Love One Another

Love One Another

(Address to a Circle of Young People)

I would like to say to you at parting (at my age, every meeting with people is a parting) briefly what, according to my understanding, people must do for their life not to be the evil and grief that it now seems to most people, but to be what God wishes and what we all wish—that is, good and joy, as it ought to be.

The whole matter lies in how a person understands his life. If he understands his life to mean that this life has been given to him in his body, to Ivan, to Peter, to Maria, and that the whole business of life is to obtain as many pleasures, enjoyments, and happinesses as possible for this “I” of his—for Ivan, Peter, Maria—then life will always be unhappy and embittered for everyone.

Life will be unhappy and embittered because everything that one person wants for himself, every other person wants as well. And since everyone wants as much of every good for themselves as possible, and this good is one and the same for all such people, there is never enough of this good for everyone. And therefore, if people live each for himself, they cannot avoid taking from one another, struggling, being angry with one another, and from this their life cannot be happy. And even when people sometimes obtain what they want, it is always too little for them, and they try to get more and more; and besides this, they fear that what they have obtained will be taken from them, and they envy those who have obtained what they lack.

So that if people understand their life as each one in his own body, then the life of such people cannot help being unhappy.

Such it is now for all such people. But such—that is, unhappy—life should not be. Life has been given to us for our good, and that is how we all understand life. But for life to be such, people must understand that our true life is in no way in our body, but in that spirit which lives in our body, and that our good lies not in pleasing and doing what the body wants, but in doing what this spirit wants—this same spirit living in us as in all people. And this spirit wants good for itself, for the spirit. But since this spirit is one and the same in all people, it wants good for all people. And to wish good for all people means to love people. And no one and nothing can prevent loving people; and the more a person loves, the freer and more joyful his life becomes.

So that it turns out that a person can never satisfy the body, no matter how much he tries, because what the body needs is not always obtainable, and if you try to obtain it, you must struggle with others; but a person can always satisfy the soul, because the soul needs only love, and for love there is no need to struggle with anyone; not only is there no need to struggle with others, but on the contrary, the more you love, the more you draw closer to other people. So that nothing can prevent love, and every person who loves more becomes not only happier and more joyful himself, but makes others happy and joyful as well.

So this, dear brothers, is what I wanted to say to you at parting—to say what all the saints and wise people, and Christ, and all the sages of the world have taught you: namely, that our life is unhappy through our own fault, that the power which sent us into life and which we call God did not send us to suffer, but to have that very good we all desire, and that we fail to receive this good destined for us only when we understand life other than as we ought and do other than what we ought.

But we complain about life, that our life is badly arranged, and do not consider that it is not our life that is badly arranged but that we ourselves do not do what is needed. And this is exactly as if a drunkard were to complain that he drank himself into ruin because there are too many taverns and saloons, when in fact there are many taverns and saloons only because there are many drunkards like him.

Life has been given to people for their good, if only they would use it as it ought to be used. If only people lived not by envy of one another but by love, life would be unceasing good for all.

Now from all sides people speak only one thing: life, they say, is bad and unhappy because it is badly arranged—let us remake the bad arrangement into a good one, and our life will be good.

Dear brothers, do not believe this; do not believe that from this or that arrangement of life your life can be worse or better. I will not even mention that all those people who concern themselves with arranging a better life all disagree among themselves—they all argue among themselves: some propose one arrangement, considering it the very best, while others say that this arrangement is the very worst, and that only what they propose is good. And a third group rejects even this and proposes its own very best, and so on. But even if there were such a best arrangement, even if we agreed that the best arrangement had been devised, then how are we to make people live according to this arrangement, how maintain this good arrangement when people are accustomed to living badly and love living badly? For now we are accustomed to living badly and love living badly; whatever we take up, we spoil it, yet we say that we will live well when the arrangement is good. But how can there be a good arrangement when people are bad?

So even if there is such a best arrangement of life, in order to achieve it people must become better. Yet you are promised a good life after you, in addition to your present bad life, will also struggle with people, coerce people, even kill them, in order to introduce this good arrangement—that is, you are promised a good life after you yourselves have become even worse than now.

Do not believe this, do not believe this, dear brothers. For life to be good, there is only one means: for people themselves to be better. And when people are better, the life that should exist among good people will arrange itself on its own.

Your salvation and that of all people lies in no way in a sinful, violent arrangement of life, but in the arrangement of your own soul. Only by this, by such arrangement of the soul, will each person obtain for himself and for others the greatest good and the best arrangement of life that people can ever desire. True good, that which every human heart seeks, is given to us not in some future arrangement of life maintained by violence, but here and now, to all of us, everywhere, in every moment of life and even of death, achieved through love.

This good has been given to us from the ages; but people did not understand it and did not accept it. Now, however, the time has come when we can no longer fail to accept it—we cannot fail to accept it, first, because the ugliness and sufferings of our life have brought us to the point where our life has become unbearably agonizing. And second, because the true teaching of Christ, being revealed to us more and more, has now become so clear that we can no longer, for our own salvation, fail to recognize and accept it.

Our salvation now lies in one thing: in recognizing that our true life is not in our body but in that divine spirit which lives in us, and that therefore all the efforts we previously put into improving our bodily life, both as individuals and in society, we can and must put into the one thing needful and important for a person—into each person cultivating and strengthening in himself love not only for those who love us, but, as Christ said, for all people, and especially for those who are strangers to us and who hate us.

Our life now is so far from this that at first glance such a transfer of all one’s efforts—instead of caring for worldly affairs—to the one inconspicuous, unfamiliar thing, love for all people, seems impossible.

But this only seems so: love for all people, even for those who hate us, is much more natural to the human soul than struggle with neighbors and hatred of them. A change in the understanding of the meaning of life is not only not impossible in our time; on the contrary, what is impossible is the continuation of that embittered life of all against all that we are leading now. This change is not only not impossible; on the contrary, it alone can deliver people from the calamities they suffer, and therefore this change must sooner or later inevitably take place.

Dear brothers, why, for what reason do you torment yourselves? Only remember that the greatest good has been destined for you, and take it. Everything is within yourselves. It is so easy, so simple, and so joyful.

But perhaps people who are suffering, poor, oppressed, will say: “Yes, this may be good for the rich and those in power; it is easy for the rich and powerful to love their enemies when those enemies are in their power. But this is hard for us, the suffering and oppressed.” But this is not true. Dear brothers, to change one’s understanding of life is equally necessary for the powerful and rich, and for the subordinate and poor. And for the subordinate and poor it is easier than for the rich. The subordinate and poor need only, without changing their position, not only not do deeds contrary to love but not take part in such deeds—such as deeds of violence—and all this arrangement hostile to love will fall of itself. But for those in power it is much harder to accept and fulfill the teaching of love. For them to fulfill this teaching, they must renounce the temptations of power and wealth that possess them; and this is harder for them. The poor and subordinate need only not commit new acts of violence and, most importantly, not take part in the old.

As a person grows, so grows humanity. The consciousness of love has been growing, is growing, and has grown in our time to the point where we cannot fail to see that it must save us and become the foundation of our life. For what is happening now—these are the final convulsions of a dying life of violence, malice, and lovelessness.

For now it cannot but be clear that all these struggles, all this hatred, all these violent arrangements—all these are senseless deceits leading to nothing but ever-increasing calamities. And it cannot but be clear that the one, simplest, and easiest salvation from all this is the consciousness of the fundamental principle of the life of all people—love—that principle which inevitably, without any effort, replaces the greatest evil with the greatest good.

There is a tradition that the apostle John, having reached a very old age, was wholly absorbed in one feeling and expressed it always in the same words, saying only this: “Children, love one another.” Thus was expressed the old age—that is, the life of one person who had lived to a certain limit. Just so must the life of humanity be expressed, having lived to a certain limit.

For it is so simple, so clear: you live—that is, you were born, you grow, you mature, you grow old, and any moment now you will die. Can the purpose of your life really be in yourself? Surely not. What then, a person asks himself, what am I? And there is only one answer: I am something that loves—at first it seems I love only myself, but one need only live a little, think a little, to see that to love oneself, who is passing through life, who is dying, is impossible, is pointless. I feel that I must love and do love myself. But in loving myself, I cannot help feeling that the object of my love is unworthy of it; yet I cannot help loving. In love there is life. What then is to be done? Love others, those close to me, friends, those who love me? At first it seems that this satisfies the need for love, but all these people, in the first place, are imperfect, and in the second place, they change; and above all, they die. What then should I love? And there is only one answer: love everyone, love the principle of love, love love, love God. Love not for the sake of the one you love, not for your own sake, but for the sake of love. One has only to understand this, and at once all the evil of human life is destroyed and its meaning becomes clear and joyful.

“Yes, that would be good. What could be better?” people will say. “It would be good to love and live for love, if everyone lived this way. But I will live for love, give everything to another, while others will live for themselves, for their bodies—what will become of me, and not only of me but of my family, of those I love, cannot help loving? Talk about love has been going on for ages, but no one follows it. And it is impossible to follow. To devote one’s life to love would be possible only if all people at once, by some miracle, changed their worldly, bodily life to a spiritual, divine life. But there is no such miracle, and therefore all this is just words, not deeds.” So people speak, reassuring themselves in their false, habitual life. They speak thus, but in the depths of their soul they know that they are not right. They know that these arguments are invalid. They are invalid because only for the advantage of worldly, bodily life is it necessary that all people change their life at once; but not so for spiritual life—for love, for love of God and people. Love gives good to a person not in its consequences but in love itself; it gives him good completely independently of how other people act and what in general happens in the external world. Love gives good because a person, in loving, unites with God and not only desires nothing for himself but desires to give everything he has—his life itself—to others, and finds good in this giving of himself to God. And therefore everything that other people do, everything that may happen in the world, cannot influence his actions. To love means to give oneself to God, to do what God wants, and God is love—that is, He wants good for all and therefore cannot want the one who fulfills His law to perish.

A loving person, even alone among the unloving, does not perish. And if he does perish among people, as Christ perished on the cross, then his death too is both joyful for him and significant for others, and not desperate and insignificant as are the deaths of worldly people.

So the excuse that I do not give myself over to love because not everyone will do the same and I will be left alone is both incorrect and bad. It is exactly as if a person who needs to work to feed himself and his children would not take up work because others do not work.

Yes, dear brothers, let us lay down our lives in strengthening love within ourselves and leave the world to go as it will—that is, as it has been determined for it from above. Let us do this, and believe me, we shall receive the greatest good for ourselves and do all the good for people that we are capable of doing.

For it is so simple, so easy, and so joyful. Let every person only love—love not only those who love him but all people, especially those who hate him, as Christ taught, and life becomes an unceasing joy, and all the questions that misguided people so vainly try to resolve by violence are not only resolved but cease to exist. “And we know that we have passed from death into life, if we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother has no eternal life. Only he who loves his brother has eternal life abiding in him.”

One more word, dear brothers.

About no task can one know whether it is good or bad without having tested it in practice in life. If a farmer is told that it is good to sow rye in rows, or a beekeeper that it is good to make frame hives, then a reasonable farmer and beekeeper, in order to know for certain whether what they are told is true, will make a trial and follow or not follow what was proposed to them, according to how much they find confirmation in the experience.

The same in the whole matter of life. In order to know for certain how applicable to life are the teachings about love, test them.

Try it: commit yourself for a fixed period to follow the demands of love in everything—to live so that in all your dealings you remember above all, with every person, with a thief, a drunkard, with a rude superior or subordinate, not to depart from love—that is, in dealing with him, to remember what he needs, not yourself. And having lived thus for the appointed period, ask yourself: was it hard for you, and did you make your life worse or better? And according to what your experience gives you, decide whether it is true that the fulfillment of love gives good in life, or whether these are only empty words. Try this; try, instead of repaying an offender evil for evil, instead of condemning behind his back a person living badly, and so forth—instead of this, try to answer evil with good, to say nothing bad about a person, not to treat even an animal, a dog, roughly, but with kindness and gentleness. Live this way for a day, two, or more (as an experiment), and compare your state of soul during this time with what it used to be. Try this, and you will see how, instead of a sullen, angry, and heavy state, you will be bright, cheerful, joyful. And live this way another week and a third, and you will see how your spiritual joy will keep growing and growing, and your affairs will not only not fall apart but will go better and better.

Only try this, dear brothers, and you will see that the teaching about love is not just words but a deed, the most, most immediate deed, understood and needed by all.

—Leo Tolstoy

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Translator’s Notes:

• This address encapsulates Tolstoy’s mature religious philosophy, developed over the final three decades of his life. The emphasis on internal moral transformation over external social arrangements reflects his critique of revolutionary movements that sought to change society through violence.
• The reference to the apostle John (traditionally identified as the author of John’s Gospel and epistles) reflects a tradition that in his extreme old age, John could only repeat “Little children, love one another” (Latin: Filioli, diligite alterutrum). This tradition appears in Jerome’s commentary on Galatians.
• The quotation at the end (“we know that we have passed from death into life, if we love the brethren”) is from 1 John 3:14.
• Tolstoy’s contrast between living “for the body” and living “for the spirit” echoes Paul’s distinction between flesh and spirit (sarx and pneuma), though Tolstoy’s understanding differs from orthodox Christian theology.
• The practical “experiment” Tolstoy proposes at the end—living according to love for a set period to test its effects—reflects his empirical approach to ethics and his belief that the truth of his teaching could be verified in lived experience.
• This reading pairs thematically with the preceding Didache (readings #59-60), which presents early Christianity as primarily ethical teaching. Together they form a sequence illustrating Tolstoy’s vision of authentic Christianity.