Chapter 11

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE HAS ALREADY ARISEN IN OUR
SOCIETY, AND WILL INFALLIBLY PUT AN END TO THE PRESENT
ORGANIZATION OF OUR LIFE BASED ON FORCE--WHEN THAT WILL BE.

The Condition and Organization of our Society are Terrible, but
they Rest only on Public Opinion, and can be Destroyed by it--
Already Violence is Regarded from a Different Point of View; the
Number of those who are Ready to Serve the Government is
Diminishing; and even the Servants of Government are Ashamed of
their Position, and so often Do Not Perform their Duties--These
Facts are all Signs of the Rise of a Public Opinion, which
Continually Growing will Lead to No One being Willing to Enter
Government Service--Moreover, it Becomes More and More Evident
that those Offices are of No Practical Use--Men already Begin to
Understand the Futility of all Institutions Based on Violence, and
if a Few already Understand it, All will One Day Understand it--
The Day of Deliverance is Unknown, but it Depends on Men
Themselves, on how far Each Man Lives According to the Light that
is in Him.

The position of Christian humanity with its prisons, galleys,
gibbets, its factories and accumulation of capital, its taxes,
churches, gin-palaces, licensed brothels, its ever-increasing
armament and its millions of brutalized men, ready, like chained
dogs, to attack anyone against whom their master incites them,
would be terrible indeed if it were the product of violence, but
it is pre-eminently the product of public opinion. And what has
been established by public opinion can be destroyed by public
opinion--and, indeed, is being destroyed by public opinion.

Money lavished by hundreds of millions, tens of millions of
disciplined troops, weapons of astounding destructive power, all
organizations carried to the highest point of perfection, a whole
army of men charged with the task of deluding and hypnotizing the
people, and all this, by means of electricity which annihilates
distance, under the direct control of men who regard such an
organization of society not only as necessary for profit, but even
for self-preservation, and therefore exert every effort of their
ingenuity to preserve it--what an invincible power it would seem!
And yet we need only imagine for a moment what will really
inevitably come to pass, that is, the Christian social standard
replacing the heathen social standard and established with the
same power and universality, and the majority of men as much
ashamed of taking any part in violence or in profiting by it, as
they are to-day of thieving, swindling, begging, and cowardice;
and at once we see the whole of this complex, and seemingly
powerful organization of society falls into ruins of itself
without a