War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [283]
Pierre was beginning to feel dissatisfied with his activity. Masonry, at least the Masonry he knew here, sometimes seemed to him to be based on appearance alone. He never thought of doubting Masonry itself, but he suspected that Russian Masonry had taken the wrong path and deviated from its source. And therefore, at the end of the year, Pierre went abroad to be initiated into the highest mysteries of the order.
In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. From the correspondence of our Masons with those abroad, it was known that Bezukhov had managed while abroad to gain the confidence of many highly placed persons, had penetrated many mysteries, had been raised to a higher degree, and was bringing much back with him for the common good of the Freemasons’ cause in Russia. All the Petersburg Masons came to him, fawned on him, and it seemed to them all that he was concealing and preparing something.
A solemn session of the lodge of the second degree was convened, at which Pierre promised to tell what he had to convey to the Petersburg brothers from the highest leaders of the order. The session was full. After the usual rituals, Pierre got up and began his speech.
“Beloved brothers,” he began, blushing and faltering and holding the written text in his hand, “it is not enough to observe our mysteries in the quiet of the lodge—we must act…act. We are somnolent, but we must act.” Pierre took out his notebook and began to read. “In order to spread the pure truth and bring about the triumph of virtue,” he read, “we must purify people of prejudice, spread rules that correspond to the spirit of the time, take upon ourselves the upbringing of the young, unite the most intelligent people with indissoluble bonds, boldly and yet reasonably overcome superstition, unbelief, and stupidity, and form those devoted to us into people bound together by a single goal and having power and strength.
“For the achievement of this goal, we must assure a preponderance of virtue over vice, we must try to make it so that the honest man already attains in this world the eternal reward for his virtues. But we are very much hindered in these great intentions by present-day political institutions. What are we to do in such a state of affairs? Are we to favor revolutions, overthrow everything, drive out force by force?…No, we are very far from that. Every violent reform is blameworthy, because it will not set evil to rights in the least, as long as people remain as they are, and because wisdom has no need of violence.
“The entire project of the order should be based on forming people who are firm, virtuous, and bound together by unity of conviction, a conviction that consists of persecuting vice and stupidity everywhere and with all their might, and of patronizing talent and virtue: drawing worthy people up from the dust and uniting them to our brotherhood. Only then will our order have power—to bind imperceptibly the hands of those who condone disorder and rule them in such a way that they do not notice it. In short, a universal, sovereign form of government should be established, which will be spread over the whole world, without destroying civil bonds, and under which all other governments may continue in their usual way and do all except that which hinders the great goal of our order, that is, the achievement of the triumph of virtue over vice. This was the goal of Christianity itself. It taught people to be wise and kind and to follow, for their own benefit, the example and precepts of the best and wisest men.
“Back then, when all was plunged in darkness, preaching alone was, of course, sufficient: the newness of the truth endowed it with special strength, but now we require much stronger means. It is now necessary that men, governed by their own feelings, find sensual delight in virtue. It is impossible to eradicate the passions; we must only try to point them towards a noble goal, and therefore it is necessary that every man be able to satisfy his passions within the limits