every man can, understanding the wrongfulness of such property, diminish its extent.Not every man can renounce the possession of capital (there are some who do) or the use of articles defended by violence, but each man can, by diminishing his own requirements, be less and less in need of articles which provoke other people to envy.
Not every offcial can renounce his government salary (though there are men who prefer hun ger to dishonest governmental employment), but every one can prefer a smaller salary to a larger one for the sake of having duties less bound up with violence; not every one can refuse to make use of government schools (although there are some who do), but every one can give the preference to private schools, and each can make less and less use of articles that are taxed, and of goverernment institutions.
Between the existing order, based on brute force, and the ideal of a society based on reasonable agreement confirnied by custom, there are an infinite number of steps, which mankind are ascending, and the approach to the ideal is only accomplished to the extent to which people free themselves from participation in violence, from taking advantage of it, and from being accustomed to it.
We do not know and cannot see, still less, like the pseudo-scientific men, foretell, in what way this gradual weakening of governments and emancipation of people will come about;nor do we know what new forms man's life will take as the gradual emancipation progresses, but we certainly do know that the life of people who, having understood the criminality and harmfulness of the activity of governments, strive not to make use of them, or to take part in them, will be quite different and more in accord with the law of life and our own consciences than the present life, in which people themselves participating in governmental violence and taking advantage of it, make a pretence of struggling against it, and try to destroy the old violence by new violence.
The chief thing is that the present arrange ment of life is bad; about that all are agreed.
The cause of the bad conditions and of the existing slavery lies in the violence used by governments.There is only one way to abolish governmental violence: that people should abstain from participating in violence.And, therefore, whether it be difficult or not, to abstain from participating in governmental violence, and whether the good results of such abstinence will or will not be soon apparent, are superfluous questions; because to liberate people from slavery there is only that one way, and no other!
To what extent and when voluntary agreement, confirmed by custom, will replace violence in each society and in the whole world will depend on the strength and clearness of people's consciousness and on the number of individuals who make this consciousness their own.Each of us is a separate person, and each can be a participator in the general movement of humanity by his greater or lesser clearness of recognition of the aim before us, or he can be an opponent of progress.Each will have to make his choice : to oppose the will of God, building upon the sands the unstable house of his brief, illusive life, or to join in the eternal, deathless movement of true life in accordance with God's will.
But perhaps I am mistaken, and the right conclusions to draw from human history are these, and the human race is not moving toward emancipation from slavery; perhaps it can be proved that violence is a needful factor of progress, and that the state, with its violence, is a necessary form of life, and that it will be worse for people if governments are abolished and if the defence of our persons and property is aholished.
Let us grant it to be so, and say that all the foregoing reasoning is wrong; but besides the general considerations about the life of humanity, each man has also to face the question of his own life; and notwithstanding any considerations about the general laws of life, a man cannot do what lie admits to be not merely harmful, but wrong.
