💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › leo-tolstoy-a-confession.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:12:40. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: A Confession Author: Leo Tolstoy Date: 1882 Language: en Topics: autobiography Source: Retrieved on 9th June 2021 from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Confession_(Maudes_translation) Notes: Written in 1879–80, and published two years later, this work is written by a 51-year-old Tolstoy who looks back, considering his life thus far a failure (despite his tremendous success and status as a writer, having already published War and Peace and Anna Karenina). Chapters 4–7 deal with a period during which he struggled with suicide. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude.
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.
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
jeune homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut’. [Footnote:
Nothing so forms a young man as an intimacy with a woman of good
breeding.] 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 [Footnote: He was in fact 27 at the time.] 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.
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 [Footnote: Russians
generally make a distinction between Europeans and Russians. — A.M.]
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 abroad, and in the year of
the peasants’ emancipation (1861) I returned to Russia armed with all
this wisdom, and having become an Arbiter [Footnote: To keep peace
between peasants and owners.-A.M.] 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 [Footnote: A fermented drink prepared from mare’s milk.-A.
M.], 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
[Footnote: The desyatina is about 2.75 acres.-A.M.] 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.
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 fulfill 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 my 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.
“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 flew 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.
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 in 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. [Footnote: 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.]
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.
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 by 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.
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.
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 o equals o. 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: o equals o, 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 o equals o, 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.
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 [Footnote: 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.] 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
that 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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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. [Footnote: In Russia Sunday was called Resurrection-day. — A.
M.] 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 forget 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.
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 [Footnote: A
sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.], 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 please. 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 of 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. [Footnote: At
the time this was written capital punishment was considered to be
abolished in Russia. — A.M.]
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.
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 healthy 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 to 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.
Conclusion 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 whither 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 whither 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.