To conquer to Christianity the wild nations, who do not touch us and who do not in any way provoke us to oppress them, we—instead of leaving them first of all alone, and, in case of necessity or of a wish to get in closer relations with them, acting upon them only through a Christian relation to them, through the Christian teaching as proved by truly Christian acts of suffering, humility, abstinence, purity, brotherhood, love—begin by this, that we open among them new markets for our commerce, with nothing but our advantage in view, seize their land, that is, rob them, sell them wine, tobacco, opium, that is, corrupt them, and establish among them our order, teach them violence and all its methods, that is, the following of nothing but the animal law of struggle, below which no man can descend, and we do everything which can be done in order to conceal from them whatever of Christianity there is in us. And after that we send to them about two dozen missionaries, who prattle some hypocritical ecclesiastic absurdities and, in the shape of incontrovertible proofs of the impossibility of applying the Christian truths to life, adduce these our experiments at the Christianization of the savages.
The same is true of the so-called criminals, who live within our societies. To subjugate these men to Christianity, there is but one, the only way—the Christian public opinion, which can be established among these men only by means of the true Christian teaching, confirmed by a true, Christian example of life.
And so, to preach this Christian teaching and confirm it by a Christian example, we establish among these people agonizing prisons, guillotines,