Work, Death, and Sickness (Tolstoy)
Division into chapters is editorial.
The original paradise and its problems
According to a South American Indian legend, humanity originally lived in paradise. In the beginning, people had no need to work for survival.
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
They knew no illness and lived in complete abundance. However, when the divine creator looked down to observe how people were living, he discovered a troubling reality. Instead of enjoying their blessed existence, humans had fallen into conflict and selfishness.
Rather than being grateful for their paradise, people quarreled with one another, each caring only for himself, until they cursed their very existence.
Work as Gods solution and its failure
Recognizing that people's separate, selfish lives caused their unhappiness, the divine being decided to change their circumstances. He arranged matters so that humans could no longer survive without working. They now needed to build dwellings, dig the ground, and grow food to avoid suffering from cold and hunger. The creator believed this necessity would bring people together.
Work will bring them together...They cannot make their tools, prepare and transport their timber, build their houses...each one alone by himself
The divine plan was that cooperative labor would make people understand that working together heartily would bring them more abundance and better lives, thus uniting them. However, when the creator returned to observe the results, he found people living worse than before. While they did work together out of necessity, they had broken into small competing groups. Each group tried to snatch work from others, hindering one another and wasting time and strength in struggles, making life difficult for everyone.
Unpredictable death brings new suffering
Seeing that work had failed to unite humanity, the divine being tried a different approach.
God decided so as to arrange things that man should not know the time of his death, but might die at any moment; and he announced this to them
The creator's reasoning was that knowing death could come at any moment would prevent people from grasping at temporary gains and spoiling their allotted hours of life. But this intervention also failed to achieve its intended purpose. When the divine observer returned, he found life had become even worse. The strongest people took advantage of mortality's uncertainty to subdue the weaker ones, killing some and threatening others with death. This created a new hierarchy where the strongest and their descendants did no work and suffered from the weariness of idleness, while the weaker were forced to work beyond their strength and suffered from lack of rest. Fear and hatred divided humanity further, making life more unhappy than ever.
Sickness divides humanity further
Having witnessed these failures, the divine being decided to employ one final means to unite humanity.
God, to mend matters, decided to make use of one last means; he sent all kinds of sickness among men
The creator's hope was that when all people faced sickness, the healthy would have pity on the sick and help them, expecting similar care when they themselves fell ill. However, when the divine being returned to observe the results, he discovered that life had become worse than ever before. The very sickness intended to unite people had divided them more completely. Those strong enough to make others work also forced them to provide care during illness, but did not reciprocate when others were sick. Those forced to work and care for the powerful were so exhausted they had no time to tend their own sick family members. The wealthy arranged special houses where poor people suffered and died far from sympathetic company, cared for only by hired attendants who nursed them without compassion or even with disgust. Moreover, people considered many illnesses infectious and avoided not only the sick but even those who cared for them.
Gods abandonment and humanitys slow understanding
Faced with the complete failure of all attempts to guide humanity toward happiness and unity, the divine being made a final decision. If even sickness would not teach people where their true happiness lay, they would have to learn through suffering alone. The creator abandoned humanity to find their own way. Left to themselves, people lived for a long time before they began to understand that they all could and should be happy. Only in the very latest times did a few begin to comprehend the true nature of human fulfillment - that work should not be a burden for some and slavery for others, but a common and joyful occupation uniting all people. They started to understand that with death constantly threatening everyone, the only reasonable purpose for any person is to spend their allotted time in unity and love. Finally, they began to realize that sickness, rather than dividing humanity, should provide opportunities for loving union with one another.