Now where will Tolstoy find the basis of Society in Nature?
In the human instinct for getting-together. And that instinct seems to grow out of our hopes, and our fears, our profound belief that we need our fellow-man, and that we are not strong enough to stand alone, no matter how much we would like to do so.
Deep down in your heart you will find the primeval, natural craving for independence, individuality, separate living, separate doing. With the great common mass of humanity this tendency has been weakened by disuse until it is not an active principle. It is like a muscle which has lost its strength from inaction. Hence, the common man goes with the herd, just as a flock of sheep follows the bell-wether.
Society, then is a matter of convention: Nature did not frame it.
Nor does Nature impose upon us the relation of Husband and Wife.
Why do we adopt the present marriage system, which differs in so many respects from Nature, and from former practices of the human race?
Simply because we believe it to be an improvement. We know it is better than the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes: we believe it to be better than Polygamy; we hope that it will some day be a more radiant success than the Divorce Courts would seem to indicate.
Now as to the land.
Undoubtedly, the earth was given to the human family as a home for the family. Undoubtedly, Nature teaches that the earth belongs in common to the entire human race.