Is there a God?

[balli]

I haven't read more than a post or two, but the fact that this thread has debated the unknowable for 39 pages easily makes it the most stupid thread in the entirety of the internet.

[baseline bum]

Prove it.

You can't, can you?

:lol

I'll prove that you can't prove it, making me right by theistic logic.

[johnsmith]

Yep.

With irrefutable proof.

You missed it, though.

Fuck.


Fuck it, me, Sheebah, Jesus, Buddha, and the rest of the holy avengers are leaving work then.

[johnsmith]

the entirety of the internet.

Which is controlled by God............or the guy from the Matrix.............one of those two.

[DisgruntledLionFan#54,927]

I'll prove that you can't prove it, making me right by theistic logic.

Nice, except I'd use another word in place of logic.

[CuckingFunt]

Which is controlled by God............or the guy from the Matrix.............one of those two.

My money's on the Architect.

[DisgruntledLionFan#54,927]

My money's on the Architect.

Even money on Morgan Freeman.

[baseline bum]

Nice, except I'd use another word in place of logic.

It's ok... you prove that I can't prove it, making you right. Anything's equally possible!

[CuckingFunt]

Even money on Morgan Freeman.

You can't imagine how happy I'd be to learn that Morgan Freeman was actually God. That would rock so hard I might even become a born again.

[baseline bum]

You can't imagine how happy I'd be to learn that Morgan Freeman was actually God. That would rock so hard I might even become a born again.

Better than Alanis Morissette I guess.

[dickface]

I stopped reading this thread at about page 19. Anyone answer the question yet?

42

[DisgruntledLionFan#54,927]

Better than Alanis Morissette I guess.

Well, she did make Affleck's head explode so, at the very least, she has that going for her.

[BULLSHIT]

Listen up. I'm not going to explain it again. I know how hard it is for you to pay attention so I'm going to spell it out slowly and with large bold print so you can try and understand this with additional visual help.

I NEVER SET OUT TO PROVE OR UNPROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. NEVER ONCE DID I ATTEMPT TO DO SUCH. YOU FUCKSHITS STILL AFTER 30 PAGES THINK THIS IS A DEBATE ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. HOW FUCKING BLIND ARE YOU. CAN YOU FUCKING READ. CAN YOU? THIS IS AND ALWAYS WAS A DEBATE ABOUT MODERN DAY CHRISTIANITY AND JESUS. THE THREAD WAS HIJACKED ON PAGE 1 OR 2. PLEASE TAKE YOUR "GOD" LINES AND SHOVE THEM UP YOUR ASS.

FUCK SAKE PEOPLE HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE EITHER NO LESS THAN 10 TIMES HAVE YOU FUCKING DENSE ASSHOLES REFERENCED "GOD". I KNOW WHAT THE TITLE OF THE THREAD IS AND IF YOU READ THE THREAD YOU'D REALIZE ITS MOVED IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION.

OH OH OH IS THAT TOO FUCKING HARD FOR YOU TO DO? IS IT? DO WE NEED TO READ IT PAGE BY FUCKING GOD DAMN PAGE FOR YOU. FUCK. YOU FUCKING PEOPLE WILL NEVER GET IT. I'M SURE TWO MORE PAGES MORE AND I'LL HERE "WELL WELL YOU DIDN'T PROVE THERE IS NO GOD". I BET I FUCKING READ IT. YOU MORONS CAN'T HELP YOURSELVES.

THIS MOTHERFUCKING THREAD ISN'T DEBATING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD OR ANY HIGHER POWER. YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND NOW? DO YOU?

:violin

[I Love Me Some Me]

Sorry I can't multi-quote like I want to (posting from my Blackjack), but to those drawing parallels to parents killing their kids...that won't work. Remember, the biological parents are reproducing life, and are not the creators of life like God is.

And, I warned you the answer would not be satisfying. I also don't want to underemphasize the goodness of God. Read the Bible. if you're interested in all of His goodness it's all in there along with the killing.

He is not above the law, He is the law. Remember, He said THOU shalt not kill, not I will not kill.

[baseline bum]

Sorry I can't multi-quote like I want to (posting from my Blackjack), but to those drawing parallels to parents killing their kids...that won't work. Remember, the biological parents are reproducing life, and are not the creators of life like God is.


Doublespeak. The mother is creating the kids cells in her own body.

[leemajors]

it is what it is, but why is it what it is - chuck d. irrelevant and he may not have been the first to say it.

[Skywalker]

If one truly seeks spiritual enlightenment, they will find the way.

I personally believe Jesus showed the way.

We will ALL have our physical beings returned to dust.

No one will escape this.

Our spiritual beings however,
their fate is yet to be determined,
and I believe our fate lies within our hands, our minds, and our hearts.

It's one thing to be unaware of the path.
Another to be searching for it...trying to follow it.

But for those that choose to spit in it's general direction,

I hope and feel that it is the corruption of Christ's message that you spit upon.

Please do not be so quick to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater'.

There are so many unanswered questions regarding the bible and the true meanings and true sources,
but one light will always remain, and that selfless and loving light is to be our guide.

As for proof?
The only proof that will ever matter will be for you to feel the power of the spirit within.

That comes from faith. That comes from sacrifice.

The proof is found within one's self.

Find it, and it will be the happiest day of your life.

I can promise you that.

May God Bless us all.

[MiamiHeat]

:wakeup

[Winehole23]

But for those that choose to spit in it's general direction,

I hope and feel that it is the corruption of Christ's message that you spit upon. That is very genially expressed.



As for proof?
The only proof that will ever matter will be for you to feel the power of the spirit within.This is the basic intuition of protestantism: we all receive God privately and have no absolute need for churches, to be saved.

[smeagol]

So B2B and MH, how can you explain that 12 ignorant fishermen from Galilea invented a religion that is alive 2,000 years later and is followed by more than 1 billion people?

Also, in your explanation, tell us why right after Christ's death and all through the first 300 years of the existance of this new religion, people were willing to die for their beliefs?

And I don't mean going to war for the Christian cause, but willing to die gruesome deaths after days of turture, simply because they were niot willing to deny Christ.

[Blake]

So B2B and MH, how can you explain that 12 ignorant fishermen from Galilea invented a religion that is alive 2,000 years later and is followed by more than 1 billion people?

how do you know that it was invented by 12 ignorant fisherman? Was Luke or Mark disciples?


Also, in your explanation, tell us why right after Christ's death and all through the first 300 years of the existance of this new religion, people were willing to die for their beliefs?

And I don't mean going to war for the Christian cause, but willing to die gruesome deaths after days of turture, simply because they were niot willing to deny Christ.

why is anyone willing to die for their beliefs? Are you one of the 5 people left that hasn't seen Braveheart?

[MelGibson]

Braveheart should be in everyone's DVD collection.

[BacktoBasics]

So B2B and MH, how can you explain that 12 ignorant fishermen from Galilea invented a religion that is alive 2,000 years later and is followed by more than 1 billion people?

Also, in your explanation, tell us why right after Christ's death and all through the first 300 years of the existance of this new religion, people were willing to die for their beliefs?

And I don't mean going to war for the Christian cause, but willing to die gruesome deaths after days of turture, simply because they were niot willing to deny Christ.We've already done this. I'm not going over it again.

[MelGibson]

And as a devout Catholic this is the most ridiculous thread I've ever read.

Kyrie Eleison!

[smeagol]

how do you know that it was invented by 12 ignorant fisherman? Was Luke or Mark disciples?


They were close to Peter and Paul. What is your point?




why is anyone willing to die for their beliefs? Are you one of the 5 people left that hasn't seen Braveheart?


So being turtured, or burned alive, or eaten by wild beats because you ackowledge a "false" God (false according to B2B) is the same as dying for freedom, for your family or for your country?

Are you serious? or simply playing dumb?

[smeagol]

We've already done this. I'm not going over it again.

Sorry. I missed your answers to my questions.

Care to link them?

[Homeland Security]

They were close to Peter and Paul. What is your point?

So being turtured, or burned alive, or eaten by wild beats because you ackowledge a "false" God (false according to B2B) is the same as dying for freedom, for your family or for your country?

Are you serious? or simply playing dumb?
Some people are so stubborn they would rather die than admit they were wrong.

[Blake]

They were close to Peter and Paul. What is your point?

that Christianity and the Bible as we know it was not an institution built by 12 ignornant fishermen.


So being turtured, or burned alive, or eaten by wild beats because you ackowledge a "false" God (false according to B2B) is the same as dying for freedom, for your family or for your country?

Are you serious? or simply playing dumb?

ehhhh......should I answer this, even though I know it won't make a difference and I'll probably get another "what, are you stupid?" line?

people die for principles and beliefs all the time, but just because someone dies for a belief doesn't make them right.

answer this: why else would a 9/11 hijacker take over a plane and commit suicide in the process unless he was absolutely correct that he would be in Heaven with his 1000 virgins the minute he crashes the plane?

But go ahead and follow everyone that dies and gets tortured for their beliefs.

[CommanderMcBragg]

But go ahead and follow everyone that dies and gets tortured for their beliefs.

Like the good men and women in our Military who are dying for their belief in their Country?

[smeagol]

that Christianity and the Bible as we know it was not an institution built by 12 ignornant fishermen.


:clap




answer this: why else would a 9/11 hijacker take over a plane and commit suicide in the process unless he was absolutely correct that he would be in Heaven with his 1000 virgins the minute he crashes the plane?


Those terrorists are waging a war, which is somewhat different to a man in the 2nd century being taken to the circus because he refuses to deny Christ.

[Blake]

:clap

you're welcome


Those terrorists are waging a war, which is somewhat different to a man in the 2nd century being taken to the circus because he refuses to deny Christ.

sidestepping the point.

[smeagol]

sidestepping the point.

How so? I stated the difference between the two examples.

[Blake]

If one truly seeks spiritual enlightenment, they will find the way.

I personally believe Jesus showed the way.

We will ALL have our physical beings returned to dust.

No one will escape this.

Our spiritual beings however,
their fate is yet to be determined,
and I believe our fate lies within our hands, our minds, and our hearts.

It's one thing to be unaware of the path.
Another to be searching for it...trying to follow it.

But for those that choose to spit in it's general direction,

I hope and feel that it is the corruption of Christ's message that you spit upon.

Please do not be so quick to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater'.

There are so many unanswered questions regarding the bible and the true meanings and true sources,
but one light will always remain, and that selfless and loving light is to be our guide.

As for proof?
The only proof that will ever matter will be for you to feel the power of the spirit within.

That comes from faith. That comes from sacrifice.

The proof is found within one's self.

Find it, and it will be the happiest day of your life.

I can promise you that.

May God Bless us all.

hey, did you know that the way you find out if someone has the force is through a blood sample?

yeah, that was a bummer for me too

[monosylab1k]

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original]

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

3. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

4. This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition]

“Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

[monosylab1k]

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original]

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

3. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

4. This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition]

“Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Chapter 3: Socialist and Communist Literature

[BacktoBasics]

Sorry. I missed your answers to my questions.

Care to link them?I'll give a brief summary. You can go back on your own and cherry pick the particulars of my points.


Using mathematics and ancient calendars you can accurately go back and make significant correlations with a multitude of different moments depicting scores of important time periods, years, eras, seasons and so. All of which had their own special "god" or personification. The original pagan calendars showed us this long before Jesus ever existed. So arguing the specifics of each god is competely irrelevant which is where most of the Pro-Jesus arguments stem from including a large portion of the debate here.

Since we find similarities between these personifications we see the pattern. Even if you took 1 out of every 10 correlations that have been argued here its still a significant amount over a vast time frame and it covers nearly every impactual moment in Jesus' life and times. We conclude that very little about Jesus was original. Most dates and moments of significance correlate to a personified god or time, era, season, year and so on. You can't deny math in relation to the original calendars and the original calendars came centuries before Jesus. Those very calendars were the basis for almost every personified god. You now have every significant moment, date and happening in Jesus' life all readily available long before the man every existed.

Previously in this thread I provided a math equation that depicts key moments in the stories of Jesus. The math was already in place and it was based on astroligical time. All it needed was the fable around it.

We now have a precedent and everything we have about Jesus is lifted from another source (god or time structure). There is zero first hand writings and everything thats referenced is a copy of a copy of a copy so much to the point that the very church which supports its cause questions authenticity. I've posted previously where the church has waited years, decades and centuries before authenticating bodies of work due to uncertainty. There are no original documentations from the era or Jesus. None. Including zero physical artifacts.

Believers love to site sources that the church finds questionable or has admittedly altered to fit modern Christianity? This is possibly the only time modern man has willingly accepted hearsay or second, third and forth hand accounts as historical fact. Jesus was a compelation of a multitude of personifications. The orgins are rooted mathematically in time and astrology if you want to grab a caculator and an astrologer to test any of it.

I'll hang up and listen the next 4 pages of

"you proved nothing"

"prove it"

"you didn't disprove god"

"this won't affect my faith"

blah blah blah blah blah

So if you'd rather save the mindless faith dribble please do so because I know that it won't matter. Nothing will. I know that no matter how concrete any alternative reality would be it would never change the thumpers view.

[monosylab1k]

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original]

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

3. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

4. This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition]

“Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]


In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.


They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Chapter 3: Socialist and Communist Literature

Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

(1) The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition 1888]
* * *

The famous final phrase of the Manifesto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”, in the original German is: “Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!” Thus, a more correct translation would be “Proletarians of all countries, Unite!”

“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” is a popularisation of the last three sentences, and is not found in any official translation. Since this English translation was approved by Engels, we have kept the original intact.

[johnsmith]

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original]

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

3. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

4. This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition]

“Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]


In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Chapter 3: Socialist and Communist Literature
Today 09:12 AM


Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

(1) The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition 1888]
* * *

The famous final phrase of the Manifesto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”, in the original German is: “Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!” Thus, a more correct translation would be “Proletarians of all countries, Unite!”

“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” is a popularisation of the last three sentences, and is not found in any official translation. Since this English translation was approved by Engels, we have kept the original intact.


Hmmmm, Good point Mono.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Simply put, the time period from the occurrence of the events recorded and to the time of the writing is entirely too short for legends of this magnitude to develop.

Additionally, if the authors were writing legend, the books would have read differently. The gospels are simply not written in the typical style used to write of legend. There is entirely too much verifiable details. They were written within the lifetimes of firsthand eyewitnesses who would have disputed fallacies and corroborated facts. The authors leave in stories about themselves which expose them (the authors) as being hard of heart, insensitive, cowardly, and slow to learn. They leave in difficult-to-swallow teachings such as loving your enemies and warnings of upcoming persecution...things which (if writing a tale to lure in new members) would probably be left out. They are written from four different perspectives, which tells us the authors made no effort to harmonize their works with one another. Most importantly, the authors had nothing to gain from these writings except a life of suffering and death...and in the face of such death, none decided to renounce their faith or admit to scripting legendary tales.

[Blake]

How so? I stated the difference between the two examples.

The difference reasons for why people die don't matter. The point is that people die for what they believe in.

[BacktoBasics]

Simply put, the time period from the occurrence of the events recorded and to the time of the writing is entirely too short for legends of this magnitude to develop.

Additionally, if the authors were writing legend, the books would have read differently. The gospels are simply not written in the typical style used to write of legend. There is entirely too much verifiable details. They were written within the lifetimes of firsthand eyewitnesses who would have disputed fallacies and corroborated facts. The authors leave in stories about themselves which expose them (the authors) as being hard of heart, insensitive, cowardly, and slow to learn. They leave in difficult-to-swallow teachings such as loving your enemies and warnings of upcoming persecution...things which (if writing a tale to lure in new members, would probably be left out). They are written from four different perspectives, which tells us the authors made no effort to harmonize their works with one another. Most importantly, the authors had nothing to gain from these writings except a life of suffering and death...and in the face of such death, none decided to renounce their faith or admit to scripting legendary tales.

Lets not act as if its an impossiblity for someone to revolutionize a genre. People change the face of story telling all the time. Lets not act as we don't view certain movies or read certain books that are completely different than a normal style of writing.

Life is revolutionized nearly ever day in our time. Why is that such an impossiblity in that era.

Might be a poor analogy but look at Dracula

Many many many authors. Central theme. A million different ways to tell the story. Some even changed the face of the myth with new and original styles to depict the fable. Some pick and choose which characteristics to keep whiles others are left out. Some characteristics are expanded on. Some Jesus stories have him more like a mortal man some have him healing the sick and performing miracles.

[MiamiHeat]

dont spam the thread like that

[Spam]

dont spam the thread like that

+100

[Blake]

Lets not act as if its an impossiblity for someone to revolutionize a genre. People change the face of story telling all the time. Lets not act as we don't view certain movies or read certain books that are completely different than a normal style of writing.

Life is revolutionized nearly ever day in our time. Why is that such an impossiblity in that era.

Might be a poor analogy but look at Dracula

Many many many authors. Central theme. A million different ways to tell the story. Some even changed the face of the myth with new and original styles to depict the fable. Some pick and choose which characteristics to keep whiles others are left out. Some characteristics are expanded on. Some Jesus stories have him more like a mortal man some have him healing the sick and performing miracles.

there have been plenty of Draculians that have been tortured/persecuted over the years for their beliefs.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Lets not act as if its an impossiblity for someone to revolutionize a genre. People change the face of story telling all the time. Lets not act as we don't view certain movies or read certain books that are completely different than a normal style of writing.

Life is revolutionized nearly ever day in our time. Why is that such an impossiblity in that era.

Might be a poor analogy but look at Dracula

Many many many authors. Central theme. A million different ways to tell the story. Some even changed the face of the myth with new and original styles to depict the fable. Some pick and choose which characteristics to keep whiles others are left out. Some characteristics are expanded on. Some Jesus stories have him more like a mortal man some have him healing the sick and performing miracles.


Now we're saying, that not only did these 4 average joes propogate and distribute this grand legend, but they also revolutionized the genre with their works?

And we're not talking about one author propogating the legend and revolutionizing the genre...we're talking about four authors, working indepentantly, propogating the exact same legend and revolutionizing the genre in the exact same way.

[monosylab1k]

dont spam the thread like that

Isn't this the thread where people constantly post pointless bullshit?

[monosylab1k]

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original]

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

1. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour.

By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live. [Engels, 1888 English edition]

2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)]

3. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]

4. This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition]

“Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate". Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]


In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.


They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Chapter 3: Socialist and Communist Literature


Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

(1) The party then represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Réforme. The name of Social-Democracy signifies, with these its inventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican Party more or less tinged with socialism. [Engels, English Edition 1888]
* * *

The famous final phrase of the Manifesto, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”, in the original German is: “Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!” Thus, a more correct translation would be “Proletarians of all countries, Unite!”

“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” is a popularisation of the last three sentences, and is not found in any official translation. Since this English translation was approved by Engels, we have kept the original intact.

the Communist Manifesto certainly has a place in this "discussion". Somebody else can find out what place that is, I'll just provide the text.

[monosylab1k]

MY FATHER'S FAMILY name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine—who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!”

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

“O! Don't cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don't do it, sir.”

“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”

“Pip, sir.”

“Once more,” said the man, staring at me. “Give it mouth!”

“Pip. Pip, sir.”

“Show us where you live,” said the man. “Pint out the place!”

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the aldertrees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself—for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.

“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips, “what fat cheeks you ha' got.”

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized, for my years, and not strong.

“Darn Me if I couldn't eat 'em,” said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, “and if I han't half a mind to't!”

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

“Now lookee here!” said the man. “Where's your mother?”

“There, sir!” said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“There, sir!” I timidly explained. “Also Georgiana. That's my mother.”

“Oh!” said he, coming back. “And is that your father alonger your mother?”

“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too; late of this parish.”

“Ha!” he muttered then, considering. “Who d'ye live with—supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?”

“My sister, sir—Mrs. Joe Gargery—wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir.”

“Blacksmith, eh?” said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know what wittles is?”

“Yes, sir.”

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me wittles.” He tilted me again. “You bring 'em both to me.” He tilted me again. “Or I'll have your heart and liver out.” He tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, “If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more.”

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:

“You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?”

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning.

“Say, Lord strike you dead if you don't!” said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

“Now,” he pursued, “you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!”

“Goo-good night, sir,” I faltered.

“Much of that!” said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. “I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!”

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms—clasping himself, as if to hold himself together—and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered—like an unhooped cask upon a pole—an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.

[BacktoBasics]

Now we're saying, that not only did these 4 average joes propogate and distribute this grand legend, but they also revolutionized the genre with their works?

And we're not talking about one author propogating the legend and revolutionizing the genre...we're talking about four authors, working indepentantly, propogating the exact same legend and revolutionizing the genre in the exact same way.Lets backs up we are talking about authors that no one can confirm. There is no original documentation. What we have is work that are copies of copies of copies. Speculated or assumed authorship. Some compelling some not so compelling.

I'm not going down this road again because its pointless. Previously in this thread I provided substantial evidence of almost every single piece of text and all of it comes into question because none of it is original.

I mearly made the "revolutionary" statement as something to ponder not a solution or reason.

I have and will still ask for

1. Original documentation. Signed and dated or at least original from the time of Jesus.

2. Physical evidence


You have a legit source in Tacitus but all the years which would coincide with Jesus are magically missing. Perhaps someone was pissed off at the lack of mention and removed/destroyed them.

[BacktoBasics]

the Communist Manifesto certainly has a place in this "discussion". Somebody else can find out what place that is, I'll just provide the text.
If it has a place then discuss it otherwise you're just posting words to be an asshole. Either offer a point or opinion or stop posting million word threads.

There's no point in childishly annoying people. Which is all you're doing until you offer some insight to your point.

[Richard Cranium]

My God this thread just keeps going and going.

[Blake]

MY FATHER'S FAMILY name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip .......

I guess we all have our own ways to get aroused. I'm not judging......just sayin that nekkid chicks is what works for me.

[monosylab1k]

There's no point in childishly annoying people.

Chapter II

MY SISTER, MRS. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off every day of her life.

Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in our country were—most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's out now, making it a baker's dozen.”

“Is she?”

“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her.”

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.

“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did,” said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at it: “she Ram-paged out, Pip.”

“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger species of child, and as no more than my equal.

“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she's been on the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you.”

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing me—I often served as a connubial missile—at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. “Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.”

“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying and rubbing myself.

“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn't for me you'd have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by hand?”

“You did,” said I.

“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my sister.

I whimpered, “I don't know.”

“I don't!” said my sister. “I'd never do it again! I know that. I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife, and him a Gargery, without being your mother.”

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.

“Hah!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” One of us, by-the-by, had not said it at all. “You'll drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you'd be without me!”

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his blue eye, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib—where it sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaister—using both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the leg of my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then—which stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched bread-and-butter on the other. At last, I desperately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister's observation.

“What's the matter now?” said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.

“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip.”

“What's the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than before.

“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your elth's your elth.”

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on.

“Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter,” said my sister, out of breath, “you staring great stuck pig.”

Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite, and looked at me again.

“You know, Pip,” said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone, “you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell upon you, any time. But such a—” he moved his chair, and looked about the floor between us, and then again at me—“such a most oncommon bolt as that!”

“Been bolting his food, has he?” cried my sister.

“You know, old chap,” said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was your age—frequent—and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters; but I never see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't Bolted dead.”

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair: saying nothing more than the awful words, “You come along and be dosed.”

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening, the urgency of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire), “because he had had a turn.” Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had none before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe—I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his—united to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until to-morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily I slipped away, and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.

“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; “was that great guns, Joe?”

“Ah!” said Joe. “There's another conwict off.”

“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly, “Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, “What's a convict?” Joe put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word, “Pip.”

“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they're firing warning of another.”

“Who's firing?” said I.

“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work, “what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.”

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite, unless there was company.

At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying “her?” But Joe wouldn't hear of that at all, and again opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make nothing of the word.

“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you wouldn't much mind—where the firing comes from?”

“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't quite mean that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”

“Oh-h!” said I looking at Joe. “Hulks!”

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you so.”

“And please what's Hulks?” said I.

“That's the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right ‘cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name for marshes in our country.

“I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put there?” said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn't bring you up by hand to badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went up stairs in the dark, with my head tingling—from Mrs. Joe's thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was shot with gray, I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way, and every crack in every board, calling after me, “Stop thief!” and “Get up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught, when my back was half turned, winking. I had no time for verification, no time for selection, no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly used for making that intoxicating-fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that was put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish in a corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope that it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some time.

There was a door in the kitchen communicating with the forge; I unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's tools. Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the misty marshes.

[angel_luv]

Follow this train of thought with me if you will.....

let's suppose the rapture happens in our lifetime (which many hell beaters believe).......

several million people suddenly disappear (mostly in America and Europe I guess.....) cars crash, planes fall out of the sky etc......

a dude rises up and says "hey, how about we all put a mark on our hand/forehead?"

Will everyone will suddenly have gotten stupid and just plain forget about the book of Revelation or all the Hollywood movies about it? There is absolutely no way in this millenium that if a bunch of people suddenly disappeared that anyone would ever allow a forhead/hand mark because everyone is still very aware of the prophecy.....
and the dude that would try to suggest it, would be one dead dude......real quick.

just sayin...

and by the way.......popcorn? You are in heaven on a cloud and the best snack you can come up with is popcorn? I'm glad to know that microwaves go to Heaven with us when we die.


Popcorn is the best snack with a movie. :)

I can see people blaming the Rapture disappearances on nuclear weapons or aliens or something of that nature.

.

As for people taking the anti christ's word for it... look for example at Oprah's current influence- I.E. how many masses of people look to Oprah and her show for answers- and we are not even in a state of real crisis.

My guess is that when the Rapture happens, people are going to be looking for answers and will listen to anyone who says he has them.
The antichrist will know this and will capitalize on people's fear, sense of loss, and desparation.

[smeagol]

Lets backs up we are talking about authors that no one can confirm. There is no original documentation. What we have is work that are copies of copies of copies. Speculated or assumed authorship. Some compelling some not so compelling.

I'm not going down this road again because its pointless. Previously in this thread I provided substantial evidence of almost every single piece of text and all of it comes into question because none of it is original.

I mearly made the "revolutionary" statement as something to ponder not a solution or reason.

I have and will still ask for

1. Original documentation. Signed and dated or at least original from the time of Jesus.

2. Physical evidence


You have a legit source in Tacitus but all the years which would coincide with Jesus are magically missing. Perhaps someone was pissed off at the lack of mention and removed/destroyed them.

Do you believe in Aristotle's and Plato's work (ie, do you believe they were really written by by men 300 years before Jesus was born)?

[I Love Me Some Me]

Lets backs up we are talking about authors that no one can confirm. There is no original documentation. What we have is work that are copies of copies of copies. Speculated or assumed authorship. Some compelling some not so compelling.
Compare it to other works of its time. Plato's writings include only seven ancient manuscripts, the earliest dated 1300 years after the date of the original text. Only ten copies exist of the Gallic Wars (a third-hand account), and the earliest is dated 1000 years after the original writings. The Iliad only has 643 copies.

There are over 5000 Greek manuscripts, some dated as early as the first century, which cite gospel writings. Quotes from the gospels were made by church fathers as early as the first century. All together, there are over 24000 ancient documents (exponentially more than The Iliad, Gallic Wars, and Plato), with some as early as the first century. So, we can see that New Testament evidence far exceeds other works of its time. So, you should either accept the accuracy of the NT writings, or you have to label pretty much everything we know about the Greek and Roman Empire as fictional as you say the gospels are.



I have and will still ask for

1. Original documentation. Signed and dated or at least original from the time of Jesus.

see above...either accept the NT as historically accurate, or reject what you know of the Greek and Roman empires as fiction.



2. Physical evidence.

I would just ask that if there are other things in your life (or life in general) that you believe exist or happened, in spite of the lack of physical evidence?

[Blake]

I can see people blaming the Rapture disappearances on nuclear weapons or aliens or something of that nature.

As for people taking the anti christ's word for it... look for example at Oprah's current influence- I.E. how many masses of people look to Oprah and her show for answers- and we are not even in a state of real crisis.

My guess is that when the Rapture happens, people are going to be looking for answers and will listen to anyone who says he has them.
The antichrist will know this and will capitalize on people's fear, sense of loss, and desparation.

so what will the antichrist's answer for the disappearance be? Aliens or nukes?

if it's aliens, you are saying that the masses of people would rather believe in unseen aliens than the book of Revelation which actually prophesies a rapture?

and if someone disappeared out of a car or a plane, how would a nuclear weapon accomplish such a feat?

this is the fun stuff here.

[Blake]

Do you believe in Aristotle's and Plato's work (ie, do you believe they were really written by by men 300 years before Jesus was born)?

just curious, do Plato and Aristotle make claims about people rising from the dead?

[Blake]

see above...either accept the NT as historically accurate, or reject what you know of the Greek and Roman empires as fiction.


lemme get this straight......

I either accept that Lazarus came back from the dead or else everything I know of those empires is wrong......

do I have to accept that Sampson also had super strength unless he got a haircut?

[smeagol]

Lets not act as if its an impossiblity for someone to revolutionize a genre. People change the face of story telling all the time. Lets not act as we don't view certain movies or read certain books that are completely different than a normal style of writing.

This point was touched upon by ES.

Christ dies in 33 AD. Gospels, Acts and Letters are written as early as 50 - 60 AD, most of them by eyewitnesses of Christ's life. We have surviving manuscripts from 125 - 175 AD.

So tell us exactly who and when did these embilishements and changes to Christ's life occur. Was it with the original authors? Or was it with the copyists?

What we do know is that by 150 AD (120 years after Jesus died), there were Books of the Bible going around that look 99.9% what the modern Bibles looks like.

[angel_luv]

so what will the antichrist's answer for the disappearance be? Aliens or nukes?

if it's aliens, you are saying that the masses of people would rather believe in unseen aliens than the book of Revelation which actually prophesies a rapture?

and if someone disappeared out of a car or a plane, how would a nuclear weapon accomplish such a feat?

this is the fun stuff here.



I think this thread proves that a lot of people would rather embrace anything over God.
Sad but true.

As for accepting the anti christ's explanation... who says the answer has to be a good one. People will be desparate for some sort of explanation they feel they can wrap their minds around.

People can imagine aliens. People have heard of nuclear weapons. It is within the grasp of their carnal understanding... unlike the Bible, something they have spent a lifetime rejecting. ( And all the people remaining will be those who have spent their lives rejecting Christ, otherwise they would not have been left behind.)

[smeagol]

just curious, do Plato and Aristotle make claims about people rising from the dead?

Yes.

Haven't you ever read Aristotle's book "How to raise the dead: Three simple steps"?

[I Love Me Some Me]

just curious, do Plato and Aristotle make claims about people rising from the dead?


lemme get this straight......

I either accept that Lazarus came back from the dead or else everything I know of those empires is wrong......

do I have to accept that Sampson also had super strength unless he got a haircut?

First of all, Sampson was OT, not NT.

Secondly, you are arbitrarily presupposing miracles cannot and did not happen. You start your argument with a presupposition that cannot be justified. Instead, you should just proceed with the caveat that you'll give credibility to any fact of history that is well-substantiated (what HISTORIANS do). You do that, and you'll find that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John pass with flying colors as good history.

Finally, if you state the gospels are false, or legend, or tales that revolutionize the genre, you have to say the same for any other historical event of that time. You have to do so because the evidence that's supports the historical accuracy of the gospels is greater than the evidence that supports the historical accuracy of what we know of ancient Greece and Rome. If you hold a standard of reliability to the gospel accounts, you should hold the same standard of reliability to any other account of history from the same time period.

[BacktoBasics]

Smeagol you just cited roughly a 100 year difference. For some reason you don't see how a century could create a legend.

I don't really feel like digging up a bunch of stories but there are thousands of stories within the last century that have exploded into myth like proportions.

As far as Plato and others work. I've offered no opinion on their existence. I don't know the nature of their work. If it envolved the supernatural I'd likely question it.

[JoeChalupa]

I watched "The Bible Code" on the History Channel last night. That is all.

[smeagol]

lemme get this straight......

I either accept that Lazarus came back from the dead or else everything I know of those empires is wrong......


Nah . . . you simply have to say that Jesus was a crazy guy who dupped a bunch of guys in believing he was the Son of God, and those guys convinced other guys and they wrote the story of His life, and more people believed them until modern times, where millions of people still believe this big fairy tale.



do I have to accept that Sampson also had super strength unless he got a haircut?

Or that Jonah lived inside a whale . . .

[MiamiHeat]

Why are you believers avoiding the facts presented earlier in the thread?

[angel_luv]

Why are you believers avoiding the facts presented earlier in the thread?

Why does it bother you so much that we Believers refuse to take your word for it?

[BacktoBasics]

Why does it bother you so much that we Believers refuse to take your word for it?Its not his word for it. He and myself are frustrated at the lack of reasonable considerations for strong points of interest.

[101A]

I was an atheist a couple of decades ago when I knew it all, too.

[BacktoBasics]

I PM'd monosylab1k. I'm willing to bet she doesn't have the balls to reasonably respond to me. She'll probably post some additional annoying shit because at best she has a loose understanding of exactly how to troll with purpose. Really all it does is show how weak her self esteem is by attempting to get a rise out of us. A real troll would pull the mark in properly. I'm not suprised this gals style has always been garbage before substance. Its why no one on this board listens to her.

[angel_luv]

Its not his word for it. He and myself are frustrated at the lack of reasonable considerations for strong points of interest.

You have repeatedly, sometimes quite harshly, mocked our believes, yet you condemn our rejection of your/ your sources point of view.

Ironic.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Why are you believers avoiding the facts presented earlier in the thread?


Its not his word for it. He and myself are frustrated at the lack of reasonable considerations for strong points of interest.

What of Extra Stout's responses to each of those points? The information he provided was compelling enough to dismiss those "facts" as either completely false or considerably irrelevant.

[BacktoBasics]

You have repeatedly, sometimes quite harshly, mocked our believes, yet you condemn our rejection of your/ your sources point of view.

Ironic.
Yep. Ironic or not I feel my sources and my views are considerably more realistic and viable than happy magic time.

There is probably some additional irony there too.

[MiamiHeat]

What of Extra Stout's responses to each of those points? The information he provided was compelling enough to dismiss those "facts" as either completely false or considerably irrelevant.

all of his arguments were destroyed.

SEVERAL TIMES I EVEN SHOWED HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT HE WAS SAYING

[BacktoBasics]

What of Extra Stout's responses to each of those points? The information he provided was compelling enough to dismiss those "facts" as either completely false or considerably irrelevant.I looked at both sides with an open mind. Both obviously contradicted each other. Both provided reasonable sources. You just happen to appreciate ES's view more. Or maybe his view fits your view so you sympathize with it. I don't know but I didn't feel his contradictions were any more legit than MH's.

As a matter of fact MH posted. ES responded and MH responded back with additional sources.

Other than preference I don't see how his response was any more valuable than the others.

[MiamiHeat]

You have repeatedly, sometimes quite harshly, mocked our believes, yet you condemn our rejection of your/ your sources point of view.

Ironic.

You don't seem to understand.

This is not opinion or bias. These are -facts-. Factual historical evidence that the Jesus mythology heavily influenced and borrowed everything from older Sun worship.

That's not opinion.

[angel_luv]

Yep. Ironic or not I feel my sources and my views are considerably more realistic and viable than happy magic time.

There is probably some additional irony there too.

It is God's Word, not mine, that you are rejecting.

I am not at all insulted that you do not believe me. Rather, I feel for you because of all I know you are missing out on.

For what does a man profit if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

[TDMVPDPOY]

seriously guys, go smoke a joint or pop a blue pill, you will see angels, spirits, god......thats what i hear from pill poppers...

[monosylab1k]

Chapter III

IT WAS A RIMY morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, “A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie! Stop him!” The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, “Holloa, young thief!” One black ox, with a white cravat on—who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air—fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, “I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't for myself I took it!” Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.

All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all dispatch, I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and had a flat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at me—it was a round, weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for it made him stumble—and then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went, and I lost him.

“It's the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had known where it was.

I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was the right man—hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all night left off hugging and limping—waiting for me. He was awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down, this time, to get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets.

“What's in the bottle, boy?” said he.

“Brandy,” said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious manner—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it—but he left off to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.

“I think you have got the ague,” said I.

“I'm much of your opinion, boy,” said he.

“It's bad about here,” I told him. “You've been lying out on the meshes and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”

“I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me,” said he. “I'd do that if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is over there, directly arterwards. I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet you.”

He was gobbling mincemeat, meat bone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly—:



“You're not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”

“No, sir! No!”

“Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?”

“No!”

“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint is!”

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”

“Did you speak?”

“I said, I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thankee, my boy. I do.”

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

“I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him,” said I, timidly; after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making the remark. “There's no more to be got where that came from.” It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.

“Leave any for him? Who's him?” said my friend, stopping in his crunching of pie-crust.

“The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you.”

“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes, yes! He don't want no wittles.”

“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise.

“Looked? When?”

“Just now.”

“Where?”

“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found him nodding asleep, and thought it was you.”

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained, trembling; “and—and”—I was very anxious to put this delicately—“and with—the same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn't you hear the cannon last night?”

“Then, there was firing!” he said to himself.

“I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that,” I returned, “for we heard it up at home, and that's further away, and we were shut in besides.”

“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man's alone on these flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid hands on—and there's nothin'! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night—coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, tramp—I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day—But this man;” he had said all the rest as if he had forgotten my being there; “did you notice anything in him?”

“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew I knew.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of his grey jacket. “Show me the way he went. I'll pull him down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file, boy.”

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and his leg. The last I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.

[I Love Me Some Me]

I looked at both sides with an open mind. Both obviously contradicted each other. Both provided reasonable sources. You just happen to appreciate ES's view more. Or maybe his view fits your view so you sympathize with it. I don't know but I didn't feel his contradictions were any more legit than MH's.

As a matter of fact MH posted. ES responded and MH responded back with additional sources.

Other than preference I don't see how his response was any more valuable than the others.

Or any less valuable. So, you're probably right...because I agree with him, I give him more benefit of the doubt. Works both ways though, doesn't it?


Ultimately I think this can be simplified into the following disagreement:

Non-believers approach the accuracy of the Bible as false until proven accurate.

Believers approach the accuracy of the Bible as accurate until proven false.

And neither side has (or will) produce enough compelling evidence to convince the other side to change their mind.

[MiamiHeat]

THE MOST RECENT Extra Stout posts

1) B2B asked him
"Out of curiousity I'd like to know what ES thinks is the single most compelling piece of evidence supporting the existence of Jesus. I'm not talking about God just a mortal man named Jesus who was the son of God....magical powers and all.

I don't want 5, 6 or 10 things. Just the one single most compelling piece of evidence."

2) Extra Stout responded by using P52. He generously and misleadingly said that P52's age was ~125 CE.

3) I came with the facts about P52.

A) It's debated heavily. The -estimation- for P52's age is around 125-170 CE. Much different picture.

B) The estimation -is based on hand writing-. The style of the script. Papyrologists themselves have said this is not an accurate way to estimate age. Scholars have said, because of this, we have to say that P52 could have been written even around 250 CE.

C) Extra Stout says I am no expert, I don't know anything compared to papyrologists. He goes on to quote a scholar and leaves the rest out.

D) I post the rest of the quote and the papyrologist says exactly what I did.

That is not compelling evidence.


That's just the latest rebuttal to anything Extra Stout posts. He has no leg to stand on.


----

There were other times Extra Stout was proven incorrect, severely. He behaved in an intentionally misleading manner.

[BacktoBasics]

It is God's Word, not mine, that you are rejecting.

I am not at all insulted that you do not believe me. Rather, I feel for you because of all I know you are missing out on.

For what does a man profit if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?
Funny I feel the same way. Its sad to me that you'll never experience true freedom and self understanding because you surrender to something fictious instead of surrendering to your own inner self. To me you've lost the ability to reach your true soul. At best you'll reach the soul expected by another. It saddens me further that you'll never have the strength to reach your full potential when all of lifes doings and undoings are left up to the hand of god.

Last but not least you may never truely appreciate the entire scope of man because you fail to realize that when its over and you die there is nothing left other than an empty lifeless vessel. So you'll never be able to go back and fulfill your own destiny at your own hand.

Our views on each other aren't so different.

[MiamiHeat]

The fact that "I love Me some Me" completely ignores my responses and rebuttals to Extra Stout is very telling.

[I Love Me Some Me]

THE MOST RECENT Extra Stout posts

1) B2B asked him
"Out of curiousity I'd like to know what ES thinks is the single most compelling piece of evidence supporting the existence of Jesus. I'm not talking about God just a mortal man named Jesus who was the son of God....magical powers and all.

I don't want 5, 6 or 10 things. Just the one single most compelling piece of evidence."

2) Extra Stout responded by using P52. He generously and misleadingly said that P52's age was ~125 CE.

3) I came with the facts about P52.

A) It's debated heavily. The -estimation- for P52's age is around 125-170 CE. Much different picture.

B) The estimation -is based on hand writing-. The style of the script. Papyrologists themselves have said this is not an accurate way to estimate age. Scholars have said, because of this, we have to say that P52 could have been written even around 250 CE.


That is not compelling evidence.


----

There were other times Extra Stout was proven incorrect, severely. He behaved in an intentionally misleading manner.

You follow your claim of facts with statements like "estimation" and "could have been written." Those don't strike me as factual statements, but rather fancy guesses.

And, his estimation is neither generous or misleading, he just took the side that supported his argument. You agree that 125 is with the "estimated" date range, no?

His evidence was as compelling as yours, if not more. So if you dismiss his, you should dismiss yours as well...and we're back to square one.

[monosylab1k]

Chapter IV

I FULLY EXPECTED to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen door-step to keep him out of the dust-pan—an article into which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.

“And where the deuce ha' you been?” was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. “Ah! well!” observed Mrs. Joe. “You might ha' done worse.” Not a doubt of that I thought.

“Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear the Carols,” said Mrs. Joe. “I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any.”

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dust-pan had retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of breakfast; “for I ain't,” said Mrs. Joe, “I ain't a going to have no formal cramming and busting and washing up now, with what I've got before me, I promise you!”

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops on a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took gulps of milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlour across the passage, which was never uncovered at any other time, but passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four little white crockery poodles on the mantelshelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and everything that he wore then, grazed him. On the present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free use of my limbs.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside, was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether the Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman said, “Ye are now to declare it!” would be the time for me to rise and propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble, the wheelwright, and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe's uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one. When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of, indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being “thrown open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm—always giving the whole verse—he looked all round the congregation first, as much as to say, “You have heard our friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion of this style!”

I opened the door to the company—making believe that it was a habit of ours to open that door—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. I was not allowed to call him uncle, under the severest penalties.

“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to; “I have brought you as the compliments of the season—I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine—and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of port wine.”

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, “Oh, Un—cle Pum—ble—chook! This is kind!” Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted, “It's no more than your merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how's Sixpennorth of halfpence?” meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour; which was a change very like Joe's change from his working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally juvenile position, because she had married Mr. Hubble—I don't know at what remote period—when she was much younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain. No; I should not have minded that if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation—as it now appears to me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third—and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”

“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when there was company, than when there was none. But he always aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did so at dinnertime by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with some severity, and intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the Church being “thrown open”—what kind of sermon he would have given them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he remarked that he considered the subject of the day's homily, ill-chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many subjects “going about.”

“True again,” said Uncle Pumblechook. “You've hit it, sir! Plenty of subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't go far to find a subject, if he's ready with his salt-box.” Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short interval of reflection, “Look at Pork alone. There's a subject! If you want a subject, look at Pork!”

“True, sir. Many a moral for the young,” returned Mr. Wopsle; and I knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; “might be deduced from that text.”

(“You listen to this,” said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name; “Swine were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an example to the young.” (I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.) “What is detestable in a pig, is more detestable in a boy.”

“Or girl,” suggested Mr. Hubble.

“Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,” assented Mr. Wopsle, rather irritably, “but there is no girl present.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, “think what you've got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a Squeaker—”

“He was, if ever a child was,” said my sister, most emphatically.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “If you had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you—”

“Unless in that form,” said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.

“But I don't mean in that form, sir,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had an objection to being interrupted; “I mean, enjoying himself with his elders and betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he wouldn't. And what would have been your destination?” turning on me again. “You would have been disposed of for so many shillings according to the market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped you under his left arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would have shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of it!”

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.

“He was a world of trouble to you, ma'am,” said Mrs. Hubble, commiserating my sister.

“Trouble?” echoed my sister, “trouble?” And then entered on a fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go there.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose so aggravated me, during the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time, was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that took possession of me when the pause was broken which ensued upon my sister's recital, and in which pause everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with indignation and abhorrence.

“Yet,” said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the theme from which they had strayed, “Pork—regarded as biled—is rich, too; ain't it?”

“Have a little brandy, uncle,” said my sister.

O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table, under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone bottle, and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The wretched man trifled with his glass—took it up, looked at it through the light, put it down—prolonged my misery. All this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding.

I couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't know how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, and surveying the company all round as if they had disagreed with him, sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, “Tar!”

I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be worse by-and-bye. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day, by the vigour of my unseen hold upon it.

“Tar!” cried my sister, in amazement. “Why, how ever could Tar come there?”

But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot gin-and-water. My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and mixing them. For the time at least, I was saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with the fervour of gratitude.

By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp, and partake of pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding. The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the genial influence of gin-and-water. I began to think I should get over the day, when my sister said to Joe, “Clean plates—cold.”

I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone.

“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best grace,” you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook's!”

Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!

“You must know,” said my sister, rising, “it's a pie; a savoury pork pie.”

The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said—quite vivaciously, all things considered—“Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our best endeavours; let us have a cut at this same pie.”

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that “a bit of savoury pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm,” and I heard Joe say, “You shall have some, Pip.” I have never been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could hear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for my life.

But I ran no further than the house door, for there I ran head foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets: one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me, saying, “Here you are, look sharp, come on!”

[MiamiHeat]

And, his estimation is neither generous or misleading, he just took the side that supported his argument. You agree that 125 is with the "estimated" date range, no?


That's MISLEADING. YOU HAVE TO POST THE ENTIRE ESTIMATED DATE RANGE.

THAT WOULD BE TAMPERING WITH FACTS TO SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT

Fits right in line with Christian history.

Also, it's under HEAVY DEBATE. Scholars are saying the actual date range can even be from 125-250 CE.

[angel_luv]

You don't seem to understand.

This is not opinion or bias. These are -facts-. Factual historical evidence that the Jesus mythology heavily influenced and borrowed everything from older Sun worship.

That's not opinion.

What also is not an opinion is the faith that Jesus Himself strengthens in my heart each and every day.

Let every man be a liar. My God is true.

[Blake]

I think this thread proves that a lot of people would rather embrace anything over God.
Sad but true.

As for accepting the anti christ's explanation... who says the answer has to be a good one. People will be desparate for some sort of explanation they feel they can wrap their minds around.

People can imagine aliens. People have heard of nuclear weapons. It is within the grasp of their carnal understanding... unlike the Bible, something they have spent a lifetime rejecting. ( And all the people remaining will be those who have spent their lives rejecting Christ, otherwise they would not have been left behind.)

I think this thread proves that people would rather embrace their harp while sitting on a cloud instead of doing a little critical thinking.

Nobody here is rejecting just God just for sheets and giggles. Most people here just want truth.

[I Love Me Some Me]

That's MISLEADING. YOU HAVE TO POST THE ENTIRE ESTIMATED DATE RANGE.

THAT WOULD BE TAMPERING WITH FACTS TO SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT

Fits right in line with Christian history.

Also, it's under HEAVY DEBATE. Scholars are saying the actual date range can even be from 125-250 CE.

It's not anymore misleading than the 'facts' you provided about pre-Jesus deities, including the circumstances surrounding their births, and symbolism. Again, if you reject his argument based on these standards, you must do the same for yours.

Considering that it is, as you say, "under heavy debate" gives credence to the fact that 125 is a relevant possibility. If it were not, no debate would be necessary (especially a heavy one).

[Blake]

What also is not an opinion is the faith that Jesus Himself strengthens in my heart each and every day.

Let every man be a liar. My God is true.

does anyone else get the image of AL sitting there with her fingers in her ears going "la la la I cant hear you la la la"

sheez

:shootme

[MiamiHeat]

It's not anymore misleading than the 'facts' you provided about pre-Jesus deities, including the circumstances surrounding their births, and symbolism. Again, if you reject his argument based on these standards, you must do the same for yours.

What was misleading about the facts I posted about the pre-Jesus sungods?

Oh, that's right. You read Extra Stout's bullshit propaganda post and didn't read my rebuttal.




Considering that it is, as you say, "under heavy debate" gives credence to the fact that 125 is a relevant possibility. If it were not, no debate would be necessary (especially a heavy one).

Do you listen to yourself? YOU CANNOT POST just -125 CE- and leave out the actual estimated date range. That is misleading understand? It can be 125 CE or 170 CE (or even 250 CE).

Are you trolling? Seriously now

[BacktoBasics]

does anyone else get the image of AL sitting there with her fingers in her ears going "la la la I cant hear you la la la"

sheez

:shootmeI've said that numerous times. Sometimes I enjoy talking to her but in the end you have to come to terms with the fact that nothing no matter how logical it may seem would ever sink in....hell even be considered.

She won't and never will read any point made.

[angel_luv]

I think this thread proves that people would rather embrace their harp while sitting on a cloud instead of doing a little critical thinking.

Nobody here is rejecting just God just for sheets and giggles. Most people here just want truth.

For the record, I know that Heaven is not full of a bunch of people sitting on clouds with harps. It is a majestic a million times over.

The sitting on a cloud with popcorn picture is just something that helps make me smile from time to time.

[smeagol]

Smeagol you just cited roughly a 100 year difference. For some reason you don't see how a century could create a legend.

It's 100 years because I arbitrarily used 150AD as the date where we start having manuscripts of the Bible. The Ryland Papirus (P52) could date as early as 125AD and some have suggested it could be from the turn of the First Century.

So now we are talking about less than 70 years and not 100. And then there's Clement I's letter to the Corinthians, said to be written around 90 AD, where he quotes several passages from the Bible. Clement I was the fourth Pope and was ordained by St Peter in Rome.

But again, the true question that needs to be addressed is when and how did Jesus' life get corrupted from the time he died to the time it was put on paper (papirii)?

Does the conspiracy start with Paul and the Gospel writers? Or were their texts corrupted by the next generation of copyists?

IMO, there is to much evidence that what the NT was written in good faith and is true. So the only question left unaswered is: Was Christ really the Being he claims he was? Or was he a lunatic, a lier that dupped millions?



As far as Plato and others work. I've offered no opinion on their existence. I don't know the nature of their work. If it envolved the supernatural I'd likely question it.


This is probably the biggest obstacle that lies between you and Christianity. You are enslaved by the material world. Your motto is probably "Seeing is believing". It appears that you will not give the supernatural a chance, and Christianity is all about the supernatural.

[angel_luv]

does anyone else get the image of AL sitting there with her fingers in her ears going "la la la I cant hear you la la la"

sheez

:shootme

I believe the God of the Universe over mere man- sounds like common sense to me. :)

[angel_luv]

I've said that numerous times. Sometimes I enjoy talking to her but in the end you have to come to terms with the fact that nothing no matter how logical it may seem would ever sink in....hell even be considered.

She won't and never will read any point made.

I won't believe anything contrary to God's Word, true.
However, I do regularly read all your rants and sincerely enjoy the unique perspective and sense of humor that God created you with.

[BacktoBasics]

It's 100 years because I arbitrarily used 150AD as the date where we start having manuscripts of the Bible. The Ryland Papirus (P52) could date as early as 125AD and some have suggested it could be from the turn of the First Century.

So now we are talking about less than 70 years and not 100. And then there's Clement I's letter to the Corinthians, said to be written around 90 AD, where he quotes several passages from the Bible. Clement I was the fourth Pope and was ordained by St Peter in Rome.

But again, the true question that needs to be addressed is when and how did Jesus' life get corrupted from the time he died to the time it was put on paper (papirii)?

Does the conspiracy start with Paul and the Gospel writers? Or were their texts corrupted by the next generation of copyists?

IMO, there is to much evidence that what the NT was written in good faith and is true. So the only question left unaswered is: Was Christ really the Being he claims he was? Or was he a lunatic, a lier that dupped millions?





This is probably the biggest obstacle that lies between you and Christianity. You are enslaved by the material world. Your motto is probably "Seeing is believing". It appears that you will not give the supernatural a chance, and Christianity is all about the supernatural.I'll give the supernatural a chance. I love it...sometimes even obsess over it.

Was Christ really the Being he claims he was? Or was he a lunatic, a lier that dupped millions?

I'll entertain that line. I do think its possible that a man Jesus existed. Just not in the capacity that he's thought of in todays times.

[clambake]

you hear that, b2b? it's gods unique perspective and sense of humor.

you plagiarist.

[I Love Me Some Me]

What was misleading about the facts I posted about the pre-Jesus sungods?

Oh, that's right. You read Extra Stout's bullshit propaganda post and didn't read my rebuttal.

Read it, and concluded that yours was the bullshit propaganda post.



Do you listen to yourself? YOU CANNOT POST just -125 CE- and leave out the actual estimated date range. That is misleading understand? It can be 125 CE or 170 CE (or even 250 CE).

Are you trolling? Seriously now

Do you not read your own posts? YOU CANNOT POST that Osiris was born of a virgin (which is false, Isis was not a virgin at the time of his conception), that Dionysis turned water into wine (which he did not, he filled empty barrels with wine, not turned water-filled barrels into wine-filled barrels), or that Krishna was the "Shephard of God" (he was the Shepherd-God, because he was a Shepherd by trade) and expect to be treated as someone who provides nothing but facts. Your posts were just as misleading (if not more, considering you made stuff up) as what ES provided in rebuttal.

[Blake]

I believe the God of the Universe over mere man- sounds like common sense to me. :)

funny, I thought that it was man that picked up the pen and wrote the Bible. Silly me.

I know I know.......divine intervention....

the same divine intervention that gives us about 1000 different versions of the Bible including an "New American" version.

[MiamiHeat]

Sylvester Stallone wrote 'Rocky' in 3 days :)


Just remember,

-miraculous birth
- son of god come to earth
- miracles
- etc..

all been done before. Not hard to create ANOTHER incarnation of the same myth. it was very popular in those times to do so.

also, you must remember, what you have now as christianity is NOT what we had at the start. in the beginning of all of this christianity, there were DOZENS of different forms of christianity, significantly different from each other.

[Blake]

For the record, I know that Heaven is not full of a bunch of people sitting on clouds with harps. It is a majestic a million times over.

The sitting on a cloud with popcorn picture is just something that helps make me smile from time to time.

a cloud with popcorn sounds as good as streets of gold to me. What use is gold to me if Im dead?

[MiamiHeat]

Read it, and concluded that yours was the bullshit propaganda post.




Do you not read your own posts? YOU CANNOT POST that Osiris was born of a virgin (which is false, Isis was not a virgin at the time of his conception), that Dionysis turned water into wine (which he did not, he filled empty barrels with wine, not turned water-filled barrels into wine-filled barrels), or that Krishna was the "Shephard of God" (he was the Shepherd-God, because he was a Shepherd by trade) and expect to be treated as someone who provides nothing but facts. Your posts were just as misleading (if not more, considering you made stuff up) as what ES provided in rebuttal.

YOU ARE NITPICKING EVERY MINUTE DETAIL TO FILTER INFORMATION

"Oh, Dionysus filled empty barrels with wine but jesus turned water into wine!!!"

I'm not even going to fact check you here.

I am going to ask you a simple question

Do you or do you not notice the amazing similarities to the Jesus myth told many times before in history? It doesn't matter if they are not a 'carbon copy', they aren't supposed to be. The characters and names change around, but the basic outline is there.

Do you or do you not notice the amazing similarities to the Jesus myth told many times before in history?

There is only -1- right answer to that question. It's painfully obvious that the answer is yes, there are amazing similarities in ancient Sun gods told many times before Christianity.

You deny this?

[angel_luv]

you hear that, b2b? it's gods unique perspective and sense of humor.

you plagiarist.

Not a plagiarist. Rather, he just takes after his Father. :)

[BacktoBasics]

Myth can cultivated in short periods of time.

Wilt banged 10,000 chics.

SRV played guitar until his finger tips fell off and then he glued them back on

Elvis is still alive

not the best examples but you get the point.

[BacktoBasics]

YOU ARE NITPICKING EVERY MINUTE DETAIL TO FILTER INFORMATION

"Oh, Dionysus filled empty barrels with wine but jesus turned water into wine!!!"

I'm not even going to fact check you here.

I am going to ask you a simple question

Do you or do you not notice the amazing similarities to the Jesus myth told many times before in history? It doesn't matter if they are not a 'carbon copy', they aren't supposed to be. The characters and names change around, but the basic outline is there.

Do you or do you not notice the amazing similarities to the Jesus myth told many times before in history?

There is only -1- right answer to that question. It's painfully obvious that the answer is yes, there are amazing similarities in ancient Sun gods told many times before Christianity.

You deny this?OH OH I know I know this one teacher.

He doesn't see the similarities.

[smeagol]

THE MOST RECENT Extra Stout posts

1) B2B asked him
"Out of curiousity I'd like to know what ES thinks is the single most compelling piece of evidence supporting the existence of Jesus. I'm not talking about God just a mortal man named Jesus who was the son of God....magical powers and all.

I don't want 5, 6 or 10 things. Just the one single most compelling piece of evidence."

2) Extra Stout responded by using P52. He generously and misleadingly said that P52's age was ~125 CE.

3) I came with the facts about P52.

A) It's debated heavily. The -estimation- for P52's age is around 125-170 CE. Much different picture.

B) The estimation -is based on hand writing-. The style of the script. Papyrologists themselves have said this is not an accurate way to estimate age. Scholars have said, because of this, we have to say that P52 could have been written even around 250 CE.

C) Extra Stout says I am no expert, I don't know anything compared to papyrologists. He goes on to quote a scholar and leaves the rest out.

D) I post the rest of the quote and the papyrologist says exactly what I did.

That is not compelling evidence.


That's just the latest rebuttal to anything Extra Stout posts. He has no leg to stand on.


----

There were other times Extra Stout was proven incorrect, severely. He behaved in an intentionally misleading manner.

http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/greek/johnpap.html

125 - 150 AD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52

Before 100 AD to after 150 AD

http://www.historian.net/P52.html

117 - 138 AD

http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/stjohnfragment/

100 - 150 AD

http://www.abu.nb.ca/Courses/NTIntro/LifeJ/RylandsPap.htm

Not later than 150 AD


So, choosing 125 AD was not misleading at all.

Again, as with you Jesus - Sun God similarities, you have proven nothing.

Way to go . . .

[BacktoBasics]

So minimum you're a couple of generations away and yet still no first hand accounts on original documentation.

Physical evidence would be nice too.

[smeagol]

Was Christ really the Being he claims he was? Or was he a lunatic, a lier that dupped millions?

I'll entertain that line. I do think its possible that a man Jesus existed. Just not in the capacity that he's thought of in todays times.

Funny, earlier in this thread you completely denied that Jesus-man ever existed.

You seem to change your mind very quickly . . .

[smeagol]

So minimum you're a couple of generations away and yet still no first hand accounts on original documentation.

Physical evidence would be nice too.

There is no physical evidence of any ancient writtings (pre 1000 AD).

There are manuscripts of the Bible that were written, at best, less than 70 years from Jesus' death. It does not get better than this, amigo.

[smeagol]

Myth can cultivated in short periods of time.

Wilt banged 10,000 chics.

SRV played guitar until his finger tips fell off and then he glued them back on

Elvis is still alive

not the best examples but you get the point.

Ok. Try to put some effort on your response:

How do you envision this happened in the case of the Bible?

[BacktoBasics]

Funny, earlier in this thread you completely denied that Jesus-man ever existed.

You seem to change your mind very quickly . . .I don't believe he existed.

I said I'd entertain the idea of him existing just not in the capacity as he's viewed now.

Thats not me changing my mind. Its exercising my ability to rationally consider something if the evidence arises.

[MiamiHeat]

YOU JUST PROVED MY POINT.

1) 25 years is -significant- when dating P52. You can't leave out the rest

2) The ACTUAL estimation has to be a wider range than that.

"What emerges from this survey is nothing surprising to papyrologists: paleography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand. Roberts himself noted this point in his edition of P52. The real problem is the way scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence. I have not radically revised Roberts's work. I have not provided any third-century documentary papyri that are absolute "dead ringers" for the handwriting of P52, and even had I done so, that would not force us to date P52 at some exact point in the third century. Paleographic evidence does not work that way. What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P52 to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel." - Brent Nongbri


So it could be even as far back as 250 CE or even early as 50 CE. WE DO NOT KNOW.

So therefore, saying "~125 CE" is MISLEADING. WE DO NOT KNOW.

You proved my point.

[MiamiHeat]

Also...even IF it were written in 33 CE, it DOES NOT PROVE that the Christian God is real


We have all sorts of texts about different gods. It doesn't prove that any of THOSE are real


So what's the point?

[smeagol]

Also...even IF it were written in 33 CE, it DOES NOT PROVE that the Christian God is real


We have all sorts of texts about different gods. It doesn't prove that any of THOSE are real


So what's the point?


Short of Christ himself coming back to Earth and performing a miracle infront of your own very eyes, no evidence will be good enough for you.

That is the bottom line.

Again, theorize about how the Christ myth got propagated.

[baseline bum]

There is no physical evidence of any ancient writtings (pre 1000 AD).

There are manuscripts of the Bible that were written, at best, less than 70 years from Jesus' death. It does not get better than this, amigo.

88uzkxJZK3M

[smeagol]

YOU JUST PROVED MY POINT.

1) 25 years is -significant- when dating P52. You can't leave out the rest

2) The ACTUAL estimation has to be a wider range than that.

"What emerges from this survey is nothing surprising to papyrologists: paleography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand. Roberts himself noted this point in his edition of P52. The real problem is the way scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence. I have not radically revised Roberts's work. I have not provided any third-century documentary papyri that are absolute "dead ringers" for the handwriting of P52, and even had I done so, that would not force us to date P52 at some exact point in the third century. Paleographic evidence does not work that way. What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P52 to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel." - Brent Nongbri


So it could be even as far back as 250 CE or even early as 50 CE. WE DO NOT KNOW.

So therefore, saying "~125 CE" is MISLEADING. WE DO NOT KNOW.

You proved my point.

I guess Mr Nongbri is the ultimate scholar regarding P52. :rolleyes

The truth is even if we found the original Gospel of John, autographed and dated by St John himself, you would not give Christianity a chance.

[BacktoBasics]

I guess Mr Nongbri is the ultimate scholar regarding P52. :rolleyes

The truth is even if we found the original Gospel of John, autographed and dated by St John himself, you would not give Christianity a chance.That would be exponentially more compelling. I would consider it an enormous find.

[MiamiHeat]

Short of Christ himself coming back to Earth and performing a miracle infront of your own very eyes, no evidence will be good enough for you.

That is the bottom line.

Again, theorize about how the Christ myth got propagated.

Short of finding a smoking gun text titled "How we are going to invent Christianity" dated 10 BCE coupled with video evidence of their meetings in front of your own very eyes, no evidence will be good enough for you.

That is the bottom line.

Again, do you deny the amazing similarities of the Jesus story told many times before in older religions?

[MiamiHeat]

I guess Mr Nongbri is the ultimate scholar regarding P52. :rolleyes

The truth is even if we found the original Gospel of John, autographed and dated by St John himself, you would not give Christianity a chance.


You don't seem to understand what he is saying.

The estimation of the age of P52 is based on STYLE OF SCRIPT. HAND WRITING. All papyrologists, even ROBERTS HIMSELF, admit that it's an ineffective way of dating text.

If I sit down and write "Star Wars" in 18th century script , does it mean it's from then?


Lastly, CHRISTIANS HAVE BEEN SCANDALOUS FORGERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY You cannot, with ANY SCHOLARLY CERTAINTY, be confident of P52's age.

[smeagol]

Short of finding a smoking gun text titled "How we are going to invent Christianity" dated 10 BCE coupled with video evidence of their meetings in front of your own very eyes, no evidence will be good enough for you.


My problem is I cannot figure out how Christianity was created out of the blue by Jesus' followers. I have asked you or B2B to come up with a plausible answer, but I have not read any answer yet.

If you couple that with other things such as personal experiences and the explanation to other questions science has not been able to answer, I concluded some time ago that Christianity must be true.

I was a sceptic for more than 10 years, just like you. I simply accepted what to me is the overwhelming evidence in favor of the Christian God's existence.



Again, do you deny the amazing similarities of the Jesus story told many times before in older religions?


I do. I think you've made lose connections. When I read them, I picture Galileo and NBADAN coming up with reasons why 9/11 was an inside job.

[smeagol]

You don't seem to understand what he is saying.


I understand exactly what he is saying.



The estimation of the age of P52 is based on STYLE OF SCRIPT. HAND WRITING. All papyrologists, even ROBERTS HIMSELF, admit that it's an ineffective way of dating text.


So? You pick to late part of the estimation and I pick the early. In any case, it does not change the point. Even if the Ryland Papirus was writen in 170 AD. It is still good evidence, and close enough to Jesus' life.



If I sit down and write "Star Wars" in 18th century script , does it mean it's from then?


Lastly, CHRISTIANS HAVE BEEN SCANDALOUS FORGERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY You cannot, with ANY SCHOLARLY CERTAINTY, be confident of P52's age.


So you are implying that a Christian living in 250 AD wrote P52 with 100AD writting style? :lmao

[johnsmith]

I didn't believe in God until Mono's posts.

[MiamiHeat]

So? You pick to late part of the estimation and I pick the early.


No, I don't pick the late part. I pick the ENTIRE ESTIMATION. I don't lie and cherry pick.


I don't hate Christianity. You seem to confuse me with someone with bias.

[I Love Me Some Me]

YOU ARE NITPICKING EVERY MINUTE DETAIL TO FILTER INFORMATION



"Oh, Dionysus filled empty barrels with wine but jesus turned water into wine!!!"

As are you with 125 AD. But, when you do it it's just potato/potAHto, tomato/tomAHto...when the other side does it, it's false and misleading.

You logic is inconsistent. Think about your 'facts' the same way you think of the other's 'facts.'


I'm not even going to fact check...

Why start now, right? :lol


I am going to ask you a simple question

Do you or do you not notice the amazing similarities to the Jesus myth told many times before in history? It doesn't matter if they are not a 'carbon copy', they aren't supposed to be. The characters and names change around, but the basic outline is there.

Do you or do you not notice the amazing similarities to the Jesus myth told many times before in history?

There is only -1- right answer to that question. It's painfully obvious that the answer is yes, there are amazing similarities in ancient Sun gods told many times before Christianity.

You deny this?


OH OH I know I know this one teacher.

He doesn't see the similarities.

For both, I'll refer to a post made earlier in this thread:

"I can concede that some general similar traits of a god HAVE TO apply to any religious leader...throughout history. They have to be good leaders, they have to do noteworthy feats of goodness or the supernatural, the have to establish teachings and traditions, the have to create community rituals, and they have to battle evil in some form. These are common elements of religion...NOT things that require some theory of dependence. It's simply not enough to point to some vague similarities and call Christian's "copy-cats." You'd have to show that the parallels are numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central to that religion. "

Why is it so preposterous of me to ask you to provide something numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central...but anything short of a hand-written bible autographed by Jesus himself isn't good enough for you. You guys have to play by the same rules here. There is a set of evidential standards you have for me to abide by, but that same set of standards does not apply to your side of the argument.

[I Love Me Some Me]

I don't lie and cherry pick.

Except when it comes to facts about Osiris alleged 'virgin birth', Disonysis turning 'water into wine', and Krishna being the 'Shepherd of God'.

Inconsistent logic.

[MiamiHeat]

Why do you claim Isis was not a virgin?

Because Isis the Goddess was with Osiris? Mary was married to Joseph and they were human yet she was a 'virgin' .....and you don't have a problem swallowing that load of crap.


You don't understand Egyptian mythology.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Why do you claim Isis was not a virgin?

Because Isis the Goddess was with Osiris? Mary was married to Joseph and they were human yet she was a 'virgin' .....and you don't have a problem swallowing that load of crap.


You don't understand Egyptian mythology.

Osiris became her husband, then she became pregnant with Horus. It's pretty safe to assume that when Osiris and her celebrated their honeymoon, Isis' virginity was no longer considered valid.

Now, you can claim that her becoming pregnant with Horus was miraculous, but to say that she was a virgin at the time is patently untrue. Misleading, if you will.

See...first the marriage, then the pregnancy. Christianity makes no qualms about the claim that Mary was a virgin at the time of her conception, the marriage to Joseph came later (virginity still in tact).

I don't have to understand Egyptian mythology to understand that you're wrong on this point.

[BacktoBasics]

Osiris became her husband, then she became pregnant with Horus. It's pretty safe to assume that when Osiris and her celebrated their honeymoon, Isis' virginity was no longer considered valid.

Now, you can claim that her becoming pregnant with Horus was miraculous, but to say that she was a virgin at the time is patently untrue. Misleading, if you will.

See...first the marriage, then the pregnancy. Christianity makes no qualms about the claim that Mary was a virgin at the time of her conception, the marriage to Joseph came later (virginity still in tact).

I don't have to understand Egyptian mythology to understand that you're wrong on this point.
I'm sorry I have to jump in on this one. Stating that marriage assumingly equates to sex is a bit presumptous.

I've listened to you plenty but this post is ridiculous.

If you're going to argue against speculation you're going to have to offer up more than the same.

[101A]

Stating that marriage assumingly equates to sex is a bit presumptous.



As a man married for nearly 19 years, I can vouch for this statement.

[I Love Me Some Me]

I'm sorry I have to jump in on this one. Stating that marriage assumingly equates to sex is a bit presumptous.

I've listened to you plenty but this post is ridiculous.

If you're going to argue against speculation you're going to have to offer up more than the same.

Sure it's presumptious, but it's certainly not ridiculous and completely speculative.

http://www.egyptianculture.net/Marriage.aspx

EDIT: Nevermind, not presumptuous at all -

"Isis and Osiris

After his first attempt, Set managed to kill Osiris again and cut up his body into numerous parts. These parts Set spread all over Egypt. Isis, Nephthys and Anubis searched Egypt, and managed to retrieve all of the pieces of the body, except one - Osiris' phallus. Set had dropped the penis into the Nile (making it fertile), where it was eaten by a fish. The god and goddesses pieced Osiris together and created the first mummy. Using her magic, Isis fashioned a replacement for Osiris' missing part, either out of clay, wood or gold, and attached this to her dead husband's body. Through magical spells, life was breathed back into Osiris' body (though some dispute this and believe that Osiris was dead at the time)... The goddess managed to share a time of passion with her husband who impregnating her with their child, Horus. Osiris then passed into the afterlife, becoming god of the dead."

Not a virgin birth...by any means.

[MiamiHeat]

ugh. "Love Me Some Me"

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

[I Love Me Some Me]

ugh. "Love Me Some Me"

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

:lol

You've been making believe you've proven it all along.

Try this on for size:
http://www.egyptianculture.net/Marriage.aspx

"Isis and Osiris

After his first attempt, Set managed to kill Osiris again and cut up his body into numerous parts. These parts Set spread all over Egypt. Isis, Nephthys and Anubis searched Egypt, and managed to retrieve all of the pieces of the body, except one - Osiris' phallus. Set had dropped the penis into the Nile (making it fertile), where it was eaten by a fish. The god and goddesses pieced Osiris together and created the first mummy. Using her magic, Isis fashioned a replacement for Osiris' missing part, either out of clay, wood or gold, and attached this to her dead husband's body. Through magical spells, life was breathed back into Osiris' body (though some dispute this and believe that Osiris was dead at the time)... The goddess managed to share a time of passion with her husband who impregnating her with their child, Horus. Osiris then passed into the afterlife, becoming god of the dead."

[MiamiHeat]

answer my question.

ugh. "Love Me Some Me"

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

[I Love Me Some Me]

answer my question.

ugh. "Love Me Some Me"

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

I just did.

I quoted a source that explains that Horus was conceived when Isis had sex with Osiris dead corpse, with his cock formed from clay. Not exactly virgin.

[MiamiHeat]

are you ok in the head?

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

are you trolling? :P come on now, nanananana trolling right?

[MiamiHeat]

If I wasted my time and provided you with facts and sources to prove that you are wrong about Isis, what will your reaction be?

I'll help you out. There is more than 1 story about Horus' birth. Ancient Egyptians actually had several different mythos about it.

Oops!


Answer my question please.

if I wasted my time and proved it, what is your reaction?

[BacktoBasics]

are you ok in the head?

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

are you trolling? :P come on now, nanananana trolling right?Don't bother. You won't get the reaction you desire.

He just equated a vibrator on a dead man to actual functional reproductive sex.

Last time I checked shoving a glass dick in your virgin pussy doesn't mean you're not a virgin anymore.

[I Love Me Some Me]

are you ok in the head?

if I waste my time and provide you with the facts and sources to prove this about Isis, what will your reaction be?

let's just make believe I proved it, what is your reaction?

are you trolling? :P come on now, nanananana trolling right?

Ok...so you want me to hypothetically give you credit for providing documentation for a fact that you KNOW is not correct?

You want me to pretend you've proven something that's patently not correct?


C'mon man...come back when you want to have a serious conversation.

[MiamiHeat]

I want to know how you plan on reacting.

Can't you just answer that simple question?

[MiamiHeat]

Don't bother. You won't get the reaction you desire.

He just equated a vibrator on a dead man to actual functional reproductive sex.

Last time I checked shoving a glass dick in your virgin pussy doesn't mean you're not a virgin anymore.

you speak the truth

he just doesn't know that the ancient egyptians had several different accounts of the story, and they all pre-date christianity. he picked 1 account and thinks that's canon.

that's not how the ancient egyptians used to work. his mind is coming from the wrong perspective

[I Love Me Some Me]

Don't bother. You won't get the reaction you desire.

He just equated a vibrator on a dead man to actual functional reproductive sex.

Last time I checked shoving a glass dick in your virgin pussy doesn't mean you're not a virgin anymore.

Not only that, but I provided a link that showed the importance of sexual function in an Egyptian marriage...but you want me to presume that Isis and Osiris DIDN'T have sex after they got married.

And of course you're not going to get the reaction you desire. I'm not gonna pretend he's proven something that he hasn't proven.

[I Love Me Some Me]

I want to know how you plan on reacting.

Can't you just answer that simple question?

I'm going to react this way:

"I can concede that some general similar traits of a god HAVE TO apply to any religious leader...throughout history. They have to be good leaders, they have to do noteworthy feats of goodness or the supernatural, the have to establish teachings and traditions, the have to create community rituals, and they have to battle evil in some form. These are common elements of religion...NOT things that require some theory of dependence. It's simply not enough to point to some vague similarities and call Christian's "copy-cats." You'd have to show that the parallels are numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central to that religion."

[JoeChalupa]

Are you all going to Ash Wednesday Services next month?

[MiamiHeat]

So basically, you want a carbon copy of the Jesus mythos.

Otherwise, you don't believe there is anything to this.

That's not how this works. You simply don't understand.

[I Love Me Some Me]

So basically, you want a carbon copy of the Jesus mythos.

Otherwise, you don't believe there is anything to this.

That's not how this works. You simply don't understand.

I'm holding you to the same standard of evidence that you are holding others to.

Pretend that you've been shown proof of the historical accuracy of Jesus and the gospels. How would you react?

[JoeChalupa]

What the hell. I may as well keeping posting in here and go round and round like everyone else.

[JoeChalupa]

Are you all going to Ash Wednesday Services next month?

What, no takers?

[JoeChalupa]

I've got my palms from last Palm Sunday ready.

[BacktoBasics]

Lets not loose cite that every "god" or mytholigical person of worship is agreed upon as some form of personification.

Jesus was the only one considered real. So the entire argument would be potentially acceptable with every diety except Jesus.

Thats important to my understanding. Most would disagree.

[JoeChalupa]

Ooops...am I trolling?

[MiamiHeat]

Which parts were proven? That he walked on water or that there was a roman named Pilate?

What type of accuracy are we talking here?

Because I can write "Star Wars" and name one of the characters Barack Obama, it doesn't mean it's real.

What sort of thing do you mean?

[I Love Me Some Me]

Which parts were proven? That he walked on water or that there was a roman named Pilate?

What type of accuracy are we talking here?

Because I can write "Star Wars" and name one of the characters Barack Obama, it doesn't mean it's real.

What sort of thing do you mean?

Play the game by your own rules.

Pretend that you've been shown proof of the historical accuracy of Jesus and the gospels. How would you react?

[monosylab1k]

CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

[JoeChalupa]

Wow. I'll read that to put me to sleep.

[E20]

Sylvester Stallone wrote 'Rocky' in 3 days
Did not know that.

[Aunt Ester]

I never knew there were so many damn heathens up in here!!

[JoeChalupa]

I'm not surprised.

[MiamiHeat]

Let's take a look at claims made by those who deny the facts :

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[MiamiHeat]

anyone still want to argue these aren't facts?

[JoeChalupa]

anyone still want to argue these aren't facts?

Still doesn't prove Jesus never existed.

[MiamiHeat]

:) damning evidence ain't it?

[JoeChalupa]

:) damning evidence ain't it?

Nope. Not even close.

[MiamiHeat]

yeeeaaah right. stop trolling :)

[jack sommerset]

Another thing that cracks me up about religion and the bible is noone can ever agree on anything that fictional book has in it. Half the people that follow the bible believe in both Testaments why the other half believe in just the old. Just disagreeing is not good enough, they have to "scare" the people or change the game up a bit for selfish, greedy reasons.The Christians say "if you don't believe in Jesus Christ you are going to HELL" No playing around with that one. Ticket straight to hell even if you never were given the chance to know who this cat was.Fucked up!!!!!!!!!!!

The hell with sharing a common belief with the Jews and Christians that God does exist. The hell with sharing churches (money) to worship what they do agree on. Its a business and always has been. A way to get power and so many fools fall in line. Sad.

[Flo-Rida]

It's very simple.

Do you believers want to start hearing the real meanings and explanations behind your religion?

I'm not wasting my time debating about faith and/or the right to believe. That will never lead anywhere. However, facts can't be disputed

Better to be safe than sorry.

[MiamiHeat]

Fear.

[Richard Cranium]

Fear factor.

[JoeChalupa]

yeeeaaah right. stop trolling :)

:lmao Keep on believin' my brother.

[spurspf]

Sorry, MiamiHeat, I think you were too passive in the beginning waiting for a question, but what I want to know is why DPG21920 was allowed to dominitate this thread. Most people who have read this thread probably think it is logical to prove a negative and not a positive. Hey DPG21920, it is impossible to prove a negative logically, the onus is on you to prove something, so go ahead prove the existance of god. By the way, I believe in the existance of some guy called Jesus Christ, and that is all he was, some guy. Once we die, we die, sorry it makes you feel so sad. Hey, I even know of another person who walked on water and turned water into wine, around the same time as Jesus. His name was Appolonius. Go ahead and do a google search for him.

[MiamiHeat]

Hey, I even know of another person who walked on water and turned water into wine, around the same time as Jesus. His name was Appolonius. Go ahead and do a google search for him.

Yeah, he's one of them. There's a long list of them.

REPOSTING SO IT'S NOT MISSED.

Let's take a look at claims made by those who deny the facts :

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[baseline bum]

it is impossible to prove a negative logically.

No it isn't. I'll give you a negative that's easily proved:

There is no rational number whose square is 2.

If there was it would be the quotient q = m/n, where n is a positive integer and m is an integer. We can just assume m>0 also, since (-m/n)^2=(m/n)^2 and m is obviously not 0, since 0^2=0 is not equal to 2. We can also assume m/n is reduced in lowest terms, because if it is not, divide both m and n by their greatest common divisor and call those m and n.

(m/n)^2 = 2 implies that m^2 = 2n^2. Then m^2 is even. Then m is even, since odd*odd = odd. Then m=2k for some k>0, since m is even. Then 2 is a factor of m, and m^2 = 4k^2 = 2n^2.

So, n^2 = 2k^2, which shows n^2 is even. Therefore, n is even. Therefore, 2 is a factor of n. But 2 is also a factor of m since m is even, so m/n is not reduced in lowest terms. The contradiction shows there is no rational number q=m/n whose square is 2. I.e., the square root of 2 isn't rational.

[stretch]

No it isn't. I'll give you a negative that's easily proved:

There is no rational number whose square is 2.

If there was it would be the quotient q = m/n, where n is a positive integer and m is an integer. We can just assume m>0 also, since (-m/n)^2=(m/n)^2 and m is obviously not 0, since 0^2=0 is not equal to 2. We can also assume m/n is reduced in lowest terms, because if it is not, divide both m and n by their greatest common divisor and call those m and n.

(m/n)^2 = 2 implies that m^2 = 2n^2. Then m^2 is even. Then m is even, since odd*odd = odd. Then m=2k for some k>0, since m is even. Then 2 is a factor of m, and m^2 = 4k^2 = 2n^2.

So, n^2 = 2k^2, which shows n^2 is even. Therefore, n is even. Therefore, 2 is a factor of n. But 2 is also a factor of m since m is even, so m/n is not reduced in lowest terms. The contradiction shows there is no rational number q=m/n whose square is 2. I.e., the square root of 2 isn't rational.

what. the. fuck.

:lmao

[stretch]

CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

this is a good book. can you post more of it?

[stretch]

CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

like i mean the entire book.

[stretch]

CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

can you also post jurassic park? thats a personal favorite of mine.

[stretch]

CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

thanks.

[baseline bum]

How unoriginal.

[703 Spurz]

There is no God. There is the idea and concept of God which keeps believers in line, but there is definately no all-powerful devine being watching over us and creating "miracles".

The thing I find the most funny is God in sports. When someone wins they thank God. Well.... what about the other person/people that lost? Did God forsake them or just favor you more? I thought God loved us all equally? Could it possibly be that through your own strength and talent that you won the day on your own? Is it really that hard to believe that?

I always felt that way too. Like when a guy jacks a ball out of the park and does the religious thing with spectacles testicles pocket and watch thing.

What, does the pitcher not believe in God so that's why he made him give up a homer?

[baseline bum]

what. the. fuck.

:lmao

That's ok. You've shown countless times you have no idea how to logically argue anything.

[stretch]

That's ok. You've shown countless times you have no idea how to logically argue anything.

Okay, quit being a dipshit. I was just shocked more than anything that you would go through the whole equation or whatever the hell you wrote about to prove a negative or whatever it was. It wasn't anything negative against you, you insecure faggot.

[Blake]

thanks.

ruh roh.

someone's jealous of mono getting all the troll glory and wants to get some for herself.

lol, loser.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Okay, quit being a dipshit. I was just shocked more than anything that you would go through the whole equation or whatever the hell you wrote about to prove a negative or whatever it was. It wasn't anything negative against you, you insecure faggot.

Baseline pulls a little maths/logic out and you spam the thread then go ad hominem homophobic - who is the insecure one again? :rolleyes

PS I'm not going to buy into the "is there or isn't there a God or Gods?" argument because I don't have a clue, and I think belief in a higher being is an entirely personal choice.

However, I CAN tell you that the Earth is more than 8,000-odd years old, and if you reject that you are an idiot. The scientific evidence contradicting Genesis' version of events and the Old Testament time-line is overwhelming. A higher being did NOT create everything a few thousand years ago and then construct the world to make it look like it was 4 billion years old. That, if you believe it, is entirely duplicitous and contradictory of the qualities of "God-like" behaviour. It makes no rational sense, and scientific understanding makes a mockery of it.

[MiamiHeat]

so once i post the sources for the facts, you got to show your face Love Me Some Me

see if you can re-read your friend Extra Stout's bullshit propaganda again

[johnsmith]

this is a good book. can you post more of it?


Originally Posted by monosylab1k

CHAPTER I


"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."

"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.

"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.

"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"

"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."

"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."

"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."

"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:

"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"

She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"

"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"

"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."

Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.

"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:

"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."

The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."

And she smiled her ecstatic smile.

"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."

"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."

The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.

"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.

"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"

He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."

Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.

"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"

"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."

"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."





CHAPTER II


Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.


*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.


To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.

The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.

"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.

"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."

"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."

"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.

"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.




CHAPTER III


Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."

The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.

"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.

The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.

The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.

"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.

"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.

The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."

There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.

"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.

Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.

"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.

He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.

"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.

"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.

The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"

"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.

"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.

Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.





CHAPTER IV


Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.

"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.

"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."

"And Lise, your wife?"

"She will go to the country."

"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"

"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"

Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.

"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.

"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.

"Very," said Pierre.

In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."


Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.

"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."

Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.

"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.

"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.

"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.

"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"

"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.

"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."

Prince Vasili smiled.

"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."

"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."

"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."

"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"

"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"

"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."

"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.





CHAPTER V


"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."

Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.

"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"


*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!


"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."

"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."

And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.

Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.

The princess listened, smiling.

"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:

"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.

"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."

"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."

"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.

"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.

It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.

"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."

"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."

"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.

"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.

The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.

"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."

"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."

"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.

"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.

"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.

"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."

"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.

"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."

"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."

Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.

"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"

"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"

"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.

"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.

The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.

"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."

"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.

"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."

Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.


Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:

"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.

"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."

Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.

"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"

Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.

"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.

I agree with you stretch, this is good stuff.

[MiamiHeat]

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[MiamiHeat]

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[MiamiHeat]

page 47

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[MiamiHeat]

page 47 please

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[MiamiHeat]

page 47 yet?

[MiamiHeat]

still no page 47?


Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.


Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.


Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.


Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

[MiamiHeat]

how's that for spamming?

[smeagol]

anyone still want to argue these aren't facts?

All I see when I read your posts is that there were dozens of civilizations before the Jews, and each civilization had hundreds of God-stories (you even mention the fact that some God-stories had several iterations).

You are bound to find similarities between those thousands of stories that came before Christ, and the story of Christ.

That does not mean that the story of Christ is a copy of other stories.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Let me start by saying that I don't remember making 5 out of these 6 claims, but for argument's sake I'll address them anyway


Let's take a look at claims made by those who deny the facts :

Click on words for link.


Claim #1 - Isis was not a virgin

First, we have to understand how the ancient egyptians lived. They worshipped over 2,000 Gods. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/gods_gallery.shtml) They had different versions/accounts/stories for the same Gods in different areas around Egypt. They did not have -1- canonical religion like you are familiar with. When you read an account of Horus' birth, just remember you are reading one account. There are several different stories.

ALL of the Horus birth stories involve a miraculous birth.

1) In one account, Isis is impregnated by "a flash of lightning" (http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb3F7roWPvsC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=isis+impregnated+by+lightning&source=web&ots=05QAz5rf1p&sig=W101TskOoKHoK3ZqoYfuvRKU5Po)and in another account "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis) She gives birth to Horus/Apis. Apis is an Egyptian Bull God that is another form of Osiris, they are associated as one and the same (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29660/Apis). He is most famous for being worshipped by the Israelites as a "Golden Calf" after they leave Egypt and while Moses is on Mt. Sinai.

So. Isis gives birth to Apis (Osiris/Horus) "begotten by a ray of light from heaven". Virgin birth.

There are more accounts, however, but they all involve some sort of miraculous birth. The one I have given however, is a virgin birth.

There is even many accounts of Virgin Queens and Mothers, such as Mut-Em-Usa, the VIRGIN QUEEN OF EGYPT (http://englishatheist.org/indexd.shtml).

You have heard of the QUEEN OF SHEEBA. She was famous for her chastity aka VIRGINITY. She ruled Ethiopia, which would be part of Egypt, around 960 BC.

Virgin women of importance is nothing new to the Egyptians.

This is really the only claim I made, questioning the virginity of Isis, in relation to the claim MH made in his original posting of these issues of a 'virgin birth'.

For clarity, let's go ahead and make sure that we are on the same page when we are discussing a virgin. A virgin is someone who has not experienced sexual intercourse, so a virgin birth is one in which a virgin gives birth. Considering the fact that Isis and Osiris were married prior to the alleged miraculous conception of Horus gives considerable doubt to the 'virginity' of Isis at the time of conception.

However, even if her virginity were in tact (which it most like was not) the similarities between the circumstances surrounding the conception of Horus (in any account) are not all that similar to the account of Mary. In most pagan cases (including the one discussed right now), the divine male (Osiris in this case) in human or other form, impregnates the woman through normal sexual intercourse of (to put it frankly) vaginal penetration. In Mary's case, the gospels speak clearly of her virginity, and make no mention of a divine male mating (in any form) with Mary, but rather the she would "conceive in her womb."



Claim #2 - Isis-Meri does not exist so it didn't influence "Mary"

Isis is one of the original Mother Goddess. She too, had many forms. She was worshipped for THOUSANDS of years and was only surpassed by the Virgin Mary.

Isis is not her ONLY name obviously, since the egyptians worshipped many forms of Isis, the Mother Goddess.
'Goddess of Many Names' / 'Queen of the Gods' (http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/gods.php)

She is also known as Aset, Ast, Est, Meri-En-Sakar, and many others.

One of Isis' forms was the Goddess of Nature and Harvest - MERI-EN-SAKAR. (http://books.google.com/books?id=hlFtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA334&lpg=PA334&dq=egyptian+god+meri&source=web&ots=b1eQammvH7&sig=KFWlUdbhLfUNFSTsFykZhXo8djY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA334,M1) They are all forms of ISIS, the Mother.

Isis ultimately absorbed and represented hundreds of different goddesses, all forms of the Mother, ISIS. Her worship survived until around the 6th century CE.

Not a claim I made, but your answer is ridiculous anyway. Simply put, Mary is in no way, shape, or form a 'diety' within the Christian teachings. She is not a goddess, and is not worshipped.

I'll repeat this more in addressing your other claims, but I say that because no where in scripture is Mary elevated to anything more than "highly favored" by God, and "blessed among women."

Mary is not a goddess, and is not worshipped. Therefore, the pre-existence of Isis-Meri or any other form of female diety is irrelevant to the discussion of an earthly mortal named Mary.



Claim #3 - The 'Mother of God' Mary in Christianity did not copy/borrow/steal from Isis the Mother of God

To quote from this source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/virginmary_1.shtml):

"When Christianity was spreading across the Empire, it's clear that it deliberately took images from the pagan world in which it lived and into which it spread and used those images. Old holy wells and shrines were turned into Christian shrines. In Egypt a shrine of Isis was deliberately and self-consciously re-created as a shrine of Mary."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaryAndHorus.JPG

The connections are so similar, sometimes scholars can't even tell if they are looking at Mary or Isis.

All of these "borrowings" were done after Constantine and really several centuries later than is relevant to our conversation. Horus on the lap of Isis was certainly used by the Early Church as a concession to help new converts and for teaching purposes. This is interesting stuff, but the lateness of the use of such images really means it's not relevant to our discussion.

I say again, I'm not too concerned with anything other than the Jesus/Christianity of the gospels and epistles. That should be the reference point for this discussion. The Bible isn't a picture book, as far as I know, so iconic images hold no place in the conversation.



Claim #4 - December 25 was not celebrated by Ancient Egyptians as the birth of Horus/Osiris

This is an Ancient Egyptian Calendar (http://showcase.netins.net/web/ankh/calendar1.html)

"Birth of Heru (Horus) the child of Aset (Isis) ; Going forth of Wadjet singing in Heliopolis;Day of Elevating the Great Netjert (Goddess) in all Her names & manifestations"


Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible, however it too is celebrated on Dec. 25th once again, to coincide with this ancient worship of the Sun. The date was chosen to occur on the same date as the birth of Horus, Mithra, Dionysus and the Sol Invictus (unconquerable Sun), etc.

However, for argument's sake I'll just state that it's possible (even probable) that the early church adopted this date to celebrate Jesus' birth. In fact, it was most likely done as a competitive strategy, to allow new converts to continue to celebrate the lighting of the lights and the other cool and fun things that went along with the "birthday of the Sun." Christians were inclined to participate in this holiday, so the church Christianized it. Besides, the content and conceptual meaning of the holiday would be (and still is) CONSIDERABLY different, even if the trappings of the holiday were much the same.

I say again, I'm not too concerned with anything other than the Jesus/Christianity of the gospels and epistles. That should be the reference point for this discussion. As so astutely pointed out by you, "Jesus' birth day is NEVER mentioned in the Bible."


Claim #5 - Horus' birth is not heralded by a Star in the East as Jesus was

The Star in the East is known as Sirius. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, almost twice as bright as the next brightest star. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sirius) Sirius was an important star for the ancient egyptians. They based their calendar around Siirus. (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/calendar.html) They called it "the going up of the goddess Sothis". Sothis/Sirius has always been identified with Isis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/sothis.htm).

Ok. So, the Star in The East/Isis heralds the birth of the Sun/Son of God Horus.

I guess, so what? I mean...the star was there, it's always been there, it'll probably always be there. To me this is really not significant at all. Besides that, I'm really having a hard time finding a lot of info about Horus birth being announced by a star. Perhaps you can elaborate more.



Claim #6 - Isis/Horus/Osiris are not the original "holy trinity"

Isis is the Mother of God, the Great Mother Goddess.
Horus is the Son of Osiris/ Son of God
Osiris is the Father, "Judge of the Dead in the Afterlife" (http://history.howstuffworks.com/ancient-egypt/osiris.htm)

Yeah. Apparently, Osiris was judging the dead well before Jehovah.

They are the original Holy Trinity.

Osiris' worship was still widespread until around 388 CE (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14577d.htm), when Theodosius (the last roman emperor) declared Nicene Christianity the official state religion and began punishing all other religious practices.

The Trinity, as discussed in the Christian church has:

God - The Father
God - The Son
God - The Holy Spirit

Which is distinctly different from Osiris the Father, Isis the Mother, and Horus the Son. Firstly, and most importantly, God is God in all three forms in the Christian Trinity. He is not a different person (as Osiris, Isis, and Horus were). He is 3-in-1, the same God in three personifications.

In any case, I'll repeat for the last time...I'm not too concerned with anything other than the Jesus/Christianity of the gospels and epistles. That should be the reference point for this discussion. None of the gospel or epistle authors were aware of or even mentioned the word or concept of a Trinity. The idea of a Trinity was something published by the Early Church.



I find your evidence to be neither damning, nor actually evidence.I can concede that some general similar traits of a god HAVE TO apply to any religious leader...throughout history. They have to be good leaders, they have to do noteworthy feats of goodness or the supernatural, the have to establish teachings and traditions, the have to create community rituals, and they have to battle evil in some form. These are common elements of religion...NOT things that require some theory of dependence. It's simply not enough to point to some vague similarities and call Christian's "copy-cats." You'd have to show that the parallels are numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central to that religion.

[MiamiHeat]

as I said

Love Me some Me's answer boils down to :

"So? It's not a carbon copy so it means nothing!!!"

"Yeah, the Christians stole things from other religions. So? They just did it for x reason, it doesn't mean the religion is fake!!!"


Really sad to see. I didn't even get to ALL of the similarities. There are -many-, many more than what I posted. I just don't have the time to argue with lunatics who don't want to confront their religion or just trolls on SpursTalk


This information has been known for CENTURIES, so it's not new. For a long time, even saying these things got you killed. Now we live in an era where we can be free from the christian bastards and tell the truth.

I am leaning towards trolls, that's what I think :) Except angel_luv, she really does believe lol

[BacktoBasics]

You guys are arguing the specifics of a story that was never actually real. How can you sit there and argue virginity or not over a fable. Its not a real story so you can't logically argue that because they were married they had sex. Fables aren't rooted in reality. The story is similar. Other stories are similar. None of them are real. They're fabrications. You can't nitpic a fabricated myth because it doesn't equate to reality. He's provided evidence of a virgin birth pertaining to a myth. Then you want to bring the debate down to how that would relate in reality. I don't agree with that stance I Love Me Some Me.


Its like arguing Jack in the Beanstalk because no vine could grow that big. No shit its a fable.

[MiamiHeat]

i'd like to say I didn't even know WHO acharya S was until I read -this- thread on spurstalk.

You guys realize Acharya S stole all of that info she has from other authors? this topic has been written about hundreds of times in many many books by many scholars over centuries.

this is part of the stuff that the Church was trying to cover up.

[I Love Me Some Me]

as I said

Love Me some Me's answer boils down to :

"So? It's not a carbon copy so it means nothing!!!"

"Yeah, the Christians stole things from other religions. So? They just did it for x reason, it doesn't mean the religion is fake!!!"


Really sad to see. I didn't even get to ALL of the similarities. There are -many-, many more than what I posted. I just don't have the time to argue with lunatics who don't want to confront their religion or just trolls on SpursTalk


This information has been known for CENTURIES, so it's not new. For a long time, even saying these things got you killed. Now we live in an era where we can be free from the christian bastards and tell the truth.

I am leaning towards trolls, that's what I think :) Except angel_luv, she really does believe lol


Your quick response only tells me you don't care to debate, only to cut/paste/repeat what has been legitimately rebutted over and over again. Your posts are completely void of independent thought, and you have no interesting in conversation...only in hearing/reading your own thoughts.

All I'm asking for is the following:

Show me parallels that are numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central to Christianity.

This is not a preposterous request, just simply one that you cannot fulfill. I've confronted everything you've posted...we disagree. You are not providing evidence, but fallacies and vague similarities that apply to any religion. If you decide to bow out now, that would be cool with me since you've had nothing new to say since about page 10.

[smeagol]

MH and B2B have won the debate . . . (because they say so). :lol

By the way, I have asked a question many times and nobody none of you two have answered it.

[I Love Me Some Me]

You guys are arguing the specifics of a story that was never actually real. How can you sit there and argue virginity or not over a fable. Its not a real story so you can't logically argue that because they were married they had sex. Fables aren't rooted in reality. The story is similar. Other stories are similar. None of them are real. They're fabrications. You can't nitpic a fabricated myth because it doesn't equate to reality. He's provided evidence of a virgin birth pertaining to a myth. Then you want to bring the debate down to how that would relate in reality. I don't agree with that stance I Love Me Some Me.


Its like arguing Jack in the Beanstalk because no vine could grow that big. No shit its a fable.

I'm not arguing the merits of virgin birth or other miracles. We're arguing the alleged similarities between the two stories.

To follow your Jack in the Beanstalk analogy, it's like he's trying to argue that the legend of Washington cutting down a cherry tree was stolen from the fable of Jack and the Beanstalk because they both cut down a plant. Similarities exist, but they are irrelevant to the point that it's ridiculous to try and compare the two.

[BacktoBasics]

Show me parallels that are numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central to Christianity.

There are hundreds. For the sake of the argument there are reasonably no less than 20 in this thread.

Probably a solid 2 or 3 pertaining to the Horus discussion you guys are having now.

Mithra is quite a bit more compelling. Christians stole nearly the entire diety/religion for their own.

[smeagol]

You guys are arguing the specifics of a story that was never actually real.


And you have proved this how?




How can you sit there and argue virginity or not over a fable.


How did this fable came to be. Please give us specifics.



Its not a real story so you can't logically argue that because they were married they had sex.


What is your source to affirm this?




Fables aren't rooted in reality. The story is similar. Other stories are similar. None of them are real. They're fabrications. You can't nitpic a fabricated myth because it doesn't equate to reality.


So?



He's provided evidence of a virgin birth pertaining to a myth.


Even if there was a fable 200 years before Jesus was born about a virgin birth, how the fuck does that absolutely disqualify Jesus' birth as told in the Bible?




Its like arguing Jack in the Beanstalk because no vine could grow that big. No shit its a fable.


Until you prove how the Bible came to be, STFU.

[BacktoBasics]

I'm not arguing the merits of virgin birth or other miracles. We're arguing the alleged similarities between the two stories.

To follow your Jack in the Beanstalk analogy, it's like he's trying to argue that the legend of Washington cutting down a cherry tree was stolen from the fable of Jack and the Beanstalk because they both cut down a plant. Similarities exist, but they are irrelevant to the point that it's ridiculous to try and compare the two.I see what you're saying. Although I agree and side with MH its really the reason I have abandoned that angle of the debate. Its easily arguable.

My initial point in all of this was that regardless of particulars the general basis of many stories are similar. As a collective whole its too much to ignore. Then partner that with the ability to mathematically map out the mans life I find it hard to lend credibility to the reality of his existence. Furthermore if you want similarities there are very few original celebrations central to Christianity....almost everything of significance date and time wise can be found in other religions or dieties.

Christmas, Passover and Easter are easiest to point out. lol but some here have said Christmas isn't compelling.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Show me parallels that are numerous, detailed, striking, complex, and central to Christianity.

There are hundreds. For the sake of the argument there are reasonably no less than 20 in this thread.

Probably a solid 2 or 3 pertaining to the Horus discussion you guys are having now.

Mithra is quite a bit more compelling. Christians stole nearly the entire diety/religion for their own.

You keep saying that, but outside of you and MH, no one really sees it that way. I consider myself a pretty rational person, and I think what I've contributed to this argument shows that I'm willing to consider what's been presented. However I just simply haven't seen anything compelling that shows me Christianity is a copy-cat religion, nor have I seen anything to dispute the historical accuracy of the gospels and epistles.

If you want to discuss Mithra, we can do so as well...but I've studied that and I'm prepared with answers if you're interested.

[BacktoBasics]

And you have proved this how?






How did this fable came to be. Please give us specifics.





What is your source to affirm this?






So?





Even if there was a fable 200 years before Jesus was born about a virgin birth, how the fuck does that absolutely disqualify Jesus' birth as told in the Bible?






Until you prove how the Bible came to be, STFU.All of these gods are based on personifications of astrological bodies or time frames. This isn't even being debated. Its widely accepted. The only one that isn't is Jesus. I don't need to show you that. Go read up yourself.

As far as how the fable came to be. This has been explained to death in this thread. The dates and times and moments are rooted in calendars. The stories were grown and cultivated around the time pieces. This isn't opinion ok.

Hurcules, Zues yada yada scholars already recognize their orgins. Why are you even asking this.

What is your deal with the "STFU". Why do I have to STFU. What the fuck is your problem.

I'm not going away. I'm not spamming the board. I'm being a reasonable contributor to this thread. You have fucking issues.

What makes you think you can tell me to STFU. What makes you think you can remove me from the thread?

[BacktoBasics]

You keep saying that, but outside of you and MH, no one really sees it that way. I consider myself a pretty rational person, and I think what I've contributed to this argument shows that I'm willing to consider what's been presented. However I just simply haven't seen anything compelling that shows me Christianity is a copy-cat religion, nor have I seen anything to dispute the historical accuracy of the gospels and epistles.

If you want to discuss Mithra, we can do so as well...but I've studied that and I'm prepared with answers if you're interested.I'm not interested. I've said before and I'll it again. Nothing no matter how compelling will alter the views of Christians.

I'll dable in points here and there but the bulk of my debating within this thread is over.

[JoeChalupa]

I'm still strong in my faith. But I do admire your persistence although it does nothing to my faith. :tu

[I Love Me Some Me]

I'm not interested. I've said before and I'll it again. Nothing no matter how compelling will alter the views of Christians.

I'll dable in points here and there but the bulk of my debating within this thread is over.

Good, me neither. :lol

This Christ-myth argument is nothing new. It's been around forever, and I really think that if it was as compelling as some would think it is, it would really have a larger impact on Christianity.

[JoeChalupa]

In my eyes Jesus Christ did and still does exists and all your babbling about fables and tales and the cookie monster, blah, blah, blah means nothing to me.

[Blake]

so that's it? this thread is over?

well at least mono will keep might keep it going with some more Dickens or whatever the hell that was.

[Blake]

In my eyes Jesus Christ did and still does exists and all your babbling about fables and tales and the cookie monster, blah, blah, blah means nothing to me.

angel luv?

[Blake]

This Christ-myth argument is nothing new. It's been around forever, and I really think that if it was as compelling as some would think it is, it would really have a larger impact on Christianity.

and if Christianity was as legit as some make it out to be, then why isn't it the #1 religion in the world?

I'm convinced that football is the best sport ever conceived by man, but I'll never be able to convince someone in Brazil that in the middle of their soccer riot.

[JoeChalupa]

You keep saying that, but outside of you and MH, no one really sees it that way. I consider myself a pretty rational person, and I think what I've contributed to this argument shows that I'm willing to consider what's been presented. However I just simply haven't seen anything compelling that shows me Christianity is a copy-cat religion, nor have I seen anything to dispute the historical accuracy of the gospels and epistles.

If you want to discuss Mithra, we can do so as well...but I've studied that and I'm prepared with answers if you're interested.

I concur. +1

[JoeChalupa]

and if Christianity was as legit as some make it out to be, then why isn't it the #1 religion in the world?

I'm convinced that football is the best sport ever conceived by man, but I'll never be able to convince someone in Brazil that in the middle of their soccer riot.

Religion is not a game. At least not to me.

[I Love Me Some Me]

and if Christianity was as legit as some make it out to be, then why isn't it the #1 religion in the world?

I'm convinced that football is the best sport ever conceived by man, but I'll never be able to convince someone in Brazil that in the middle of their soccer riot.

So...because football is not the number 1 sport in the world, does that mean it's not a legitimate sport?

[BacktoBasics]

it would really have a larger impact on Christianity.I don't agree with that at all. Mitra...Mithra what have you. There are many similarities, notably recognized and so forth. Christmas is a prime example. Go ahead and poll 1000 Christians and they'll have no clue as to what you're talking about. Even though the 25th and Christmas was an adopted, stolen or borrowed time piece from Mitra or Mithra. Its early I don't feel like fact checking.

People are more like sheep than they ever were. Especially devoute Christians. Very few are capable of thinking beyond the scope of their religion. Fuck most probably couldn't count back the last 8 presidents in order let alone have mythology knowledge.

[BacktoBasics]

Religion is not a game. At least not to me.
Its way less organized. The BCS would have a field day.

[Blake]

Religion is not a game. At least not to me.

the reference was not to show religion as a game. Not sure how you concluded that.

[Blake]

Its way less organized. The BCS would have a field day.

The BCS would screw that up too......probably have Buddhism and Islam in the title game while the Roman Catholics would have to take on the Mormons in the Sugar Bowl...

wait a sec.....

[I Love Me Some Me]

I don't agree with that at all. Mitra...Mithra what have you. There are many similarities, notably recognized and so forth. Christmas is a prime example. Go ahead and poll 1000 Christians and they'll have no clue as to what you're talking about. Even though the 25th and Christmas was an adopted, stolen or borrowed time piece from Mitra or Mithra. Its early I don't feel like fact checking.

People are more like sheep than they ever were. Especially devoute Christians. Very few are capable of thinking beyond the scope of their religion. Fuck most probably couldn't count back the last 8 presidents in order let alone have mythology knowledge.

Sadly, I think there is some truth to that. I think when a Christian takes the "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" stance it's simply laziness. Too many are like that. No offense, but I think Angel_Luv typifies that. She is either not interested enough, or hasn't had enough time to develop sufficient logical arguments to support her faith. She simply believes what the Bible says, and isn't ready to explore outside of that.

Christians can be lazy. A lot of them just want to go to heaven, and aren't interested in truth. So, they don't allow their faith to be challenged and pretend that engaging in such a challenge shows a lack of faith, when really all it shows is an unwillingness to learn more truth, and sometimes just outright laziness.

[Blake]

So...because football is not the number 1 sport in the world, does that mean it's not a legitimate sport?

no, but it would mean more people are wrong than right.

most Christians claim that God speaks very clearly to them through the Bible.

if it's so clear, why aren't there more? heck, why are we even having this thread go on for 47+ pages?

[Winehole23]

Mithra is quite a bit more compelling. Christians stole nearly the entire diety/religion for their own.Read Mitra-Varuna (http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0942299132/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1), or something, please. Please go learn something about what is so self-evidently and definitively true to you.

Your demonstrations sucked. Just saying. I at least put forward a scholastic theory that accomodates both faith and science. But the philosophical discussion failed at delivery, too.

If you undertake to criticize something that's very important to people, you'd best be pretty familiar with it first. The critic who obviously knows less than his audience may not get very far.

[angel_luv]

Sadly, I think there is some truth to that. I think when a Christian takes the "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" stance it's simply laziness. Too many are like that. No offense, but I think Angel_Luv typifies that. She is either not interested enough, or hasn't had enough time to develop sufficient logical arguments to support her faith. She simply believes what the Bible says, and isn't ready to explore outside of that.

Christians can be lazy. A lot of them just want to go to heaven, and aren't interested in truth. So, they don't allow their faith to be challenged and pretend that engaging in such a challenge shows a lack of faith, when really all it shows is an unwillingness to learn more truth, and sometimes just outright laziness.


Some things, in my opinion, should not be up for debate.
My stance that "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" does not stem from laziness, lack of interest, or lack of educational opportunities.
Rather my stances comes from my recognition and submission to the fact that God is too great to ever be fully explained by any man, no matter how smart.
God and His Word trumps everything, always.

[Blake]

Sadly, I think there is some truth to that. I think when a Christian takes the "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" stance it's simply laziness. Too many are like that. No offense, but I think Angel_Luv typifies that. She is either not interested enough, or hasn't had enough time to develop sufficient logical arguments to support her faith. She simply believes what the Bible says, and isn't ready to explore outside of that.

Christians can be lazy. A lot of them just want to go to heaven, and aren't interested in truth. So, they don't allow their faith to be challenged and pretend that engaging in such a challenge shows a lack of faith, when really all it shows is an unwillingness to learn more truth, and sometimes just outright laziness.

+100

I think angel luv is a typical teenager that has gotten caught up in her church youth group........which is not a bad thing to be sure........

unless she doesn't allow for any critical/skeptical thinking later as she gets older.

[stretch]

Baseline pulls a little maths/logic out and you spam the thread then go ad hominem homophobic - who is the insecure one again? :rolleyes

I didn't spam anything. I simply enjoyed what mono had to post and wanted to read more.

and as for Baselines math post, again, I had nothing against his math post. i actually thought he was trying to be funny, and I found it amusing. then he got the wrong idea that i was making fun of him, and acted like a little broad faggot about it.

[Blake]

I didn't spam anything. I simply enjoyed what mono had to post and wanted to read more.


stfu

:lol

you're the graham harrell of trolls. You think you deserve to be in the talks for the troll trophy, but nobody even wants you at the ceremony.

[angel_luv]

+100

I think angel luv is a typical teenager that has gotten caught up in her church youth group........which is not a bad thing to be sure........

unless she doesn't allow for any critical/skeptical thinking later as she gets older.

I'm 26, (though I look about 18. :lol)

I have chosen Christianity for myself and, by the grace of God, will never depart from it.

[BacktoBasics]

Read Mitra-Varuna (http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0942299132/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1), or something, please. Please go learn something about what is so self-evidently and definitively true to you.

Your demonstrations sucked. Just saying. I at least put forward a scholastic theory that accomodates both faith and science. But the philosophical discussion failed at delivery, too.

If you undertake to criticize something that's very important to people, you'd best be pretty familiar with it first. The critic who obviously knows less than his audience may not get very far.I said it was early, I stand corrected and I really don't feel doing a quick search only to end up quoting wiki or something pointless. It was a lazy post by me.

My later point about the 25th and Christmas being adopted, stolen or borrowed is pretty wide knowledge though.

However I don't feel like debating it. You're welcome to if you desire.

[BacktoBasics]

I'm 26, (though I look about 18. :lol)

I have chosen Christianity for myself and, by the grace of God, will never depart from it.You totally forgot to put a scripture line in there.

[I Love Me Some Me]

Some things, in my opinion, should not be up for debate.
My stance that "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" does not stem from laziness, lack of interest, or lack of educational opportunities.
Rather my stances comes from my recognition and submission to the fact that God is too great to ever be fully explained by any man, no matter how smart.
God and His Word trumps everything, always.

And your faith is admirable, and I hope I didn't insult you because that was not my intent.

I, too, submit to God. Not any less than you do. But, as Solomon does in Ecclesiates "I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven." In Timothy you are challenged to "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." That's why there are Christian scientists, and doctors, and engineers, and historians, and archeologists, and so on and so on. These people submit to God the same way you do, but work to understand His works. Remember...you are an ambassador of Jesus, and as His ambassador you should be equipped with knowledge, wisdom, and character. I think you've got the character nailed, but I challenge you to increase your knowledge and wisdom when it comes to these types of discussions.

[I Love Me Some Me]

no, but it would mean more people are wrong than right.

most Christians claim that God speaks very clearly to them through the Bible.

if it's so clear, why aren't there more? heck, why are we even having this thread go on for 47+ pages?

Simply put, not everyone believes the Bible is the word of God.

[Phenomanul]

The fact that Jesus embodies 300 plus prophecies concerning his Messianic role should at least make people consider whether or not he is who he said he was.

It is highly unlikely that the disciples that followed Christ around could fabricate such a watertight story... that is to say; a story that met every such prophecy because even the scholars of that time (pharisees and scribes) were ignorant about certain Messianic prophecies concerning Jesus. These prophecies, intricately woven into the Hebrew canon, were overseen by many people including the brightest minds of the time (such as Saul of Tarsus before he bacame Paul) and even some of Jesus' closest disciples. Nevertheless, Jesus satisfied every single one (a mathematical improbability)!!!

As smeagol said, either people are crazy for falling for the story of a few ignorant fishermen... or these fishermen were geniuses... or just maybe, perhaps, possibly JESUS is who he claimed he was.

[angel_luv]

And your faith is admirable, and I hope I didn't insult you because that was not my intent.

I, too, submit to God. Not any less than you do. But, as Solomon does in Ecclesiates "I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven." In Timothy you are challenged to "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." That's why there are Christian scientists, and doctors, and engineers, and historians, and archeologists, and so on and so on. These people submit to God the same way you do, but work to understand His works. Remember...you are an ambassador of Jesus, and as His ambassador you should be equipped with knowledge, wisdom, and character. I think you've got the character nailed, but I challenge you to increase your knowledge and wisdom when it comes to these types of discussions.

No offense whatsoever.

We all have different giftings meant to reach all various kinds of people.

Some Christians are excellent with apologetics- you have clear giftings in this area- and are meant to convince the intellectuals. Like Paul in the Bible.

Other Christians, like myself, are better at exhorting, which is a gift more suited to encouraging believers than heathens.
Still I relish any opportunity to testify about God which is why I always come back to these threads.

The world will be reached, so long as we all preach Jesus the best way we know how.


For Back to Basics :)

Luke 3:18- " And with many other words John exhorted the people and preached the good news to them."

1 Corinthians 12:28- "And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues."

[BacktoBasics]

The fact that Jesus embodies 300 plus prophecies concerning his Messianic role should at least make people consider whether or not he is who he said he was.

It is highly unlikely that the disciples that followed Christ around could fabricate such a watertight story... that is to say; a story that met every such prophecy because even the scholars of that time (pharisees and scribes) were ignorant about certain Messianic prophecies concerning Jesus. These prophecies, intricately woven into the Hebrew canon, were overseen by many people including the brightest minds of the time (such as Saul of Tarsus before he bacame Paul) and even some of Jesus' closest disciples. Nevertheless, Jesus satisfied every single one (a mathematical improbability)!!!

As smeagol said, either people are crazy for falling for the story of a few ignorant fishermen... or these fishermen were geniuses... or just maybe, perhaps, possibly JESUS is who he claimed he was.Or Wilt Chamberlain banged 500 chics and it turned into 10,000 via media, third hand accounts and shameless boasting.

[Phenomanul]

And MiamiHeat... If within my belief structure I believe that the first 'religion' was the one handed down to Adam and Eve... and since the first Messianic prophecy was revealed to them. Wouldn't it be more logical to conclude that all the other 'civilizations' stole/borrowed ideas from worship of the One True GOD - and not the other way around?

Sun/Baal/Ra worshipers were in essence directing their reverence to the wrong god instead of worshipping Jehova.

[Phenomanul]

Or Wilt Chamberlain banged 500 chics and it turned into 10,000 via media, third hand accounts and shameless boasting.

You completely side-stepped the concept. Typical.

[Blake]

Simply put, not everyone believes the Bible is the word of God.

even simpler put, not everyone has access to "the Word of God"

[Winehole23]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/atheist-bus-campaign-nationwide

[BacktoBasics]

You completely side-stepped the concept. Typical.ok

[MiamiHeat]

This is really the only claim I made, questioning the virginity of Isis, in relation to the claim MH made in his original posting of these issues of a 'virgin birth'.

For clarity, let's go ahead and make sure that we are on the same page when we are discussing a virgin. A virgin is someone who has not experienced sexual intercourse, so a virgin birth is one in which a virgin gives birth. Considering the fact that Isis and Osiris were married prior to the alleged miraculous conception of Horus gives considerable doubt to the 'virginity' of Isis at the time of conception.

However, even if her virginity were in tact (which it most like was not) the similarities between the circumstances surrounding the conception of Horus (in any account) are not all that similar to the account of Mary. In most pagan cases (including the one discussed right now), the divine male (Osiris in this case) in human or other form, impregnates the woman through normal sexual intercourse of (to put it frankly) vaginal penetration. In Mary's case, the gospels speak clearly of her virginity, and make no mention of a divine male mating (in any form) with Mary, but rather the she would "conceive in her womb."

1) Isis was Immaculate (http://books.google.com/books?id=gDxDAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=engraving+of+serapis+and+isis+immaculate&source=web&ots=5nIz46AD0S&sig=sxgiCWtn941L_do_575UvCm36cQ#PPA166,M1)

2) You are nitpicking again, severely nitpicking and assuming.

Isis gave birth without intercourse. A "begotten by a ray of light from heaven"

Earlier, you were nitpicking about sexual penetration. I just provided you the evidence, and now you just want to argue whether or not Isis had ever had sex prior to this birth.

It's quite clear what your intentions are.



All of these "borrowings" were done after Constantine and really several centuries later than is relevant to our conversation. Horus on the lap of Isis was certainly used by the Early Church as a concession to help new converts and for teaching purposes. This is interesting stuff, but the lateness of the use of such images really means it's not relevant to our discussion.

I say again, I'm not too concerned with anything other than the Jesus/Christianity of the gospels and epistles. That should be the reference point for this discussion. The Bible isn't a picture book, as far as I know, so iconic images hold no place in the conversation.

You can criticize the Roman Catholic church to legitimize your Protestant belief system until you are exhausted, but it doesn't change this little fact :

The Roman Catholic Church is -the reason- Christianity is where it is today. They are the original Christian Protestants.

You see, there were many different forms of Christianity, it was all one muddy mess, just like the ancient religions. Many different accounts of the same thing.



"The historian, in speaking of Christianity, has to be careful to recognize the very great changes that it has undergone, and the variety of forms that it may assume even at one epoch.”

"History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell (1946)


There were Ebionite Christians, Arian Christians, Marcionite Christians, etc. Their belief systems were so alien to what you know today, that during the Council of Nicea, the roman church tore Arian teachings (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm) and letters during the meeting for being too different.

Yet, now you want to act like christianity is any different from the ancient religions.


The Trinity, as discussed in the Christian church has:

God - The Father
God - The Son
God - The Holy Spirit

Which is distinctly different from Osiris the Father, Isis the Mother, and Horus the Son. Firstly, and most importantly, God is God in all three forms in the Christian Trinity. He is not a different person (as Osiris, Isis, and Horus were). He is 3-in-1, the same God in three personifications.

1) Osiris, Isis, and Horus are all incarnations of the one supreme "creator of all things" Re (Ra) (http://www.touregypt.net/GODS1.HTM). Osiris, Isis, and all other gods are just incarnations from Re (http://touregypt.net/featurestories/litany.htm). Amun, Aten, they are all aspects of RA. During the New Kingdom, the Aten was considered to be an aspect of the composite deity Ra-Amun-Horus. (http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/amarnareligion.html) All one and the same, associated as the one creator of all things, Re (Ra).


2) Around 1351-1356 BCE, there was an Egyptian Pharoah named Amenhotep IV, husband of the famous Nefertiti. At one point, he changed his name to Akhenaten, and he established one of the first instances of monotheism, the worship of just -1- God and the dismissal of all others. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/akhenaten.shtml)

The idea of worship of only 1 supreme god is commonly mistaken as having begun with the Jews.

This badly pre-dates Judaism.


3) Anyway, I said that the 'ORIGINAL Holy Trinity' was Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Obviously, the concept of the trinity was borrowed and changed around. Instead of Isis, they have 'the holy spirit', which is basically the Father anyway.

[Phenomanul]

Or Wilt Chamberlain banged 500 chics and it turned into 10,000 via media, third hand accounts and shameless boasting.

It is highly likely that the writers of the Gospels couldn't list every single Messianic prophecy, let alone comprehend them. And yet as they wrote about Jesus' life, their accounts fulfilled every single Messianic prophecy found in the Hebrew Canon. Jesus himself had to remind his own disciples of the scriptures because they couldn't outright understand his earthly purpose. How then could they turn around and produce an account of Jesus' life in which they inadvertantly cover every such prophecy? Any other who claims to be the Messiah would have to meet these requisites. To date, only Jesus has.

Do you not find it odd that only the 'tribe' of Judah made it this far? That is to say, that the Jews are the last remaining Hebrews still around today?

Or that the town of Bethlehem still exists amidst such a violent setting(particularly when so many other more important cities have come and gone in that same time period)?

I don't.

They serve to remind me that the next person who claims to be the Messiah would have to satisfy those two highly known pre-requisites. The fact that they're still around lends credence to the fact that someone else will try to claim just that (the anti-Christ).

[Blake]

And MiamiHeat... If within my belief structure I believe that the first 'religion' was the one handed down to Adam and Eve... and since the first Messianic prophecy was revealed to them. Wouldn't it be more logical to conclude that all the other 'civilizations' stole/borrowed ideas from worship of the One True GOD - and not the other way around?

Sun/Baal/Ra worshipers were in essence directing their reverence to the wrong god instead of worshipping Jehova.

If you think Judaism is the oldest religion, you gots some reading to do.

[smeagol]

All of these gods are based on personifications of astrological bodies or time frames. This isn't even being debated. Its widely accepted. The only one that isn't is Jesus. I don't need to show you that. Go read up yourself.


How is this relevant to discussing the Bible as a fable?



As far as how the fable came to be. This has been explained to death in this thread.


No it hasn't.



The dates and times and moments are rooted in calendars. The stories were grown and cultivated around the time pieces. This isn't opinion ok.


Dude, how dense can you be? What you present about calendars and other gods explains shit.

One more time:

How did this myth about Christ develop? You have a man (or maybe not, according to you) being born on the year 1 AD and dying on the year 33 AD.

There were disciples of this man that wrote his life story, starting less than 20years from his death. You have written documents from the 2nd C that prove that those books of the Bible existed. You have other writings from Christians, starting around the year 90 AD, going all the way to the our time, that attest to Christ's existance.

So, once again, where exactly did the Christ-myth develop?

Was it the apostles that invented him?

Was it St Paul?

Was it the next generation og Christians that pushed this myth further?

These are the questions you need to answer. All that calendar crap has been refuted to death.




What is your deal with the "STFU". Why do I have to STFU. What the fuck is your problem.

I'm not going away. I'm not spamming the board. I'm being a reasonable contributor to this thread. You have fucking issues.

What makes you think you can tell me to STFU. What makes you think you can remove me from the thread?


I'm saying STFU because you are being an annyoing fuck. Half of your posts are jabs and low blows to Christians, which is not uncommon when discussing these topics. Atheists get angsty and start with the low blows after their second post.

[BacktoBasics]

It is highly likely that the writers of the Gospels couldn't list every single Messianic prophecy, let alone comprehend them. And yet as they wrote about Jesus' life, their accounts fulfilled every single Messianic prophecy found in the Hebrew Canon. Jesus himself had to remind his own disciples of the scriptures because they couldn't outright understand his earthly purpose. How then could they turn around and produce an account of Jesus' life in which they inadvertantly cover every such prophecy. Any other who claims to be the Messiah would have to meet these requisites. To date, only Jesus has.

Do you not find it odd that only the 'tribe' of Judah made it this far? That is to say, that the Jews are the last remaining Hebrews still around today?

Or that the town of Bethlehem still exists amidst such a violent setting(particularly when so many other more important cities have come and gone in that same time period)?

I don't.

They serve to remind me that the next person who claims to be the Messiah would have to satisfy those two highly known pre-requisites. The fact that they're still around lends credence to the fact that someone else will try to claim just that (the anti-Christ).I find no validity in any of it because you have no first hand original documentation from when the man was alive and no physical evidence.

Third and forth and 60th hand accounts aren't enough for me.

You're wasting your time citing miracles and gospel talk to me. My faith is stronger than that.

[Winehole23]

My later point about the 25th and Christmas being adopted, stolen or borrowed is pretty wide knowledge though.

However I don't feel like debating it. You're welcome to if you desire.I don't debate it.

The syncretism is here is not one of belief, but thematic elements and feast days, so I don't really see how this touches the core of Christian belief. At best, it nibbles around the edges.

[Phenomanul]

If you think Judaism is the oldest religion, you gots some reading to do.

Adam and Eve were Jews? Interesting....

Was Job a Jew?

Try again.

[angel_luv]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/atheist-bus-campaign-nationwide

Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.

The principal slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500...


The subsequent news coverage generated mostly negative phone calls and emails, with the largest number going directly to the organisers. Hundreds of complaints were sent to Metro, the government body responsible for the city's buses and subways. The poster provoked two counter-campaigns by devout Christians.

Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as "Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings" on buses were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.

Sounds like the blunder is backfiring already. :)

[MiamiHeat]

And MiamiHeat... If within my belief structure I believe that the first 'religion' was the one handed down to Adam and Eve... and since the first Messianic prophecy was revealed to them. Wouldn't it be more logical to conclude that all the other 'civilizations' stole/borrowed ideas from worship of the One True GOD - and not the other way around?

Sun/Baal/Ra worshipers were in essence directing their reverence to the wrong god instead of worshipping Jehova.

1) Adam and Eve is a creation story of the Jews. The egyptian civilization pre-dates them by thousands of years.


2) The Egyptians also had a creation story that pre-dates Jehovah, by thousands of years. (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Resources/StudTxts/raSerpnt.html) It is known as "Ra and the Serpent" and the similarities between that story and the Hebrew story of creation has already been established by scholars.


I am the one who came into being as Khepri the Lifegiver!
I was the creator of all forms of life which now exist,
I was the first one to emerge from primeval matter,
After I appeared all forms of life eventually appeared for the first time,
Just after I appeared I was alone and I raised up my hand,
For neither heaven nor earth existed, and there weren't
any plants or dry land or reptiles in Egypt.

Then, I spoke and living creatures arose from out of Nun
the primeval sea. I put all the creatures back to a
state of rest in Nun so I could find a place to stand.
I made up a plan of creation in my heart, and I started
my work by laying a foundation in Egypt. I designed
every living creature by myself

3) The Serpent refers to Apep. You see, Ra (God) enemy was also a serpent.
Apep was the embodiment of evil and darkness (the night).

Here is more on him : (http://www.touregypt.net/godsofegypt/apep.htm)

Apep was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction who dwelled in eternal darkness. Every day he would attempt to devour the Sun Boat of Ra as it sailed the heavens. Set's original role was to battle Apep and keep him from destroying the boat. Occasionally, Apep would succeed, and the world would be plunged into darkness (a solar eclipse?). But Set and his companion Mehen would cut a hole in Apep's belly to allow the Sun Boat to escape.

Apep commanded an army of demons that plagued mankind. Only by putting faith in the gods of light could people defeat the demons.

Every year, a ritual called the "Banishing of Apep" would be held by the priests of Ra. They would take an effigy of Apep and in the center of the temple they would pray that all the wickedness in Egypt would go into the effigy. Then they would trample the effigy, crush it, beat it with sticks, pour mud on it, and eventually burn and destroy it. In this way, the power of Apep would be curtailed for another year.

-----------

Does that all sound very familiar to you Christians? Sure does

[Phenomanul]

I find no validity in any of it because you have no first hand original documentation from when the man was alive and no physical evidence.

Third and forth and 60th hand accounts aren't enough for me.

You're wasting your time citing miracles and gospel talk to me. My faith is stronger than that.

Gospel talk? Really?

I'm talking about the mathematical probabilities of the information contained within the gospels. Mind-baffling probabilities... Clearly a product of statistical significance despite the fact that it wasn't written with that intent.

I'm also talking about the historical relevance of Bethlehem, and the tribe of Judah (modern day Jews)...

You ignore at your own peril.