For a long time people lived in this obvious contradiction without noticing it. But the day came when this contradiction begen to stagger the more thoughtful people of different nations. And the ancient simple truth that it was natural for people to help and to love, instead of torturing and killing each other, began to dawn upon the minds of men and became every day clearer, while the acceptance of those false interpretations by which the deviations from it were justified, became less and less convincing.
In ancient times the chief justification of violence was the theory that so-called monarchs, tsars, sultans, rajahs, shahs, and other heads of states had peculiar and Divine rights. But the longer people lived, the faith in special rights of monarchs sanctioned by God, became weaker and weaker. This faith declined in eqaul degree and almost simultaneously in the Christian, in the Brahman, in the Buddhist and in the Confucian spheres, and it has recently become so feeble that it can no longer serve, as it did before, as a justification of acts openly opposed to common sense and to the true religious feeling. People saw more and more distinctly, and to-day the majority see quite clearly the absurdity and the immorality of the submission of one’s will to that of others like oneself, who require of them actions not only contrary to their material welfare but which are also a violation of their moral feelings. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that people who have lost faith in the supported by religion devinity of the authority of all manner of potentates, should endeavour to free themselves from it. But unfortunately during the domination of those monarchs, considered to be Divinely appointed beings, established themselves near the courts, an ever increasing number of persons, which under the guise of governing the people lived upon their labours. And this governing class took care that as soon as the old religious fraud about divine rule of monarchs should cease to be believed by people another and similar deception should take its place and continue in the same way as the old one to keep nations in slavery to a limited number of rulers.