Near the end of his life, the great Russian writer and thinker Leo Tolstoy, wrote “The Letter to a Hindu,” which—together with another work by Tolstoy entitled “The Kingdom of God is within You”—would have an exceptionally powerful impact on the thinking of the young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the pioneer of mass protests firmly rooted in non-violence. It was the great thinking of Gandhi, influenced by Tolstoy's message of true Christian love, that became a fundamental aspect of the exceptional path on behalf of civil rights and human rights taken by Dr. Martin Luther King in the second half of the twentieth century.
Here are some excerpts from “A Letter to a Hindu”:
Here are some excerpts from “A Letter to a Hindu”:
“A Letter to a Hindu” (1908)
If people only … freed themselves from all this harmful, stupefying ballast, the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory. One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds a place in every soul, the the truth that for our life one law is valid, namely, the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind.
The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life — for home use, as it were — but that in public life all forms of violence — such as imprisonment, executions, and wars — might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.
People continued — regardless of all that leads man forward — to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.
None of this can be fully understood, it would seem to me, without recalling the words of St. Paul (1 Cor. 2-13):
(2) And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (3) If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (4) Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant (5) or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; (6) it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. (7) It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (8) Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. (9) For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; (10) but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. (11) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. (12) For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (13) And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life — for home use, as it were — but that in public life all forms of violence — such as imprisonment, executions, and wars — might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.
People continued — regardless of all that leads man forward — to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.
None of this can be fully understood, it would seem to me, without recalling the words of St. Paul (1 Cor. 2-13):
(2) And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (3) If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (4) Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant (5) or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; (6) it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. (7) It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (8) Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. (9) For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; (10) but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. (11) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. (12) For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (13) And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
With all my Pierson love, always,
Master G.
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