 In a series of books and articles, including "What I Believe" (1884)
and "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894),
Tolstoy used the Christian gospels as a starting-point for an ideology that held violence as the ultimate evil.Tolstoy professed contempt for the private ownership of land, but his anarchism lay primarily in his view that the state exists essentially as an instrument of compulsory force, which he considered the antithesis of all religious teachings.He once wrote, "A man who unconditionally promises in advance to submit to laws which are made and will be made by men, by this very promise renounces Christianity."