Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



unscrupulously exploited, while on the contrary among 

 primitive people in general a lesser value is placed on 

 these things." 



The Fraud of Western Civilisation 



Extract from " A Letter to a Chinese Gentleman," by 

 Leo Tolstoy. (Published in Saturday Review^ Decem- 

 ber I, 1906.) 



" Amongst all these Western nations there unceasingly 

 proceeds a strife between the destitute exasperated working 

 people and the government and wealthy, a strife which is 

 restrained only by coercion on the part of deceived men 

 who constitute the army ; a similar strife is continually 

 waging between the different states demanding endlessly 

 increasing armaments, a strife which is any moment ready 

 to plunge into the greatest catastrophes. But however 

 dreadful this state of things may be, it does not constitute 

 the essence of the calamity of the Western nations. Their 

 chief and fundamental calamity is that the whole life of 

 these nations who are unable to furnish themselves with 

 food is entirely based on the necessity of procuring means 

 of sustenance by violence and cunning from other nations, 

 who like China, India, Russia and others still preserve a 

 rational agricultural life. 



" Constitutions, protective tariffs, standing armies, all 

 this together has rendered the Western nations what they 

 are — people who have abandoned agriculture and become 

 unused to it, occupied in towns and factories in the production 

 of articles for the most part unnecessary, people who with 

 their armies are adapted only to every kind of violence 

 and robbery. However brilliant their position may appear 

 at first sight it is a desperate one, and they must inevitably 

 perish if they do not change the whole structure of their 



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