Only with Love

from: Predatory Wasp Observer

If a psychological problem were set to find means of making men of our time - Christian, humane, simple, kind people - perform the most horrible crimes without feeling guilty, only one solution could be devised: simply to go on doing what is being done now. It is only necessary that these people should be governors, inspectors, policemen; that they should be fully convinced that there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the results of their deeds should not fall on anyone of them individually. Without these conditions the terrible acts I witnessed today would be impossible in our times.

It all lies in the fact that men think there are circumstances when one may deal with human beings without love. But there are no such circumstances. We may deal with things without love - we cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love - but we cannot deal with men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees without being careful. If one deals carelessly with bees one will injure them and will one’s self be injured. And so with men. It cannot be otherwise, because mutual love is the fundamental law of human life.

It is true that a man cannot force another to love him as he can force him to work for him, but it does not follow that one may deal with men without love, especially if one demands or expects anything from them. If you feel no love, sit still,” Nekhyudov thought; “occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. Just as you can only eat without injuring yourself when you are hungry, so you can only usefully and without injury deal with men when you love. Only let yourself deal with a man without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and there are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself, as all my life proves.

- Leo Tolstoy in Resurrection (1899)