‘This cannot be; it is still a dream!’ thought Esarhaddon, and made a last effort to awake. ‘Surely I am not Lailie, nor the ass, but Esarhaddon!’
He cried out, and at the same instant lifted his head out of the font.… The old man was standing by him, pouring over his head the last drops from the pitcher.
‘Oh, how terribly I have suffered! And for how long!’ said Esarhaddon.
‘Long?’ replied the old man. ‘You have only dipped your head under water and lifted it again; see, the water is not yet all out of the pitcher. Do you now understand?’
Esarhaddon did not reply, but only looked at the old man with terror.
‘Do you now understand’, continued the old man, ‘that Lailie is you, and the warriors you put to death were you also? And not the warriors only, but the animals which you slew when hunting and ate at your feasts, were also you. You thought life dwelt in you alone, but I have drawn aside the veil of delusion, and have let you see that by doing evil to others you have done it to yourself also. Life is one in them all, and yours is but a portion of this same common life. And only in that one part of life that is yours, can you make life better or worse – increasing or decreasing it. You can only improve life in yourself by destroying the barriers that divide your life from that of others, and by considering others as yourself, and loving them. By so doing you increase your share of life. You injure your life when you think of it as the only life, and try to add to its welfare at the expense of other lives. By so doing you only lessen it. To destroy the life that dwells in others is beyond your power. The life of those you have slain has vanished from your eyes, but is not destroyed. You thought to lengthen your own life and to shorten theirs, but you cannot do this. Life knows neither time nor space. The life of a moment, and the life of a thousand years: your life, and the life of all the visible and invisible beings in the world, are equal. To destroy life, or to alter it, is impossible; for life is the one thing that exists. All else, but seems to us to be.’
Having said this the old man vanished.
Next morning King Esarhaddon gave orders that Lailie and all the prisoners should be set at liberty, and that the executions should cease.
On the third day he called his son Assur-bani-pal, and gave the kingdom over into his hands; and he himself went into the desert to think over all he had learnt. Afterwards he went about as a wanderer through the towns and villages, preaching to the people that all life is one, and that when men wish to harm others, they really do evil to themselves.
1 In this story Tolstoy has used the names of real people. Esarhaddon (or Assur-akhi-iddina) is mentioned three times in the Bible (2 Kings xix. 37; Isaiah xxxvii. 38, and Ezra iv. 2), and is also alluded to in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11, as, ‘the King of Assyria, which took Manasseh in chains, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon’. His son, Assur-bani-pal, whom he promoted to power before his own death, is once mentioned in the Bible, under the name of Asnappar (Ezra iv. 10). Of Lailie history does not tell us much; but in Ernest A. Budge’s
WORK, DEATH AND SICKNESS
A LEGEND
THIS is a legend current among the South American Indians.
God, say they, at first made men so that they had no need to work: they needed neither houses, nor clothes, nor food, and they all lived till they were a hundred, and did not know what illness was.
When, after some time, God looked to see how people were living, he saw that instead of being happy in their life, they had quarrelled with one another, and, each caring for himself, had brought matters to such a pass that far from enjoying life, they cursed it.
Then God said to himself: ‘This comes of their living separately, each for himself.’ And to change this state of things, God so arranged matters that it became impossible for people to live without working. To avoid suffering from cold and hunger, they were now obliged to build dwellings, and to dig the ground, and to grow and gather fruits and grain.
‘Work will bring them together,’ thought God. ‘They cannot make their tools, prepare and transport their timber, build their houses, sow and gather their harvests, spin and weave, and make their clothes, each one alone by himself.
‘It will make them understand that the more heartily they work together, the more they will have and the better they will live; and this will unite them.’
Time passed on, and again God came to see how men were living, and whether they were now happy.
