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Title: A Confession
Creator(s): Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich (1828-1910)
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A Confession
by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
from the plain text version
Disributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine
First distributed in Russia in 1882
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I
I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was
taught it in childhood and throughout my boyhood and youth. But when I
abandoned the second course of the university at the age of eighteen I
no longer believed any of the things I had been taught.
Judging by certain memories, I never seriously believed them, but had
merely relied on what I was taught and on what was professed by the
grown-up people around me, and that reliance was very unstable.
I remember that before I was eleven a grammar school pupil, Vladimir
Milyutin (long since dead), visited us one Sunday and announced as the
latest novelty a discovery made at his school. This discovery was that
there is no God and that all we are taught about Him is a mere
invention (this was in 1838). I remember how interested my elder
brothers were in this information. They called me to their council and
we all, I remember, became very animated, and accepted it as something
very interesting and quite possible.
I remember also that when my elder brother, Dmitriy, who was then at
the university, suddenly, in the passionate way natural to him,
devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church
services, to fast and to lead a pure and moral life, we all -- even
our elders -- unceasingly held him up to ridicule and for some unknown
reason called him "Noah". I remember that Musin-Pushkin, the then
Curator of Kazan University, when inviting us to dance at his home,
ironically persuaded my brother (who was declining the invitation) by
the argument that even David danced before the Ark. I sympathized with
these jokes made by my elders, and drew from them the conclusion that
though it is necessary to learn the catechism and go to church, one
must not take such things too seriously. I remember also that I read
Voltaire when I was very young, and that his raillery, far from
shocking me, amused me very much.
My lapse from faith occurred as is usual among people on our level of
education. In most cases, I think, it happens thus: a man lives like
everybody else, on the basis of principles not merely having nothing
in common with religious doctrine, but generally opposed to it;
religious doctrine does not play a part in life, in intercourse with
others it is never encountered, and in a man's own life he never has
to reckon with it. Religious doctrine is professed far away from life
and independently of it. If it is encountered, it is only as an
external phenomenon disconnected from life.
Then as now, it was and is quite impossible to judge by a man's life
and conduct whether he is a believer or not. If there be a difference
between a man who publicly professes orthodoxy and one who denies it,
the difference is not in favor of the former. Then as now, the public
profession and confession of orthodoxy was chiefly met with among
people who were dull and cruel and who considered themselves very
important. Ability, honesty, reliability, good-nature and moral
conduct, were often met with among unbelievers.
The schools teach the catechism and send the pupils to church, and
government officials must produce certificates of having received
communion. But a man of our circle who has finished his education and
is not in the government service may even now (and formerly it was
still easier for him to do so) live for ten or twenty years without
once remembering that he is living among Christians and is himself
reckoned a member of the orthodox Christian Church.
So that, now as formerly, religious doctrine, accepted on trust and
supported by external pressure, thaws away gradually under the
influence of knowledge and experience of life which conflict with it,
and a man very often lives on, imagining that he still holds intact
the religious doctrine imparted to him in childhood whereas in fact
not a trace of it remains.
S., a clever and truthful man, once told me the story of how he ceased
to believe. On a hunting expedition, when he was already twenty-six,
he once, at the place where they put up for the night, knelt down in
the evening to pray -- a habit retained from childhood. His elder
brother, who was at the hunt with him, was lying on some hay and
watching him. When S. had finished and was settling down for the
night, his brother said to him: "So you still do that?"
They said nothing more to one another. But from that day S. ceased to
say his prayers or go to church. And now he has not prayed, received
communion, or gone to church, for thirty years. And this not because
he knows his brother's convictions and has joined him in them, nor
because he has decided anything in his own soul, but simply because
the word spoken by his brother was like the push of a finger on a wall
that was ready to fall by its own weight. The word only showed that
where he thought there was faith, in reality there had long been an
empty space, and that therefore the utterance of words and the making
of signs of the cross and genuflections while praying were quite
senseless actions. Becoming conscious of their senselessness he could
not continue them.
So it has been and is, I think, with the great majority of people. I
am speaking of people of our educational level who are sincere with
themselves, and not of those who make the profession of faith a means
of attaining worldly aims. (Such people are the most fundamental
infidels, for if faith is for them a means of attaining any worldly
aims, then certainly it is not faith.) these people of our education
are so placed that the light of knowledge and life has caused an
artificial erection to melt away, and they have either already noticed
this and swept its place clear, or they have not yet noticed it.
The religious doctrine taught me from childhood disappeared in me as
in others, but with this difference, that as from the age of fifteen I
began to read philosophical works, my rejection of the doctrine became
a conscious one at a very early age. From the time I was sixteen I
ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to church or to fast of my
own volition. I did not believe what had been taught me in childhood
but I believed in something. What it was I believed in I could not at
all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God --
but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ
and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I again could not
have said.
Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith -- my only
real faith -- that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse
to my life -- was a belief in perfecting myself. But in what this
perfecting consisted and what its object was, I could not have said. I
tried to perfect myself mentally -- I studied everything I could,
anything life threw in my way; I tried to perfect my will, I drew up
rules I tried to follow; I perfected myself physically, cultivating my
strength and agility by all sorts of exercises, and accustoming myself
to endurance and patience by all kinds of privations. And all this I
considered to be the pursuit of perfection. the beginning of it all
was of course moral perfection, but that was soon replaced by
perfection in general: by the desire to be better not in my own eyes
or those of God but in the eyes of other people. And very soon this
effort again changed into a desire to be stronger than others: to be
more famous, more important and richer than others.
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II
Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive history of my
life during those ten years of my youth. I think very many people have
had a like experience. With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was
young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness.
Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be
morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I
yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger,
and revenge -- were all respected.
Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and felt
that they approved of me. The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the
purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she so desired
for me as that I should have relations with a married woman: `Rien ne
forme un juene homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut'.
[1] Another happiness she desired for me was that I should become an
aide-de-camp, and if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor. But the
greatest happiness of all would be that I should marry a very rich
girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible.
I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache.
I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them.
I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the peasants, sentenced them to
punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery,
adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder -- there was no
crime I did not commit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct
and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively
moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness, and
pride. In my writings I did the same as in my life. to get fame and
money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the
good and to display the evil. and I did so. How often in my writings I
contrived to hide under the guise of indifference, or even of banter,
those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave meaning to my
life! And I succeeded in this and was praised.
At twenty-six years of age [2] I returned to Petersburg after the war,
and met the writers. They received me as one of themselves and
flattered me. And before I had time to look round I had adopted the
views on life of the set of authors I had come among, and these views
completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve -- they
furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life.
The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted
in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this
development we -- men of thought -- have the chief part; and among men
of thought it is we -- artists and poets -- who have the greatest
influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest the simple
question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach?
it was explained in this theory that this need not be known, and that
the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an admirable
artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt
this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and taught without myself
knowing what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food,
lodging, women, and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I
taught was very good.
this faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was
a religion, and I was one of its priests. To be its priest was very
pleasant and profitable. And I lived a considerable time in this faith
without doubting its validity. But in the second and still more in the
third year of this life I began to doubt the infallibility of this
religion and to examine it. My first cause of doubt was that I began
to notice that the priests of this religion were not all in accord
among themselves. Some said: We are the best and most useful teachers;
we teach what is needed, but the others teach wrongly. Others said:
No! we are the real teachers, and you teach wrongly. and they
disputed, quarrelled, abused, cheated, and tricked one another. There
were also many among us who did not care who was right and who was
wrong, but were simply bent on attaining their covetous aims by means
of this activity of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity of
our creed.
Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed
itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively, and I
became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the
writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless
character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former
dissipated and military life; but they were self-confident and
self-satisfied as only those can be who are quite holy or who do not
know what holiness is. These people revolted me, I became revolting to
myself, and I realized that that faith was a fraud.
But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it,
yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of
artist, poet, and teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet and
artist and could teach everybody without myself knowing what I was
teaching, and I acted accordingly.
From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally
developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to
teach men, without knowing what.
To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men
(though there are thousands like them today), is sad and terrible and
ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a
lunatic asylum.
We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak,
write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and
that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us,
contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote --
teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that
to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we
did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not
listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another
in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry
with one another -- just as in a lunatic asylum.
Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength
day and night, setting the type and printing millions of words which
the post carried all over Russia, and we still went on teaching and
could in no way find time to teach enough, and were always angry that
sufficient attention was not paid us.
It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real
innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To
gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we
did that. But in order to do such useless work and to feel assured
that we were very important people we required a theory justifying our
activity. And so among us this theory was devised: "All that exists is
reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of
Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and
newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write
books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the
best of men." This theory would have been all very well if we had been
unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met
by a diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to
have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us
money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered
himself justified.
It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic asylum; but
then I only dimly suspected this, and like all lunatics, simply called
all men lunatics except myself.
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[1] Nothing so forms a young man as an intimacy with a woman of good
breeding.
[2] He was in fact 27 at the time.
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III
So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six years,
till my marriage. During that time I went abroad. Life in Europe and
my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans [3] confirmed me
yet more in the faith of striving after perfection in which I
believed, for I found the same faith among them. That faith took with
me the common form it assumes with the majority of educated people of
our day. It was expressed by the word "progress". It then appeared to
me that this word meant something. I did not as yet understand that,
being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best
for me to live, in my answer, "Live in conformity with progress", I
was like a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves
should reply to what for him is the chief and only question. "whither
to steer", by saying, "We are being carried somewhere".
I did not then notice this. Only occasionally -- not by reason but by
instinct -- I revolted against this superstition so common in our day,
by which people hide from themselves their lack of understanding of
life. . . . So, for instance, during my stay in Paris, the sight of an
execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in
progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped
separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my
whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present
progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the
creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory,
I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what
is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress,
but it is my heart and I. Another instance of a realization that the
superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide to life,
was my brother's death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a
young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not
understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No
theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during
his slow and painful dying. But these were only rare instances of
doubt, and I actually continued to live professing a faith only in
progress. "Everything evolves and I evolve with it: and why it is that
I evolve with all things will be known some day." So I ought to have
formulated my faith at that time.
On returning from abroad I settled in the country and chanced to
occupy myself with peasant schools. This work was particularly to my
taste because in it I had not to face the falsity which had become
obvious to me and stared me in the face when I tried to teach people
by literary means. Here also I acted in the name of progress, but I
already regarded progress itself critically. I said to myself: "In
some of its developments progress has proceeded wrongly, and with
primitive peasant children one must deal in a spirit of perfect
freedom, letting them choose what path of progress they please." In
reality I was ever revolving round one and the same insoluble problem,
which was: How to teach without knowing what to teach. In the higher
spheres of literary activity I had realized that one could not teach
without knowing what, for I saw that people all taught differently,
and by quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their
ignorance from one another. But here, with peasant children, I thought
to evade this difficulty by letting them learn what they liked. It
amuses me now when I remember how I shuffled in trying to satisfy my
desire to teach, while in the depth of my soul I knew very well that I
could not teach anything needful for I did not know what was needful.
After spending a year at school work I went abroad a second time to
discover how to teach others while myself knowing nothing.
And it seemed to me that I had learnt this aborad, and in the year of
the peasants' emancipation (1861) I returned to Russia armed with all
this wisdom, and having become an Arbiter [4] I began to teach, both
the uneducated peasants in schools and the educated classes through a
magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well, but I felt I
was not quite sound mentally and that matters could not long continue
in that way. And I should perhaps then have come to the state of
despair I reached fifteen years later had there not been one side of
life still unexplored by me which promised me happiness: that was my
marriage.
For a year I busied myself with arbitration work, the schools, and the
magazine; and I became so worn out -- as a result especially of my
mental confusion -- and so hard was my struggle as Arbiter, so obscure
the results of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my shuffling
in the magazine (which always amounted to one and the same thing: a
desire to teach everybody and to hide the fact that I did not know
what to teach), that I fell ill, mentally rather than physically,
threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkirs in the steppes, to
breathe fresh air, drink kumys [5] , and live a merely animal life.
Returning from there I married. The new conditions of happy family
life completely diverted me from all search for the general meaning of
life. My whole life was centred at that time in my family, wife and
children, and therefore in care to increase our means of livelihood.
My striving after self-perfection, for which I had already substituted
a striving for perfection in general, i.e. progress, was now again
replaced by the effort simply to secure the best possible conditions
for myself and my family.
So another fifteen years passed.
In spite of the fact that I now regarded authorship as of no
importance -- the temptation of immense monetary rewards and applause
for my insignificant work -- and I devoted myself to it as a means of
improving my material position and of stifling in my soul all
questions as to the meaning of my own life or life in general.
I wrote: teaching what was for me the only truth, namely, that one
should live so as to have the best for oneself and one's family.
So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began to happen
to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of
life, and though I did not know what to do or how to live; and I felt
lost and became dejected. But this passed and I went on living as
before. Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and
oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by
the questions: What is it for? What does it lead to?
At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant
questions. I thought that it was all well known, and that if I should
ever wish to deal with the solution it would not cost me much effort;
just at present I had no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be
able to find the answer. The questions however began to repeat
themselves frequently, and to demand replies more and more
insistently; and like drops of ink always falling on one place they
ran together into one black blot.
Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal
internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear to
which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more
and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering.
The suffering increases, and before the sick man can look round, what
he took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to
him than anything else in the world -- it is death!
That is what happened to me. I understood that it was no casual
indisposition but something very important, and that if these
questions constantly repeated themselves they would have to be
answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed such
stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched them and tried
to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that they are not
childish and stupid but the most important and profound of life's
questions; and secondly that, occupying myself with my Samara estate,
the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I
was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and
could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management which greatly
occupied me at that time, the question would suddenly occur: "Well,
you will have 6,000 desyatinas [6] of land in Samara Government and
300 horses, and what then?" . . . And I was quite disconcerted and did
not know what to think. Or when considering plans for the education of
my children, I would say to myself: "What for?" Or when considering
how the peasants might become prosperous, I would suddenly say to
myself: "But what does it matter to me?" Or when thinking of the fame
my works would bring me, I would say to myself, "Very well; you will
be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or
than all the writers in the world -- and what of it?" And I could find
no reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be answered
at once, and if I did not answer them it was impossible to live. But
there was no answer.
I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had
nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and
there was nothing left.
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[3] Russians generally make a distinction between Europeans and
Russians.--A.M.
[4] To keep peace between peasants and owners.--A.M.
[5] A fermented drink prepared from mare's milk.--A.M.
[6] The desyatina is about 2.75 acres.--A.M.
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IV
My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep,
and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for
there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider
reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I
satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come
and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have know what to ask.
If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a
wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this
to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I
could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it
consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were
lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and
saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was
impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my
eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and
real death -- complete annihilation.
It had come to this, that I, a healthy, fortunate man, felt I could no
longer live: some irresistible power impelled me to rid myself one way
or other of life. I cannot say I wished to kill myself. The power
which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, and more widespread
than any mere wish. It was a force similar to the former striving to
live, only in a contrary direction. All my strength drew me away from
life. The thought of self-destruction now came to me as naturally as
thoughts of how to improve my life had come formerly. and it was
seductive that I had to be cunning with myself lest I should carry it
out too hastily. I did not wish to hurry, because I wanted to use all
efforts to disentangle the matter. "If I cannot unravel matters, there
will always be time." and it was then that I, a man favoured by
fortune, hid a cord from myself lest I should hang myself from the
crosspiece of the partition in my room where I undressed alone every
evening, and I ceased to go out shooting with a gun lest I should be
tempted by so easy a way of ending my life. I did not myself know what
I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped
something of it.
And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is
considered complete good fortune. I was not yet fifty; I had a good
wife who loved me and whom I loved, good children, and a large estate
which without much effort on my part improved and increased. I was
respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any previous
time. I was praised by others and without much self-deception could
consider that my name was famous. And far from being insane or
mentally diseased, I enjoyed on the contrary a strength of mind and
body such as I have seldom met with among men of my kind; physically I
could keep up with the peasants at mowing, and mentally I could work
for eight and ten hours at a stretch without experiencing any ill
results from such exertion. And in this situation I came to this --
that I could not live, and, fearing death, had to employ cunning with
myself to avoid taking my own life.
My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my life is a
stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me. Though I did not
acknowledge a "someone" who created me, yet such a presentation --
that someone had played an evil and stupid joke on me by placing me in
the world -- was the form of expression that suggested itself most
naturally to me.
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who
amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years:
learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with
matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay
before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing
clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and
will be nothing. And he was amused. . . .
But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none
the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single
action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have
avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so
long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come
(they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain
but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may
be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making
any effort? . . . How can man fail to see this? And how go on living?
That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated
with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it
is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is:
there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel
and stupid.
There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on
a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a
dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened
its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb
out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring
to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the
dragon, seizes a twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it.
His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign
himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still
he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one,
go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is
clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he
will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows
that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks
around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches
them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of
life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me,
ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had
fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly
consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white
and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung.
I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only
saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze
from them, and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth
intelligible to all.
The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of
the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be
told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about
it, but live, "I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long.
I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to
death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.
The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth
longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing -- art as I
called it -- were no longer sweet to me.
"Family". . .said I to myself. But my family -- wife and children --
are also human. They are placed just as I am: they must either live in
a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I
love them, guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may
come to the despair that I feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I
cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge leads them to
the truth. And the truth is death.
"Art, poetry?". . .Under the influence of success and the praise of
men, I had long assured myself that this was a thing one could do
though death was drawing near -- death which destroys all things,
including my work and its remembrance; but soon I saw that that too
was a fraud. It was plain to me that art is an adornment of life, an
allurement to life. But life had lost its attraction for me, so how
could I attract others? As long as I was not living my own life but
was borne on the waves of some other life -- as long as I believed
that life had a meaning, though one I could not express -- the
reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds afforded me
pleasure: it was pleasant to look at life in the mirror of art. But
when I began to seek the meaning of life and felt the necessity of
living my own life, that mirror became for me unnecessary,
superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. I could no longer soothe myself
with what I now saw in the mirror, namely, that my position was stupid
and desperate. It was all very well to enjoy the sight when in the
depth of my soul I believed that my life had a meaning. Then the play
of lights -- comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible -- in
life amused me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw
the dragon and saw the mice gnawing away my support.
Nor was that all. Had I simply understood that life had no meaning I
could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my lot. But I could
not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a man living in a wood
from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was
like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes
about wishing to find the road. He knows that each step he takes
confuses him more and more, but still he cannot help rushing about.
It was indeed terrible. And to rid myself of the terror I wished to
kill myself. I experienced terror at what awaited me -- knew that that
terror was even worse than the position I was in, but still I could
not patiently await the end. However convincing the argument might be
that in any case some vessel in my heart would give way, or something
would burst and all would be over, I could not patiently await that
end. The horror of darkness was too great, and I wished to free myself
from it as quickly as possible by noose or bullet. that was the
feeling which drew me most strongly towards suicide.
_________________________________________________________________
V
"But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something?"
said to myself several times. "It cannot be that this condition of
despair is natural to man!" And I sought for an explanation of these
problems in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I sought
painfully and long, not from idle curiosity or listlessly, but
painfully and persistently day and night -- sought as a perishing man
seeks for safety -- and I found nothing.
I sought in all the sciences, but far from finding what I wanted,
became convinced that all who like myself had sought in knowledge for
the meaning of life had found nothing. And not only had they found
nothing, but they had plainly acknowledged that the very thing which
made me despair -- namely the senselessness of life -- is the one
indubitable thing man can know.
I sought everywhere; and thanks to a life spent in learning, and
thanks also to my relations with the scholarly world, I had access to
scientists and scholars in all branches of knowledge, and they readily
showed me all their knowledge, not only in books but also in
conversation, so that I had at my disposal all that science has to say
on this question of life.
I was long unable to believe that it gives no other reply to life's
questions than that which it actually does give. It long seemed to me,
when I saw the important and serious air with which science announces
its conclusions which have nothing in common with the real questions
of human life, that there was something I had not understood. I long
was timid before science, and it seemed to me that the lack of
conformity between the answers and my questions arose not by the fault
of science but from my ignorance, but the matter was for me not a game
or an amusement but one of life and death, and I was involuntarily
brought to the conviction that my questions were the only legitimate
ones, forming the basis of all knowledge, and that I with my questions
was not to blame, but science if it pretends to reply to those
questions.
My question -- that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge
of suicide -- was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of
every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a
question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by
experience. It was: "What will come of what I am doing today or shall
do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?"
Differently expressed, the question is: "Why should I live, why wish
for anything, or do anything?" It can also be expressed thus: "Is
there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me
does not destroy?"
To this one question, variously expressed, I sought an answer in
science. And I found that in relation to that question all human
knowledge is divided as it were into two opposite hemispheres at the
ends of which are two poles: the one a negative and the other a
positive; but that neither at the one nor the other pole is there an
answer to life's questions.
The one series of sciences seems not to recognize the question, but
replies clearly and exactly to its own independent questions: that is
the series of experimental sciences, and at the extreme end of it
stands mathematics. The other series of sciences recognizes the
question, but does not answer it; that is the series of abstract
sciences, and at the extreme end of it stands metaphysics.
From early youth I had been interested in the abstract sciences, but
later the mathematical and natural sciences attracted me, and until I
put my question definitely to myself, until that question had itself
grown up within me urgently demanding a decision, I contented myself
with those counterfeit answers which science gives.
Now in the experimental sphere I said to myself: "Everything develops
and differentiates itself, moving towards complexity and perfection,
and there are laws directing this movement. You are a part of the
whole. Having learnt as far as possible the whole, and having learnt
the law of evolution, you will understand also your place in the whole
and will know yourself." Ashamed as I am to confess it, there was a
time when I seemed satisfied with that. It was just the time when I
was myself becoming more complex and was developing. My muscles were
growing and strengthening, my memory was being enriched, my capacity
to think and understand was increasing, I was growing and developing;
and feeling this growth in myself it was natural for me to think that
such was the universal law in which I should find the solution of the
question of my life. But a time came when the growth within me ceased.
I felt that I was not developing, but fading, my muscles were
weakening, my teeth falling out, and I saw that the law not only did
not explain anything to me, but that there never had been or could be
such a law, and that I had taken for a law what I had found in myself
at a certain period of my life. I regarded the definition of that law
more strictly, and it became clear to me that there could be no law of
endless development; it became clear that to say, "in infinite space
and time everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex,
is differentiated", is to say nothing at all. These are all words with
no meaning, for in the infinite there is neither complex nor simple,
neither forward nor backward, nor better or worse.
Above all, my personal question, "What am I with my desires?" remained
quite unanswered. And I understood that those sciences are very
interesting and attractive, but that they are exact and clear in
inverse proportion to their applicability to the question of life: the
less their applicability to the question of life, the more exact and
clear they are, while the more they try to reply to the question of
life, the more obscure and unattractive they become. If one turns to
the division of sciences which attempt to reply to the questions of
life -- to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology -- one
encounters an appalling poverty of thought, the greatest obscurity, a
quite unjustifiable pretension to solve irrelevant question, and a
continual contradiction of each authority by others and even by
himself. If one turns to the branches of science which are not
concerned with the solution of the questions of life, but which reply
to their own special scientific questions, one is enraptured by the
power of man's mind, but one knows in advance that they give no reply
to life's questions. Those sciences simply ignore life's questions.
They say: "To the question of what you are and why you live we have no
reply, and are not occupied with that; but if you want to know the
laws of light, of chemical combinations, the laws of development of
organisms, if you want to know the laws of bodies and their form, and
the relation of numbers and quantities, if you want to know the laws
of your mind, to all that we have clear, exact and unquestionable
replies."
In general the relation of the experimental sciences to life's
question may be expressed thus: Question: "Why do I live?" Answer: "In
infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small particles change
their forms in infinite complexity, and when you have under stood the
laws of those mutations of form you will understand why you live on
the earth."
Then in the sphere of abstract science I said to myself: "All humanity
lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles and ideals
which guide it. Those ideals are expressed in religions, in sciences,
in arts, in forms of government. Those ideals become more and more
elevated, and humanity advances to its highest welfare. I am part of
humanity, and therefore my vocation is to forward the recognition and
the realization of the ideals of humanity." And at the time of my
weak-mindedness I was satisfied with that; but as soon as the question
of life presented itself clearly to me, those theories immediately
crumbled away. Not to speak of the unscrupulous obscurity with which
those sciences announce conclusions formed on the study of a small
part of mankind as general conclusions; not to speak of the mutual
contradictions of different adherents of this view as to what are the
ideals of humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the
theory consists in the fact that in order to reply to the question
facing each man: "What am I?" or "Why do I live?" or "What must I do?"
one has first to decide the question: "What is the life of the whole?"
(which is to him unknown and of which he is acquainted with one tiny
part in one minute period of time. To understand what he is, one man
must first understand all this mysterious humanity, consisting of
people such as himself who do not understand one another.
I have to confess that there was a time when I believed this. It was
the time when I had my own favourite ideals justifying my own
caprices, and I was trying to devise a theory which would allow one to
consider my caprices as the law of humanity. But as soon as the
question of life arose in my soul in full clearness that reply at once
few to dust. And I understood that as in the experimental sciences
there are real sciences, and semi-sciences which try to give answers
to questions beyond their competence, so in this sphere there is a
whole series of most diffused sciences which try to reply to
irrelevant questions. Semi-sciences of that kind, the juridical and
the social-historical, endeavour to solve the questions of a man's
life by pretending to decide each in its own way, the question of the
life of all humanity.
But as in the sphere of man's experimental knowledge one who sincerely
inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the reply --
"Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time and in
complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will understand your
life" -- so also a sincere man cannot be satisfied with the reply:
"Study the whole life of humanity of which we cannot know either the
beginning or the end, of which we do not even know a small part, and
then you will understand your own life." And like the experimental
semi-sciences, so these other semi-sciences are the more filled with
obscurities, inexactitudes, stupidities, and contradictions, the
further they diverge from the real problems. The problem of
experimental science is the sequence of cause and effect in material
phenomena. It is only necessary for experimental science to introduce
the question of a final cause for it to become nonsensical. The
problem of abstract science is the recognition of the primordial
essence of life. It is only necessary to introduce the investigation
of consequential phenomena (such as social and historical phenomena)
and it also becomes nonsensical.
Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and displays
the greatness of the human mind when it does not introduce into its
investigations the question of an ultimate cause. And, on the
contrary, abstract science is only then science and displays the
greatness of the human mind when it puts quite aside questions
relating to the consequential causes of phenomena and regards man
solely in relation to an ultimate cause. Such in this realm of science
-- forming the pole of the sphere -- is metaphysics or philosophy.
That science states the question clearly: "What am I, and what is the
universe? And why do I exist, and why does the universe exist?" And
since it has existed it has always replied in the same way. Whether
the philosopher calls the essence of life existing within me, and in
all that exists, by the name of "idea", or "substance", or "spirit",
or "will", he says one and the same thing: that this essence exists
and that I am of that same essence; but why it is he does not know,
and does not say, if he is an exact thinker. I ask: "Why should this
essence exist? What results from the fact that it is and will be?"
. . . And philosophy not merely does not reply, but is itself only
asking that question. And if it is real philosophy all its labour lies
merely in trying to put that question clearly. And if it keeps firmly
to its task it cannot reply to the question otherwise than thus: "What
am I, and what is the universe?" "All and nothing"; and to the
question "Why?" by "I do not know".
So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can never
obtain anything like an answer -- and not because, as in the clear
experimental sphere, the reply does not relate to my question, but
because here, though all the mental work is directed just to my
question, there is no answer, but instead of an answer one gets the
same question, only in a complex form.
_________________________________________________________________
VI
In my search for answers to life's questions I experienced just what
is felt by a man lost in a forest.
He reaches a glade, climbs a tree, and clearly sees the limitless
distance, but sees that his home is not and cannot be there; then he
goes into the dark wood and sees the darkness, but there also his home
is not.
So I wandered n that wood of human knowledge, amid the gleams of
mathematical and experimental science which showed me clear horizons
but in a direction where there could be no home, and also amid the
darkness of the abstract sciences where I was immersed in deeper gloom
the further I went, and where I finally convinced myself that there
was, and could be, no exit.
Yielding myself to the bright side of knowledge, I understood that I
was only diverting my gaze from the question. However alluringly clear
those horizons which opened out before me might be, however alluring
it might be to immerse oneself in the limitless expanse of those
sciences, I already understood that the clearer they were the less
they met my need and the less they applied to my question.
"I know," said I to myself, "what science so persistently tries to
discover, and along that road there is no reply to the question as to
the meaning of my life." In the abstract sphere I understood that
notwithstanding the fact, or just because of the fact, that the direct
aim of science is to reply to my question, there is no reply but that
which I have myself already given: "What is the meaning of my life?"
"There is none." Or: "What will come of my life?" "Nothing." Or: "Why
does everything exist that exists, and why do I exist?" "Because it
exists."
Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an innumerable
quantity of exact replies concerning matters about which I had not
asked: about the chemical constituents of the stars, about the
movement of the sun towards the constellation Hercules, about the
origin of species and of man, about the forms of infinitely minute
imponderable particles of ether; but in this sphere of knowledge the
only answer to my question, "What is the meaning of my life?" was:
"You are what you call your `life'; you are a transitory, casual
cohesion of particles. The mutual interactions and changes of these
particles produce in you what you call your "life". That cohesion will
last some time; afterwards the interaction of these particles will
cease and what you call "life" will cease, and so will all your
questions. You are an accidentally united little lump of something.
that little lump ferments. The little lump calls that fermenting its
`life'. The lump will disintegrate and there will be an end of the
fermenting and of all the questions." So answers the clear side of
science and cannot answer otherwise if it strictly follows its
principles.
From such a reply one sees that the reply does not answer the
question. I want to know the meaning of my life, but that it is a
fragment of the infinite, far from giving it a meaning destroys its
every possible meaning. The obscure compromises which that side of
experimental exact science makes with abstract science when it says
that the meaning of life consists in development and in cooperation
with development, owing to their inexactness and obscurity cannot be
considered as replies.
The other side of science -- the abstract side -- when it holds
strictly to its principles, replying directly to the question, always
replies, and in all ages has replied, in one and the same way: "The
world is something infinite and incomprehensible part of that
incomprehensible `all'." Again I exclude all those compromises between
abstract and experimental sciences which supply the whole ballast of
the semi-sciences called juridical, political, and historical. In
those semi-sciences the conception of development and progress is
again wrongly introduced, only with this difference, that there it was
the development of everything while here it is the development of the
life of mankind. The error is there as before: development and
progress in infinity can have no aim or direction, and, as far as my
question is concerned, no answer is given.
In truly abstract science, namely in genuine philosophy -- not in that
which Schopenhauer calls "professorial philosophy" which serves only
to classify all existing phenomena in new philosophic categories and
to call them by new names -- where the philosopher does not lose sight
of the essential question, the reply is always one and the same -- the
reply given by Socrates, Schopenhauer, Solomon, and buddha.
"We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life", said
Socrates when preparing for death. "For what do we, who love truth,
strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body, and from all
the evil that is caused by the life of the body! If so, then how can
we fail to be glad when death comes to us?
"The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not
terrible to him."
And Schopenhauer says:
"Having recognized the inmost essence of the world as will, and all
its phenomena -- from the unconscious working of the obscure forces of
Nature up to the completely conscious action of man -- as only the
objectivity of that will, we shall in no way avoid the conclusion that
together with the voluntary renunciation and self-destruction of the
will all those phenomena also disappear, that constant striving and
effort without aim or rest on all the stages of objectivity in which
and through which the world exists; the diversity of successive forms
will disappear, and together with the form all the manifestations of
will, with its most universal forms, space and time, and finally its
most fundamental form -- subject and object. Without will there is no
concept and no world. Before us, certainly, nothing remains. But what
resists this transition into annihilation, our nature, is only that
same wish to live -- Wille zum Leben -- which forms ourselves as well
as our world. That we are so afraid of annihilation or, what is the
same thing, that we so wish to live, merely means that we are
ourselves nothing else but this desire to live, and know nothing but
it. And so what remains after the complete annihilation of the will,
for us who are so full of the will, is, of course, nothing; but on the
other hand, for those in whom the will has turned and renounced
itself, this so real world of ours with all its suns and milky way is
nothing."
"Vanity of vanities", says Solomon -- "vanity of vanities -- all is
vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under
the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation commeth:
but the earth abideth for ever. . . . The thing that hath been, is
that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be
done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything
whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old
time, which was before us. there is no remembrance of former things;
neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with
those that shall come after. I the Preacher was King over Israel in
Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom
concerning all that is done under heaven: this sore travail hath God
given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all
the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and
vexation of spirit. . . . I communed with my own heart, saying, Lo, I
am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they
that have been before me over Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath great
experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know
wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is
vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
"I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth,
therefore enjoy pleasure: and behold this also is vanity. I said of
laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I sought in my heart
how to cheer my flesh with wine, and while my heart was guided by
wisdom, to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it was good for
the sons of men that they should do under heaven the number of the
days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I
planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted
trees in them of all kinds of fruits: I made me pools of water, to
water therefrom the forest where trees were reared: I got me servants
and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great
possessions of herds and flocks above all that were before me in
Jerusalem: I gathered me also silver and gold and the peculiar
treasure from kings and from the provinces: I got me men singers and
women singers; and the delights of the sons of men, as musical
instruments and all that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased
more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom
remained with me. And whatever mine eyes desired I kept not from them.
I withheld not my heart from any joy. . . . Then I looked on all the
works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured
to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there
was no profit from them under the sun. And I turned myself to behold
wisdom, and madness, and folly. . . . But I perceived that one even
happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the
fool, so it happeneth even to me, and why was I then more wise? then I
said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no
remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that
which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth
the wise man? as the fool. Therefore I hated life; because the work
that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity
and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken
under the sun: seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall be
after me. . . . For what hath man of all his labour, and of the
vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all
his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, even in the night
his heart taketh no rest. this is also vanity. Man is not blessed with
security that he should eat and drink and cheer his soul from his own
labour. . . . All things come alike to all: there is one event to the
righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the evil; to the clean
and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that
sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that
sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil in all that is
done under the sun, that there is one event unto all; yea, also the
heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their
heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead. For him
that is among the living there is hope: for a living dog is better
than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the
dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the
memory of them is forgotten. also their love, and their hatred, and
their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for
ever in any thing that is done under the sun."
So said Solomon, or whoever wrote those words. [7]
And this is what the Indian wisdom tells:
Sakya Muni, a young, happy prince, from whom the existence of
sickness, old age, and death had been hidden, went out to drive and
saw a terrible old man, toothless and slobbering. the prince, from
whom till then old age had been concealed, was amazed, and asked his
driver what it was, and how that man had come to such a wretched and
disgusting condition, and when he learnt that this was the common fate
of all men, that the same thing inevitably awaited him -- the young
prince -- he could not continue his drive, but gave orders to go home,
that he might consider this fact. So he shut himself up alone and
considered it. and he probably devised some consolation for himself,
for he subsequently again went out to drive, feeling merry and happy.
But this time he saw a sick man. He saw an emaciated, livid, trembling
man with dim eyes. The prince, from whom sickness had been concealed,
stopped and asked what this was. And when he learnt that this was
sickness, to which all men are liable, and that he himself -- a
healthy and happy prince -- might himself fall ill tomorrow, he again
was in no mood to enjoy himself but gave orders to drive home, and
again sought some solace, and probably found it, for he drove out a
third time for pleasure. But this third time he saw another new sight:
he saw men carrying something. `What is that?' `A dead man.' `What
does dead mean?' asked the prince. He was told that to become dead
means to become like that man. The prince approached the corpse,
uncovered it, and looked at it. `What will happen to him now?' asked
the prince. He was told that the corpse would be buried in the ground.
`Why?' `Because he will certainly not return to life, and will only
produce a stench and worms.' `And is that the fate of all men? Will
the same thing happen to me? Will they bury me, and shall I cause a
stench and be eaten by worms?' `Yes.' `Home! I shall not drive out for
pleasure, and never will so drive out again!'
And Sakya Muni could find no consolation in life, and decided that
life is the greatest of evils; and he devoted all the strength of his
soul to free himself from it, and to free others; and to do this so
that, even after death, life shall not be renewed any more but be
completely destroyed at its very roots. So speaks all the wisdom of
India.
These are the direct replies that human wisdom gives when it replies
to life's question.
"The life of the body is an evil and a lie. Therefore the destruction
of the life of the body is a blessing, and we should desire it," says
Socrates.
"Life is that which should not be -- an evil; and the passage into
Nothingness is the only good in life," says Schopenhauer.
"All that is in the world -- folly and wisdom and riches and poverty
and mirth and grief -- is vanity and emptiness. Man dies and nothing
is left of him. And that is stupid," says Solomon.
"To life in the consciousness of the inevitability of suffering, of
becoming enfeebled, of old age and of death, is impossible -- we must
free ourselves from life, from all possible life," says Buddha.
And what these strong minds said has been said and thought and felt by
millions upon millions of people like them. And I have thought it and
felt it.
So my wandering among the sciences, far from freeing me from my
despair, only strengthened it. One kind of knowledge did not reply to
life's question, the other kind replied directly confirming my
despair, indicating not that the result at which I had arrived was the
fruit of error or of a diseased state of my mind, but on the contrary
that I had thought correctly, and that my thoughts coincided with the
conclusions of the most powerful of human minds.
It is no good deceiving oneself. It is all -- vanity! Happy is he who
has not been born: death is better than life, and one must free
oneself from life.
_________________________________________________________________
[7] Tolstoy's version differs slightly in a few places from our own
Authorized or Revised version. I have followed his text, for in a
letter to Fet, quoted on p. 18, vol. ii, of my "Life of Tolstoy," he
says that "The Authorized English version [of Ecclesiastes] is
bad.'--A.M.
_________________________________________________________________
VII
Not finding an explanation in science I began to seek for it in life,
hoping to find it among the people around me. And I began to observe
how the people around me -- people like myself -- lived, and what
their attitude was to this question which had brought me to despair.
And this is what I found among people who were in the same position as
myself as regards education and manner of life.
I found that for people of my circle there were four ways out of the
terrible position in which we are all placed.
The first was that of ignorance. It consists in not knowing, not
understanding, that life is an evil and an absurdity. People of this
sort -- chiefly women, or very young or very dull people -- have not
yet understood that question of life which presented itself to
Schopenhauer, Solomon, and Buddha. They see neither the dragon that
awaits them nor the mice gnawing the shrub by which they are hanging,
and they lick the drops of honey. but they lick those drops of honey
only for a while: something will turn their attention to the dragon
and the mice, and there will be an end to their licking. From them I
had nothing to learn -- one cannot cease to know what one does know.
The second way out is epicureanism. It consists, while knowing the
hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the advantages one
has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and licking the honey in
the best way, especially if there is much of it within reach. Solomon
expresses this way out thus: "Then I commended mirth, because a man
hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to
be merry: and that this should accompany him in his labour the days of
his life, which God giveth him under the sun.
"Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry
heart. . . . Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days
of the life of thy vanity. . .for this is thy portion in life and in
thy labours which thou takest under the sun. . . . Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is not work, nor
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."
That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle make
life possible for themselves. Their circumstances furnish them with
more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral dullness makes it
possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is
accidental, and that not everyone can have a thousand wives and
palaces like Solomon, that for everyone who has a thousand wives there
are a thousand without a wife, and that for each palace there are a
thousand people who have to build it in the sweat of their brows; and
that the accident that has today made me a Solomon may tomorrow make
me a Solomon's slave. The dullness of these people's imagination
enables them to forget the things that gave Buddha no peace -- the
inevitability of sickness, old age, and death, which today or tomorrow
will destroy all these pleasures.
So think and feel the majority of people of our day and our manner of
life. The fact that some of these people declare the dullness of their
thoughts and imaginations to be a philosophy, which they call
Positive, does not remove them, in my opinion, from the ranks of those
who, to avoid seeing the question, lick the honey. I could not imitate
these people; not having their dullness of imagination I could not
artificially produce it in myself. I could not tear my eyes from the
mice and the dragon, as no vital man can after he has once seen them.
The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in
destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and an
absurdity. A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act so.
Having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been played on
them, and having understood that it is better to be dead than to be
alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act accordingly
and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are means: a rope round
one's neck, water, a knife to stick into one's heart, or the trains on
the railways; and the number of those of our circle who act in this
way becomes greater and greater, and for the most part they act so at
the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in
full bloom and few habits degrading to the mind have as yet been
acquired.
I saw that this was the worthiest way of escape and I wished to adopt
it.
The fourth way out is that of weakness. It consists in seeing the
truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in advance
that nothing can come of it. People of this kind know that death is
better than life, but not having the strength to act rationally -- to
end the deception quickly and kill themselves -- they seem to wait for
something. This is the escape of weakness, for if I know what is best
and it is within my power, why not yield to what is best? . . . I
found myself in that category.
So people of my class evade the terrible contradiction in four ways.
Strain my attention as I would, I saw no way except those four. One
way was not to understand that life is senseless, vanity, and an evil,
and that it is better not to live. I could not help knowing this, and
when I once knew it could not shut my eyes to it. the second way was
to use life such as it is without thinking of the future. And I could
not do that. I, like Sakya Muni, could not ride out hunting when I
knew that old age, suffering, and death exist. My imagination was too
vivid. Nor could I rejoice in the momentary accidents that for an
instant threw pleasure to my lot. The third way, having under stood
that life is evil and stupid, was to end it by killing oneself. I
understood that, but somehow still did not kill myself. The fourth way
was to live like Solomon and Schopenhauer -- knowing that life is a
stupid joke played upon us, and still to go on living, washing
oneself, dressing, dining, talking, and even writing books. This was
to me repulsive and tormenting, but I remained in that position.
I see now that if I did not kill myself it was due to some dim
consciousness of the invalidity of my thoughts. However convincing and
indubitable appeared to me the sequence of my thoughts and of those of
the wise that have brought us to the admission of the senselessness of
life, there remained in me a vague doubt of the justice of my
conclusion.
It was like this: I, my reason, have acknowledged that life is
senseless. If there is nothing higher than reason (and there is not:
nothing can prove that there is), then reason is the creator of life
for me. If reason did not exist there would be for me no life. How can
reason deny life when it is the creator of life? Or to put it the
other way: were there no life, my reason would not exist; therefore
reason is life's son. Life is all. Reason is its fruit yet reason
rejects life itself! I felt that there was something wrong here.
Life is a senseless evil, that is certain, said I to myself. Yet I
have lived and am still living, and all mankind lived and lives. How
is that? Why does it live, when it is possible not to live? Is it that
only I and Schopenhauer are wise enough to understand the
senselessness and evil of life?
The reasoning showing the vanity of life is not so difficult, and has
long been familiar to the very simplest folk; yet they have lived and
still live. How is it they all live and never think of doubting the
reasonableness of life?
My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, has shown me that
everything on earth -- organic and inorganic -- is all most cleverly
arranged -- only my own position is stupid. and those fools -- the
enormous masses of people -- know nothing about how everything organic
and inorganic in the world is arranged; but they live, and it seems to
them that their life is very wisely arranged! . . .
And it struck me: "But what if there is something I do not yet know?
Ignorance behaves just in that way. Ignorance always says just what I
am saying. When it does not know something, it says that what it does
not know is stupid. Indeed, it appears that there is a whole humanity
that lived and lives as if it understood the meaning of its life, for
without understanding it could not live; but I say that all this life
is senseless and that I cannot live.
"Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide. well then, kill
yourself, and you won't discuss. If life displeases you, kill
yourself! You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life -- then
finish it, and do not fool about in life, saying and writing that you
do not understand it. You have come into good company where people are
contented and know what they are doing; if you find it dull and
repulsive -- go away!"
Indeed, what are we who are convinced of the necessity of suicide yet
do not decide to commit it, but the weakest, most inconsistent, and to
put it plainly, the stupidest of men, fussing about with our own
stupidity as a fool fusses about with a painted hussy? For our wisdom,
however indubitable it may be, has not given us the knowledge of the
meaning of our life. But all mankind who sustain life -- millions of
them -- do not doubt the meaning of life.
Indeed, from the most distant time of which I know anything, when life
began, people have lived knowing the argument about the vanity of life
which has shown me its senselessness, and yet they lived attributing
some meaning to it.
From the time when any life began among men they had that meaning of
life, and they led that life which has descended to me. All that is in
me and around me, all, corporeal and incorporeal, is the fruit of
their knowledge of life. Those very instruments of thought with which
I consider this life and condemn it were all devised not be me but by
them. I myself was born, taught, and brought up thanks to them. They
dug out the iron, taught us to cut down the forests, tamed the cows
and horses, taught us to sow corn and to live together, organized our
life, and taught me to think and speak. And I, their product, fed,
supplied with drink, taught by them, thinking with their thoughts and
words, have argued that they are an absurdity! "There is something
wrong," said I to myself. "I have blundered somewhere." But it was a
long time before I could find out where the mistake was.
_________________________________________________________________
VIII
All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less
systematically, I could not then have expressed. I then only felt that
however logically inevitable were my conclusions concerning the vanity
of life, confirmed as they were by the greatest thinkers, there was
something not right about them. Whether it was in the reasoning itself
or in the statement of the question I did not know -- I only felt that
the conclusion was rationally convincing, but that that was
insufficient. All these conclusions could not so convince me as to
make me do what followed from my reasoning, that is to say, kill
myself. And I should have told an untruth had I, without killing
myself, said that reason had brought me to the point I had reached.
Reason worked, but something else was also working which I can only
call a consciousness of life. A force was working which compelled me
to turn my attention to this and not to that; and it was this force
which extricated me from my desperate situation and turned my mind in
quite another direction. This force compelled me to turn my attention
to the fact that I and a few hundred similar people are not the whole
of mankind, and that I did not yet know the life of mankind.
Looking at the narrow circle of my equals, I saw only people who had
not understood the question, or who had understood it and drowned it
in life's intoxication, or had understood it and ended their lives, or
had understood it and yet from weakness were living out their
desperate life. And I saw no others. It seemed to me that that narrow
circle of rich, learned, and leisured people to which I belonged
formed the whole of humanity, and that those milliards of others who
have lived and are living were cattle of some sort -- not real people.
Strange, incredibly incomprehensible as it now seems to me that I
could, while reasoning about life, overlook the whole life of mankind
that surrounded me on all sides; that I could to such a degree blunder
so absurdly as to think that my life, and Solomon's and
Schopenhauer's, is the real, normal life, and that the life of the
milliards is a circumstance undeserving of attention -- strange as
this now is to me, I see that so it was. In the delusion of my pride
of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable that I and Solomon and
Schopenhauer had stated the question so truly and exactly that nothing
else was possible -- so indubitable did it seem that all those
milliards consisted of men who had not yet arrived at an apprehension
of all the profundity of the question -- that I sought for the meaning
of my life without it once occurring to me to ask: "But what meaning
is and has been given to their lives by all the milliards of common
folk who live and have lived in the world?"
I long lived in this state of lunacy, which, in fact if not in words,
is particularly characteristic of us very liberal and learned people.
But thanks either to the strange physical affection I have for the
real labouring people, which compelled me to understand them and to
see that they are not so stupid as we suppose, or thanks to the
sincerity of my conviction that I could know nothing beyond the fact
that the best I could do was to hang myself, at any rate I
instinctively felt that if I wished to live and understand the meaning
of life, I must seek this meaning not among those who have lost it and
wish to kill themselves, but among those milliards of the past and the
present who make life and who support the burden of their own lives
and of ours also. And I considered the enormous masses of those
simple, unlearned, and poor people who have lived and are living and I
saw something quite different. I saw that, with rare exceptions, all
those milliards who have lived and are living do not fit into my
divisions, and that I could not class them as not understanding the
question, for they themselves state it and reply to it with
extraordinary clearness. Nor could I consider them epicureans, for
their life consists more of privations and sufferings than of
enjoyments. Still less could I consider them as irrationally dragging
on a meaningless existence, for every act of their life, as well as
death itself, is explained by them. To kill themselves they consider
the greatest evil. It appeared that all mankind had a knowledge,
unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of life. It appeared
that reasonable knowledge does not give the meaning of life, but
excludes life: while the meaning attributed to life by milliards of
people, by all humanity, rests on some despised pseudo-knowledge.
Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the
meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind
receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational
knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not but reject. It
is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils and angels,
and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason.
My position was terrible. I knew I could find nothing along the path
of reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there -- in faith
-- was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet more impossible
for me than a denial of life. From rational knowledge it appeared that
life is an evil, people know this and it is in their power to end
life; yet they lived and still live, and I myself live, though I have
long known that life is senseless and an evil. By faith it appears
that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my
reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required.
_________________________________________________________________
IX
A contradiction arose from which there were two exits. Either that
which I called reason was not so rational as I supposed, or that which
seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I supposed. And I
began to verify the line of argument of my rational knowledge.
Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found it quite
correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was inevitable; but I
noticed a mistake. The mistake lay in this, that my reasoning was not
in accord with the question I had put. The question was: "Why should I
live, that is to say, what real, permanent result will come out of my
illusory transitory life -- what meaning has my finite existence in
this infinite world?" And to reply to that question I had studied
life.
The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not
satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first appeared, included
a demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite,
and vice versa.
I asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and
space?" And I replied to quite another question: "What is the meaning
of my life within time, cause, and space?" With the result that, after
long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: "None."
In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do otherwise) the
finite with the finite, and the infinite with the infinite; but for
that reason I reached the inevitable result: force is force, matter is
matter, will is will, the infinite is the infinite, nothing is nothing
-- and that was all that could result.
It was something like what happens in mathematics, when thinking to
solve an equation, we find we are working on an identity. the line of
reasoning is correct, but results in the answer that a equals a, or x
equals x, or ø equals ø. the same thing happened with my reasoning in
relation to the question of the meaning of my life. The replies given
by all science to that question only result in -- identity.
And really, strictly scientific knowledge -- that knowledge which
begins, as Descartes's did, with complete doubt about everything --
rejects all knowledge admitted on faith and builds everything afresh
on the laws of reason and experience, and cannot give any other reply
to the question of life than that which I obtained: an indefinite
reply. Only at first had it seemed to me that knowledge had given a
positive reply -- the reply of Schopenhauer: that life has no meaning
and is an evil. But on examining the matter I understood that the
reply is not positive, it was only my feeling that so expressed it.
Strictly expressed, as it is by the Brahmins and by Solomon and
Schopenhauer, the reply is merely indefinite, or an identity: ø equals
ø, life is nothing. So that philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but
only replies that the question cannot be solved by it -- that for it
the solution remains indefinite.
Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible to seek
in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that the reply
given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a reply can only
be obtained by a different statement of the question and only when the
relation of the finite to the infinite is included in the question.
And I understood that, however irrational and distorted might be the
replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce
into every answer a relation between the finite and the infinite,
without which there can be no solution.
In whatever way I stated the question, that relation appeared in the
answer. How am I to live? -- According to the law of God. What real
result will come of my life? -- Eternal torment or eternal bliss. What
meaning has life that death does not destroy? -- Union with the
eternal God: heaven.
So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only
knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live
humanity has another irrational knowledge -- faith which makes it
possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was
before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply
to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life
possible. Reasonable knowledge had brought me to acknowledge that life
is senseless -- my life had come to a halt and I wished to destroy
myself. Looking around on the whole of mankind I saw that people live
and declare that they know the meaning of life. I looked at myself --
I had lived as long as I knew a meaning of life and had made life
possible.
Looking again at people of other lands, at my contemporaries and at
their predecessors, I saw the same thing. Where there is life, there
since man began faith has made life possible for him, and the chief
outline of that faith is everywhere and always identical.
Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give, and to
whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the finite
existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not destroyed by
sufferings, deprivations, or death. This means that only in faith can
we find for life a meaning and a possibility. What, then, is this
faith? And I understood that faith is not merely "the evidence of
things not seen", etc., and is not a revelation (that defines only one
of the indications of faith, is not the relation of man to God (one
has first to define faith and then God, and not define faith through
God); it not only agreement with what has been told one (as faith is
most usually supposed to be), but faith is a knowledge of the meaning
of human life in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but
lives. Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in
something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he
would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature
of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the
illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite.
Without faith he cannot live.
And I recalled the whole course of my mental labour and was horrified.
It was now clear to me that for man to be able to live he must either
not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of
life as will connect the finite with the infinite. Such an explanation
I had had; but as long as I believed in the finite I did not need the
explanation, and I began to verify it by reason. And in the light of
reason the whole of my former explanation flew to atoms. But a time
came when I ceased to believe in the finite. And then I began to build
up on rational foundations, out of what I knew, an explanation which
would give a meaning to life; but nothing could I build. Together with
the best human intellects I reached the result that ø equals ø, and
was much astonished at that conclusion, though nothing else could have
resulted.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in the experimental sciences?
I wished to know why I live, and for this purpose studied all that is
outside me. Evidently I might learn much, but nothing of what I
needed.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in philosophical knowledge? I
was studying the thoughts of those who had found themselves in the
same position as I, lacking a reply to the question "why do I live?"
Evidently I could learn nothing but what I knew myself, namely that
nothing can be known.
What am I? -- A part of the infinite. In those few words lies the
whole problem.
Is it possible that humanity has only put that question to itself
since yesterday? And can no one before me have set himself that
question -- a question so simple, and one that springs to the tongue
of every wise child?
Surely that question has been asked since man began; and naturally for
the solution of that question since man began it has been equally
insufficient to compare the finite with the finite and the infinite
with the infinite, and since man began the relation of the finite to
the infinite has been sought out and expressed.
All these conceptions in which the finite has been adjusted to the
infinite and a meaning found for life -- the conception of God, of
will, of goodness -- we submit to logical examination. And all those
conceptions fail to stand reason's criticism.
Were it not so terrible it would be ludicrous with what pride and
self-satisfaction we, like children, pull the watch to pieces, take
out the spring, make a toy of it, and are then surprised that the
watch does not go.
A solution of the contradiction between the finite and the infinite,
and such a reply to the question of life as will make it possible to
live, is necessary and precious. And that is the only solution which
we find everywhere, always, and among all peoples: a solution
descending from times in which we lose sight of the life of man, a
solution so difficult that we can compose nothing like it -- and this
solution we light-heartedly destroy in order again to set the same
question, which is natural to everyone and to which we have no answer.
The conception of an infinite god, the divinity of the soul, the
connexion of human affairs with God, the unity and existence of the
soul, man's conception of moral goodness and evil -- are conceptions
formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought, they are those
conceptions without which neither life nor I should exist; yet
rejecting all that labour of the whole of humanity, I wished to remake
it afresh myself and in my own manner.
I did not then think like that, but the germs of these thoughts were
already in me. I understood, in the first place, that my position with
Schopenhauer and Solomon, notwithstanding our wisdom, was stupid: we
see that life is an evil and yet continue to live. That is evidently
stupid, for if life is senseless and I am so fond of what is
reasonable, it should be destroyed, and then there would be no one to
challenge it. Secondly, I understood that all one's reasonings turned
in a vicious circle like a wheel out of gear with its pinion. However
much and however well we may reason we cannot obtain a reply to the
question; and o will always equal o, and therefore our path is
probably erroneous. Thirdly, I began to understand that in the replies
given by faith is stored up the deepest human wisdom and that I had no
right to deny them on the ground of reason, and that those answers are
the only ones which reply to life's question.
_________________________________________________________________
X
I understood this, but it made matters no better for me. I was now
ready to accept any faith if only it did not demand of me a direct
denial of reason -- which would be a falsehood. And I studied Buddhism
and Mohammedanism from books, and most of all I studied Christianity
both from books and from the people around me.
Naturally I first of all turned to the orthodox of my circle, to
people who were learned: to Church theologians, monks, to theologians
of the newest shade, and even to Evangelicals who profess salvation by
belief in the Redemption. And I seized on these believers and
questioned them as to their beliefs and their understanding of the
meaning of life.
But though I made all possible concessions, and avoided all disputes,
I could not accept the faith of these people. I saw that what they
gave out as their faith did not explain the meaning of life but
obscured it, and that they themselves affirm their belief not to
answer that question of life which brought me to faith, but for some
other aims alien to me.
I remember the painful feeling of fear of being thrown back into my
former state of despair, after the hope I often and often experienced
in my intercourse with these people.
The more fully they explained to me their doctrines, the more clearly
did I perceive their error and realized that my hope of finding in
their belief an explanation of the meaning of life was vain.
It was not that in their doctrines they mixed many unnecessary and
unreasonable things with the Christian truths that had always been
near to me: that was not what repelled me. I was repelled by the fact
that these people's lives were like my own, with only this difference
-- that such a life did not correspond to the principles they
expounded in their teachings. I clearly felt that they deceived
themselves and that they, like myself found no other meaning in life
than to live while life lasts, taking all one's hands can seize. I saw
this because if they had had a meaning which destroyed the fear of
loss, suffering, and death, they would not have feared these things.
But they, these believers of our circle, just like myself, living in
sufficiency and superfluity, tried to increase or preserve them,
feared privations, suffering, and death, and just like myself and all
of us unbelievers, lived to satisfy their desires, and lived just as
badly, if not worse, than the unbelievers.
No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith. Only deeds
which showed that they saw a meaning in life making what was so
dreadful to me -- poverty, sickness, and death -- not dreadful to
them, could convince me. And such deeds I did not see among the
various believers in our circle. On the contrary, I saw such deeds
done [8] by people of our circle who were the most unbelieving, but
never by our so-called believers.
And I understood that the belief of these people was not the faith I
sought, and that their faith is not a real faith but an epicurean
consolation in life.
I understood that that faith may perhaps serve, if not for a
consolation at least for some distraction for a repentant Solomon on
his death-bed, but it cannot serve for the great majority of mankind,
who are called on not to amuse themselves while consuming the labour
of others but to create life.
For all humanity to be able to live, and continue to live attributing
a meaning to life, they, those milliards, must have a different, a
real, knowledge of faith. Indeed, it was not the fact that we, with
Solomon and Schopenhauer, did not kill ourselves that convinced me of
the existence of faith, but the fact that those milliards of people
have lived and are living, and have borne Solomon and us on the
current of their lives.
And I began to draw near to the believers among the poor, simple,
unlettered folk: pilgrims, monks, sectarians, and peasants. The faith
of these common people was the same Christian faith as was professed
by the pseudo-believers of our circle. Among them, too, I found a
great deal of superstition mixed with the Christian truths; but the
difference was that the superstitions of the believers of our circle
were quite unnecessary to them and were not in conformity with their
lives, being merely a kind of epicurean diversion; but the
superstitions of the believers among the labouring masses conformed so
with their lives that it was impossible to imagine them to oneself
without those superstitions, which were a necessary condition of their
life. The whole life of believers in our circle was a contradiction of
their faith, but the whole life of the working-folk believers was a
confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith gave them. And I
began to look well into the life and faith of these people, and the
more I considered it the more I became convinced that they have a real
faith which is a necessity to them and alone gives their life a
meaning and makes it possible for them to live. In contrast with what
I had seen in our circle -- where life without faith is possible and
where hardly one in a thousand acknowledges himself to be a believer
-- among them there is hardly one unbeliever in a thousand. In
contrast with what I had seen in our circle, where the whole of life
is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction, I saw that the
whole life of these people was passed in heavy labour, and that they
were content with life. In contradistinction to the way in which
people of our circle oppose fate and complain of it on account of
deprivations and sufferings, these people accepted illness and sorrow
without any perplexity or opposition, and with a quiet and firm
conviction that all is good. In contradistinction to us, who the wiser
we are the less we understand the meaning of life, and see some evil
irony in the fact that we suffer and die, these folk live and suffer,
and they approach death and suffering with tranquillity and in most
cases gladly. In contrast to the fact that a tranquil death, a death
without horror and despair, is a very rare exception in our circle, a
troubled, rebellious, and unhappy death is the rarest exception among
the people, and such people, lacking all that for us and for Solomon
is the only good of life and yet experiencing the greatest happiness,
are a great multitude. I looked more widely around me. I considered
the life of the enormous mass of the people in the past and the
present. And of such people, understanding the meaning of life and
able to live and to die, I saw not two or three, or tens, but
hundreds, thousands, and millions. and they all -- endlessly different
in their manners, minds, education, and position, as they were -- all
alike, in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life
and death, laboured quietly, endured deprivations and sufferings, and
lived and died seeing therein not vanity but good.
And I learnt to love these people. The more I came to know their life,
the life of those who are living and of others who are dead of whom I
read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier it became for me
to live. So I went on for about two years, and a change took place in
me which had long been preparing and the promise of which had always
been in me. It came about that the life of our circle, the rich and
learned, not merely became distasteful to me, but lost all meaning in
my eyes. All our actions, discussions, science and art, presented
itself to me in a new light. I understood that it is all merely
self-indulgence, and to find a meaning in it is impossible; while
the life of the whole labouring people, the whole of mankind who
produce life, appeared to me in its true significance. I understood
that that is life itself, and that the meaning given to that life is
true: and I accepted it.
_________________________________________________________________
[8] This passage is noteworthy as being one of the few references made
by Tolstoy at this period to the revolutionary or "Back-to-the-People"
movement, in which many young men and women were risking and
sacrificing home, property, and life itself from motives which had
much in common with his own perception that the upper layers of
Society are parasitic and prey on the vitals of the people who support
them.--A.M.
_________________________________________________________________
XI
And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed
meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them,
and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I
saw that people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then
rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted
them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred,
and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly
as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my
thought that had hid truth from me as much as my life itself in the
exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which
I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and
the answer -- and evil -- was quite correct. The only mistake was that
the answer referred only to my life, while I had referred it to life
in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil
and an absurdity, and really my life -- a life of indulgence of
desires -- was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, "Life is
evil and an absurdity", referred only to my life, but not to human
life in general. I understood the truth which I afterwards found in
the Gospels, "that men loved darkness rather than the light, for their
works were evil. For everyone that doeth ill hateth the light, and
cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved." I
perceived that to understand the meaning of life it is necessary first
that life should not be meaningless and evil, then we can apply reason
to explain it. I understood why I had so long wandered round so
evident a truth, and that if one is to think and speak of the life of
mankind, one must think and speak of that life and not of the life of
some of life's parasites. That truth was always as true as that two
and two are four, but I had not acknowledged it, because on admitting
two and two to be four I had also to admit that I was bad; and to feel
myself to be good was for me more important and necessary than for two
and two to be four. I came to love good people, hated myself, and
confessed the truth. Now all became clear to me.
What if an executioner passing his whole life in torturing people and
cutting off their heads, or a hopeless drunkard, or a madman settled
for life in a dark room which he has fouled and imagines that he would
perish if he left -- what if he asked himself: "What is life?"
Evidently he could not get other reply to that question than that life is
the greatest evil, and the madman's answer would be perfectly correct,
but only as applied to himself. What if I am such a madman? What if
all we rich and leisured people are such madmen? and I understood that
we really are such madmen. I at any rate was certainly such.
And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build
a nest, and when I see that a bird does this I have pleasure in its
joy. A goat, a hare, and a wolf are so made that they must feed
themselves, and must breed and feed their family, and when they do so
I feel firmly assured that they are happy and that their life is a
reasonable one. then what should a man do? He too should produce his
living as the animals do, but with this difference, that he will
perish if he does it alone; he must obtain it not for himself but for
all. And when he does that, I have a firm assurance that he is happy
and that his life is reasonable. But what had I done during the whole
thirty years of my responsible life? Far from producing sustenance for
all, I did not even produce it for myself. I lived as a parasite, and
on asking myself, what is the use of my life? I got the reply: "No
use." If the meaning of human life lies in supporting it, how could I
-- who for thirty years had been engaged not on supporting life but on
destroying it in myself and in others -- how could I obtain any other
answer than that my life was senseless and an evil? . . . It was both
senseless and evil.
The life of the world endures by someone's will -- by the life of the
whole world and by our lives someone fulfills his purpose. To hope to
understand the meaning of that will one must first perform it by doing
what is wanted of us. But if I will not do what is wanted of me, I
shall never understand what is wanted of me, and still less what is
wanted of us all and of the whole world.
If a naked, hungry beggar has been taken from the cross-roads, brought
into a building belonging to a beautiful establishment, fed, supplied
with drink, and obliged to move a handle up and down, evidently,
before discussing why he was taken, why he should move the handle, and
whether the whole establishment is reasonably arranged -- the begger
should first of all move the handle. If he moves the handle he will
understand that it works a pump, that the pump draws water and that
the water irrigates the garden beds; then he will be taken from the
pumping station to another place where he will gather fruits and will
enter into the joy of his master, and, passing from lower to higher
work, will understand more and more of the arrangements of the
establishment, and taking part in it will never think of asking why he
is there, and will certainly not reproach the master.
So those who do his will, the simple, unlearned working folk, whom we
regard as cattle, do not reproach the master; but we, the wise, eat
the master's food but do not do what the master wishes, and instead of
doing it sit in a circle and discuss: "Why should that handle be
moved? Isn't it stupid?" So we have decided. We have decided that the
master is stupid, or does not exist, and that we are wise, only we
feel that we are quite useless and that we must somehow do away with
ourselves.
_________________________________________________________________
XII
The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge helped me to
free myself from the temptation of idle ratiocination. the conviction
that knowledge of truth can only be found by living led me to doubt
the rightness of my life; but I was saved only by the fact that I was
able to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to see the real life of
the plain working people, and to understand that it alone is real
life. I understood that if I wish to understand life and its meaning,
I must not live the life of a parasite, but must live a real life, and
-- taking the meaning given to live by real humanity and merging
myself in that life -- verify it.
During that time this is what happened to me. During that whole year,
when I was asking myself almost every moment whether I should not end
matters with a noose or a bullet -- all that time, together with the
course of thought and observation about which I have spoken, my heart
was oppressed with a painful feeling, which I can only describe as a
search for God.
I say that that search for God was not reasoning, but a feeling,
because that search proceeded not from the course of my thoughts -- it
was even directly contrary to them -- but proceeded from the heart. It
was a feeling of fear, orphanage, isolation in a strange land, and a
hope of help from someone.
Though I was quite convinced of the impossibility of proving the
existence of a Deity (Kant had shown, and I quite understood him, that
it could not be proved), I yet sought for god, hoped that I should
find Him, and from old habit addressed prayers to that which I sought
but had not found. I went over in my mind the arguments of Kant and
Schopenhauer showing the impossibility of proving the existence of a
God, and I began to verify those arguments and to refute them. Cause,
said I to myself, is not a category of thought such as are Time and
Space. If I exist, there must be some cause for it, and a cause of
causes. And that first cause of all is what men have called "God". And
I paused on that thought, and tried with all my being to recognize the
presence of that cause. And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a
force in whose power I am, I at once felt that I could live. But I
asked myself: What is that cause, that force? How am I to think of it?
What are my relations to that which I call "God"? And only the
familiar replies occurred to me: "He is the Creator and Preserver."
This reply did not satisfy me, and I felt I was losing within me what
I needed for my life. I became terrified and began to pray to Him whom
I sought, that He should help me. But the more I prayed the more
apparent it became to me that He did not hear me, and that there was
no one to whom to address myself. And with despair in my heart that
there is no God at all, I said: "Lord, have mercy, save me! Lord,
teach me!" But no one had mercy on me, and I felt that my life was
coming to a standstill.
But again and again, from various sides, I returned to the same
conclusion that I could not have come into the world without any cause
or reason or meaning; I could not be such a fledgling fallen from its
nest as I felt myself to be. Or, granting that I be such, lying on my
back crying in the high grass, even then I cry because I know that a
mother has borne me within her, has hatched me, warmed me, fed me, and
loved me. Where is she -- that mother? If I have been deserted, who
has deserted me? I cannot hide from myself that someone bored me,
loving me. Who was that someone? Again "God"? He knows and sees my
searching, my despair, and my struggle."
"He exists," said I to myself. And I had only for an instant to admit
that, and at once life rose within me, and I felt the possibility and
joy of being. But again, from the admission of the existence of a God
I went on to seek my relation with Him; and again I imagined that God
-- our Creator in Three Persons who sent His Son, the Saviour -- and
again that God, detached from the world and from me, melted like a
block of ice, melted before my eyes, and again nothing remained, and
again the spring of life dried up within me, and I despaired and felt
that I had nothing to do but to kill myself. And the worst of all was,
that I felt I could not do it.
Not twice or three times, but tens and hundreds of times, I reached
those conditions, first of joy and animation, and then of despair and
consciousness of the impossibility of living.
I remember that it was in early spring: I was alone in the wood
listening to its sounds. I listened and thought ever of the same
thing, as I had constantly done during those last three years. I was
again seeking God.
"Very well, there is no God," said I to myself; "there is no one who
is not my imagination but a reality like my whole life. He does not
exist, and no miracles can prove His existence, because the miracles
would be my imagination, besides being irrational.
"But my perception of God, of Him whom I seek," I asked myself, "where
has that perception come from?" And again at this thought the glad
waves of life rose within me. All that was around me came to life and
received a meaning. But my joy did not last long. My mind continued
its work.
"The conception of God is not God," said I to myself. "The conception
is what takes place within me. The conception of God is something I
can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself. That is not what I
seek. I seek that without which there can be no life." And again all
around me and within me began to die, and again I wished to kill
myself.
But then I turned my gaze upon myself, on what went on within me, and
I remembered all those cessations of life and reanimations that
recurred within me hundreds of times. I remembered that I only lived
at those times when I believed in God. As it was before, so it was
now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget Him, or
disbelieve Him, and I died.
What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in
the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not
had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live, only when I feel
Him and seek Him. "What more do you seek?" exclaimed a voice within
me. "This is He. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God
and to live is one and the same thing. God is life."
"Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God." And more
than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and the light
did not again abandon me.
And I was saved from suicide. When and how this change occurred I
could not say. As imperceptibly and gradually the force of life in me
had been destroyed and I had reached the impossibility of living, a
cessation of life and the necessity of suicide, so imperceptibly and
gradually did that force of life return to me. And strange to say the
strength of life which returned to me was not new, but quite old --
the same that had borne me along in my earliest days.
I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth.
I returned to the belief in that Will which produced me and desires
something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim
of my life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will. and
I returned to the belief that I can find the expression of that Will
in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from, has produced for
its guidance: that is to say, I returned to a belief in God, in moral
perfection, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life. There
was only this difference, that then all this was accepted
unconsciously, while now I knew that without it I could not live.
What happened to me was something like this: I was put into a boat (I
do not remember when) and pushed off from an unknown shore, shown the
direction of the opposite shore, had oars put into my unpractised
hands, and was left alone. I rowed as best I could and moved forward;
but the further I advanced towards the middle of the stream the more
rapid grew the current bearing me away from my goal and the more
frequently did I encounter others, like myself, borne away by the
stream. There were a few rowers who continued to row, there were
others who had abandoned their oars; there were large boats and
immense vessels full of people. Some struggled against the current,
others yielded to it. And the further I went the more, seeing the
progress down the current of all those who were adrift, I forgot the
direction given me. In the very centre of the stream, amid the crowd
of boats and vessels which were being borne down stream, I quite lost
my direction and abandoned my oars. Around me on all sides, with mirth
and rejoicing, people with sails and oars were borne down the stream,
assuring me and each other that no other direction was possible. And I
believed them and floated with them. And I was carried far; so far
that I heard the roar of the rapids in which I must be shattered, and
I saw boats shattered in them. And I recollected myself. I was long
unable to understand what had happened to me. I saw before me nothing
but destruction, towards which I was rushing and which I feared. I saw
no safety anywhere and did not know what to do; but, looking back, I
perceived innumerable boats which unceasingly and strenuously pushed
across the stream, and I remembered about the shore, the oars, and the
direction, and began to pull back upwards against the stream and
towards the shore.
That shore was God; that direction was tradition; the oars were the
freedom given me to pull for the shore and unite with God. And so the
force of life was renewed in me and I again began to live.
_________________________________________________________________
XIII
I turned from the life of our circle, acknowledging that ours is not
life but a simulation of life -- that the conditions of superfluity in
which we live deprive us of the possibility of understanding life, and
that in order to understand life I must understand not an exceptional
life such as our who are parasites on life, but the life of the simple
labouring folk -- those who make life -- and the meaning which they
attribute to it. The simplest labouring people around me were the
Russian people, and I turned to them and to the meaning of life which
they give. That meaning, if one can put it into words, was as follows:
Every man has come into this world by the will of God. And God has so
made man that every man can destroy his soul or save it. The aim of
man in life is to save his soul, and to save his soul he must live
"godly" and to live "godly" he must renounce all the pleasures of
life, must labour, humble himself, suffer, and be merciful. That
meaning the people obtain from the whole teaching of faith transmitted
to them by their pastors and by the traditions that live among the
people. This meaning was clear to me and near to my heart. But
together with this meaning of the popular faith of our non-sectarian
folk, among whom I live, much was inseparably bound up that revolted
me and seemed to me inexplicable: sacraments, Church services, fasts,
and the adoration of relics and icons. The people cannot separate the
one from the other, nor could I. And strange as much of what entered
into the faith of these people was to me, I accepted everything, and
attended the services, knelt morning and evening in prayer, fasted,
and prepared to receive the Eucharist: and at first my reason did not
resist anything. The very things that had formerly seemed to me
impossible did not now evoke in me any opposition.
My relations to faith before and after were quite different. Formerly
life itself seemed to me full of meaning and faith presented itself as
the arbitrary assertion of propositions to me quite unnecessary,
unreasonable, and disconnected from life. I then asked myself what
meaning those propositions had and, convinced that they had none, I
rejected them. Now on the contrary I knew firmly that my life
otherwise has, and can have, no meaning, and the articles of faith
were far from presenting themselves to me as unnecessary -- on the
contrary I had been led by indubitable experience to the conviction
that only these propositions presented by faith give life a meaning.
formerly I looked on them as on some quite unnecessary gibberish, but
now, if I did not understand them, I yet knew that they had a meaning,
and I said to myself that I must learn to understand them.
I argued as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of faith flows,
like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious source. That
source is God, the origin both of the human body and the human reason.
As my body has descended to me from God, so also has my reason and my
understanding of life, and consequently the various stages of the
development of that understanding of life cannot be false. All that
people sincerely believe in must be true; it may be differently
expressed but it cannot be a lie, and therefore if it presents itself
to me as a lie, that only means that I have not understood it.
Furthermore I said to myself, the essence of every faith consists in
its giving life a meaning which death does not destroy. Naturally for
a faith to be able to reply to the questions of a king dying in
luxury, of an old slave tormented by overwork, of an unreasoning
child, of a wise old man, of a half-witted old woman, of a young and
happy wife, of a youth tormented by passions, of all people in the
most varied conditions of life and education -- if there is one reply
to the one eternal question of life: "Why do I live and what will
result from my life?" -- the reply, though one in its essence, must be
endlessly varied in its presentation; and the more it is one, the more
true and profound it is, the more strange and deformed must it
naturally appear in its attempted expression, conformably to the
education and position of each person. But this argument, justifying
in my eyes the queerness of much on the ritual side of religion, did
not suffice to allow me in the one great affair of life -- religion --
to do things which seemed to me questionable. With all my soul I
wished to be in a position to mingle with the people, fulfilling the
ritual side of their religion; but I could not do it. I felt that I
should lie to myself and mock at what was sacred to me, were I to do
so. At this point, however, our new Russian theological writers came
to my rescue.
According to the explanation these theologians gave, the fundamental
dogma of our faith is the infallibility of the Church. From the
admission of that dogma follows inevitably the truth of all that is
professed by the Church. The Church as an assembly of true believers
united by love and therefore possessed of true knowledge became the
basis of my belief. I told myself that divine truth cannot be
accessible to a separate individual; it is revealed only to the whole
assembly of people united by love. To attain truth one must not
separate, and in order not to separate one must love and must endure
things one may not agree with.
Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the rites of
the Church you transgress against love; and by transgressing against
love you deprive yourself of the possibility of recognizing the truth.
I did not then see the sophistry contained in this argument. I did not
see that union in love may give the greatest love, but certainly
cannot give us divine truth expressed in the definite words of the
Nicene Creed. I also did not perceive that love cannot make a certain
expression of truth an obligatory condition of union. I did not then
see these mistakes in the argument and thanks to it was able to accept
and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding
most of them. I then tried with all strength of my soul to avoid all
arguments and contradictions, and tried to explain as reasonably as
possible the Church statements I encountered.
When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason and
submitted to the tradition possessed by all humanity. I united myself
with my forefathers: the father, mother, and grandparents I loved.
They and all my predecessors believed and lived, and they produced me.
I united myself also with the missions of the common people whom I
respected. Moveover, those actions had nothing bad in themselves
("bad" I considered the indulgence of one's desires). When rising
early for Church services I knew I was doing well, if only because I
was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental pride, for the sake
of union with my ancestors and contemporaries, and for the sake of
finding the meaning of life. It was the same with my preparations to
receive Communion, and with the daily reading of prayers with
genuflections, and also with the observance of all the fasts. However
insignificant these sacrifices might be I made them for the sake of
something good. I fasted, prepared for Communion, and observed the
fixed hours of prayer at home and in church. During Church service I
attended to every word, and gave them a meaning whenever I could. In
the Mass the most important words for me were: "Let us love one
another in conformity!" The further words, "In unity we believe in the
Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost", I passed by, because I could not
understand them.
_________________________________________________________________
XIV
In was then so necessary for me to believe in order to live that I
unconsciously concealed from myself the contradictions and obscurities
of theology. but this reading of meanings into the rites had its
limits. If the chief words in the prayer for the Emperor became more
and more clear to me, if I found some explanation for the words "and
remembering our Sovereign Most-Holy Mother of God and all the Saints,
ourselves and one another, we give our whole life to Christ our God",
if I explained to myself the frequent repetition of prayers for the
Tsar and his relations by the fact that they are more exposed to
temptations than other people and therefore are more in need of being
prayed for -- the prayers about subduing our enemies and evil under
our feet (even if one tried to say that sin was the enemy prayed
against), these and other prayers, such as the "cherubic song" and the
whole sacrament of oblation, or "the chosen Warriors", etc. -- quite
two-thirds of all the services -- either remained completely
incomprehensible or, when I forced an explanation into them, made me
feel that I was lying, thereby quite destroying my relation to God and
depriving me of all possibility of belief.
I felt the same about the celebration of the chief holidays. To
remember the Sabbath, that is to devote one day to God, was something
I could understand. But the chief holiday was in commemoration of the
Resurrection, the reality of which I could not picture to myself or
understand. And that name of "Resurrection" was also given the weekly
holiday. [9] And on those days the Sacrament of the Eucharist was
administered, which was quite unintelligible to me. The rest of the
twelve great holidays, except Christmas, commemorated miracles -- the
things I tried not to think about in order not to deny: the Ascension,
Pentecost, Epiphany, the Feast of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin,
etc. At the celebration of these holidays, feeling that importance was
being attributed to the very things that to me presented a negative
importance, I either devised tranquillizing explanations or shut my
eyes in order not to see what tempted me.
Most of all this happened to me when taking part in the most usual
Sacraments, which are considered the most important: baptism and
communion. There I encountered not incomprehensible but fully
comprehensible doings: doings which seemed to me to lead into
temptation, and I was in a dilemma -- whether to lie or to reject
them.
Never shall I forge the painful feeling I experienced the day I
received the Eucharist for the first time after many years. The
service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and produced
in me a glad consciousness that the meaning of life was being revealed
to me. The Communion itself I explained as an act performed in
remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purification from sin and the
full acceptance of Christ's teaching. If that explanation was
artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so happy was I at
humbling and abasing myself before the priest -- a simple, timid
country clergyman -- turning all the dirt out of my soul and
confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought with the
humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the office, so glad
was I of union with all who have believed and now believe, that I did
not notice the artificiality of my explanation. But when I approached
the altar gates, and the priest made me say that I believed that what
I was about to swallow was truly flesh and blood, I felt a pain in my
heart: it was not merely a false note, it was a cruel demand made by
someone or other who evidently had never known what faith is.
I now permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand, but I did not
then think so: only it was indescribably painful to me. I was no
longer in the position in which I had been in youth when I thought all
in life was clear; I had indeed come to faith because, apart from
faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, except destruction;
therefore to throw away that faith was impossible and I submitted. And
I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to endure it. This was
the feeling of self-abasement and humility. I humbled myself,
swallowed that flesh and blood without any blasphemous feelings and
with a wish to believe. But the blow had been struck and, knowing what
awaited me, I could not go a second time.
I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church and still believed that
the doctrine I was following contained the truth, when something
happened to me which I now understand but which then seemed strange.
I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant, a
pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation, when a knowledge of
faith revealed itself to me. I drew near to the people, listening to
their opinions of life and faith, and I understood the truth more and
more. So also was it when I read the Lives of Holy men, which became
my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles and regarding them as
fables illustrating thoughts, this reading revealed to me life's
meaning. There were the lives of Makarius the Great, the story of
Buddha, there were the words of St. John Chrysostom, and there were
the stories of the traveller in the well, the monk who found some
gold, and of Peter the publican. There were stories of the martyrs,
all announcing that death does not exclude life, and there were the
stories of ignorant, stupid men, who knew nothing of the teaching of
the Church but who yet were saves.
But as soon as I met learned believers or took up their books, doubt
of myself, dissatisfaction, and exasperated disputation were roused
within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the meaning of
these men's speech, the more I went astray from truth and approached
an abyss.
_________________________________________________________________
[9] In Russia Sunday was called Resurrection-day.--A.M.
_________________________________________________________________
XV
How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of learning!
Those statements in the creeds which to me were evident absurdities,
for them contained nothing false; they could accept them and could
believe in the truth -- the truth I believed in. Only to me, unhappy
man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was interwoven by finest
threads, and that I could not accept it in that form.
So I lived for about three years. At first, when I was only slightly
associated with truth as a catechumen and was only scenting out what
seemed to me clearest, these encounters struck me less. When I did not
understand anything, I said, "It is my fault, I am sinful"; but the
more I became imbued with the truths I was learning, the more they
became the basis of my life, the more oppressive and the more painful
became these encounters and the sharper became the line between what I
do not understand because I am not able to understand it, and what
cannot be understood except by lying to oneself.
In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to the Orthodox
Church. But questions of life arose which had to be decided; and the
decision of these questions by the Church -- contrary to the very
bases of the belief by which I lived -- obliged me at last to renounce
communion with Orthodoxy as impossible. These questions were: first
the relation of the Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches -- to
the Catholics and to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in
consequence of my interest in religion, I came into touch with
believers of various faiths: Catholics, protestants, Old-Believers,
Molokans [10] , and others. And I met among them many men of lofty
morals who were truly religious. I wished to be a brother to them. And
what happened? That teaching which promised to unite all in one faith
and love -- that very teaching, in the person of its best
representatives, told me that these men were all living a lie; that
what gave them their power of life was a temptation of the devil; and
that we alone possess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who
do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by
the Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider
the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though they
try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their
faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this
is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in
falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say
to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and
brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his
children and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is
increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology. And to
me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became
self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to
produce.
This offence is so obvious to us educated people who have lived in
countries where various religions are professed and have seen the
contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradiction with which
Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the Protestants, and
the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and the Protestants to the
two others, and the similar attitude of Old-Believers, Pashkovites
(Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and all religions -- that the very
obviousness of the temptation at first perplexes us. One says to
oneself: it is impossible that it is so simple and that people do not
see that if two assertions are mutually contradictory, then neither of
them has the sole truth which faith should possess. There is something
else here, there must be some explanation. I thought there was, and
sought that explanation and read all I could on the subject, and
consulted all whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation, except
the one which causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars
the best regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to consider that
the best regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans. The ecclesiastics
of all the different creeds, through their best representatives, told
me nothing but that they believed themselves to have the truth and the
others to be in error, and that all they could do was to pray for
them. I went to archimandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the
strictest orders, and asked them; but none of them made any attempt to
explain the matter to me except one man, who explained it all and
explained it so that I never asked any one any more about it. I said
that for every unbeliever turning to a belief (and all our young
generation are in a position to do so) the question that presents
itself first is, why is truth not in Lutheranism nor in Catholicism,
but in Orthodoxy? Educated in the high school he cannot help knowing
what the peasants do not know -- that the Protestants and Catholics
equally affirm that their faith is the only true one. Historical
evidence, twisted by each religion in its own favour, is insufficient.
Is it not possible, said I, to understand the teaching in a loftier
way, so that from its height the differences should disappear, as they
do for one who believes truly? Can we not go further along a path like
the one we are following with the Old-Believers? They emphasize the
fact that they have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias
and a different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe in
the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and so do we. Let us hold
to that, and in other matters do as you pease. We have united with
them by placing the essentials of faith above the unessentials. Now
with the Catholics can we not say: You believe in so and so and in so
and so, which are the chief things, and as for the Filioque clause and
the Pope -- do as you please. Can we not say the same to the
Protestants, uniting with them in what is most important?
My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such
conceptions would bring reproach o the spiritual authorities for
deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a
schism; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to safeguard
in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith inherited from our
forefathers.
And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of life; and
they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of men certain
human obligations. and fulfilling these human affairs they fulfil them
in a human way. However much they may talk of their pity for their
erring brethren, and of addressing prayers for them to the throne of
the Almighty -- to carry out human purposes violence is necessary, and
it has always been applied and is and will be applied. If of two
religions each considers itself true and the other false, then men
desiring to attract others to the truth will preach their own
doctrine. And if a false teaching is preached to the inexperienced
sons of their Church -- which as the truth -- then that Church cannot
but burn the books and remove the man who is misleading its sons. What
is to be done with a sectarian -- burning, in the opinion of the
Orthodox, with the fire of false doctrine -- who in the most important
affair of life, in faith, misleads the sons of the Church? What can be
done with him except to cut off his head or to incarcerate him? Under
the Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich people were burned at the stake, that is
to say, the severest method of punishment of the time was applied, and
in our day also the severest method of punishment is applied --
detention in solitary confinement. [11]
The second relation of the Church to a question of life was with
regard to war and executions.
At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of Christian
love, began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible not to think
about this, and not to see that killing is an evil repugnant to the
first principles of any faith. Yet prayers were said in the churches
for the success of our arms, and the teachers of the Faith
acknowledged killing to be an act resulting from the Faith. And
besides the murders during the war, I saw, during the disturbances
which followed the war, Church dignitaries and teachers and monks of
the lesser and stricter orders who approved the killing of helpless,
erring youths. And I took note of all that is done by men who profess
Christianity, and I was horrified.
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[10] A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.
[11] At the time this was written capital punishment was considered to
be abolished in Russia.--A.M.
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XVI
And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was
true in the religion I had joined. Formerly I should have said that it
was all false, but I could not say so now. The whole of the people
possessed a knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they could not have
lived. Moreover, that knowledge was accessible to me, for I had felt
it and had lived by it. But I no longer doubted that there was also
falsehood in it. And all that had previously repelled me now presented
itself vividly before me. And though I saw that among the peasants
there was a smaller admixture of the lies that repelled me than among
the representatives of the Church, I still saw that in the people's
belief also falsehood was mingled with the truth.
But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from? Both
the falsehood and the truth were contained in the so-called holy
tradition and in the Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the truth had
been handed down by what is called the Church.
And whether I liked or not, I was brought to the study and
investigation of these writings and traditions -- which till now I had
been so afraid to investigate.
And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I had once
rejected with such contempt as unnecessary. Formerly it seemed to me a
series of unnecessary absurdities, when on all sides I was surrounded
by manifestations of life which seemed to me clear and full of sense;
now I should have been glad to throw away what would not enter a
health head, but I had nowhere to turn to. On this teaching religious
doctrine rests, or at least with it the only knowledge of the meaning
of life that I have found is inseparably connected. However wild it
may seem too my firm old mind, it was the only hope of salvation. It
had to be carefully, attentively examined in order to understand it,
and not even to understand it as I understand the propositions of
science: I do not seek that, nor can I seek it, knowing the special
character of religious knowledge. I shall not seek the explanation of
everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the
commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish
to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably
inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable as
being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are
right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I
recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a
way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as
being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under
an arbitrary obligation to believe.
That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable, but it is
also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I must find what is
true and what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I
am setting to work upon this task. What of falsehood I have found in
the teaching and what I have found of truth, and to what conclusions I
came, will form the following parts of this work, which if it be worth
it and if anyone wants it, will probably some day be printed
somewhere.
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1879.
The foregoing was written by me some three years ago, and will be
printed.
Now a few days ago, when revising it and returning to the line of
thought and to the feelings I had when I was living through it all, I
had a dream. This dream expressed in condensed form all that I had
experienced and described, and I think therefore that, for those who
have understood me, a description of this dream will refresh and
elucidate and unify what has been set forth at such length in the
foregoing pages. The dream was this:
I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither comfortable nor
uncomfortable: I was lying on my back. But I began to consider how,
and on what, I was lying -- a question which had not till then
occurred to me. And observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited
string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on one
such support, by calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. I
seemed to know that those supports were movable, and with a movement
of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet -- it seemed
to me that it would be more comfortable so. But I pushed it away too
far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement
caused the next support under my calves to slip away also, so that my
legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust
myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once; but the movement
caused the other supports under me to slip and to become entangled,
and I saw that matters were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower
part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach
the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and
not only did it become uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And
then only did I ask myself about something that had not before
occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I and what am I lying on? and
I began to look around and first of all to look down in the direction
which my body was hanging and whiter I felt I must soon fall. I looked
down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height
comparable to the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at a
height such as I could never have imagined.
I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that
bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whiter I was being
drawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither
was terrible. If I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip
from the last support and perish. And I did not look. But not to look
was still worse, for I thought of what would happen to me directly I
fell from the last support. And I felt that from fear I was losing my
last supports, and that my back was slowly slipping lower and lower.
Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that
this cannot be real. It is a dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but
cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself, and look
upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the
immensity of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I
really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the
immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported
above the abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from
under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my
fear passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says: "Notice this, this is
it!" And I look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that
I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how
it all happened; how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened
I was, and how I was saved from fear by looking upwards. And I ask
myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same? And I do not so
much look round as experience with my whole body the point of support
on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall,
but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look
round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is
one support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position
of securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And
then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which
I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one
awake that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream
that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there
was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted
though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung
very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of
one's body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of
falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And it
seemed as if someone said to me: "See that you remember."
And I awoke.
1882.
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This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org.