A Confession

 

 

 

                   by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

 

            Distributed by the Tolstoy Library OnLine

 

 

 

               First distributed in Russia in 1882

 

 

 

                                I

 

 

 

     I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith.

 

I was taught it in childhood and throughout my boyhood and youth.

 

But when I abandoned the second course of the university at the age

 

of eighteen I no longer believed any of the things I had been

 

taught.

 

     Judging by certain memories, I never seriously believed them,

 

but had merely relied on what I was taught and on what was

 

professed by the grown-up people around me, and that reliance was

 

very unstable.

 

     I remember that before I was eleven a grammar school pupil,

 

Vladimir Milyutin (long since dead), visited us one Sunday and

 

announced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his school.

 

This discovery was that there is no God and that all we are taught

 

about Him is a mere invention (this was in 1838).  I remember how

 

interested my elder brothers were in this information.  They called

 

me to their council and we all, I remember, became very animated,

 

and accepted it as something very interesting and quite possible.

 

     I remember also that when my elder brother, Dmitriy, who was

 

then at the university, suddenly, in the passionate way natural to

 

him, devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church

 

services, to fast and to lead a pure and moral life, we all -- even

 

our elders -- unceasingly held him up to ridicule and for some

 

unknown reason called him "Noah".  I remember that Musin-Pushkin,

 

the then Curator of Kazan University, when inviting us to dance at

 

his home, ironically persuaded my brother (who was declining the

 

invitation) by the argument that even David danced before the Ark.

 

I sympathized with these jokes made by my elders, and drew from

 

them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the

 

catechism and go to church, one must not take such things too

 

seriously.  I remember also that I read Voltaire when I was very

 

young, and that his raillery, far from shocking me, amused me very

 

much.

 

     My lapse from faith occurred as is usual among people on our

 

level of education.  In most cases, I think, it happens thus:  a

 

man lives like everybody else, on the basis of principles not

 

merely having nothing in common with religious doctrine, but

 

generally opposed to it; religious doctrine does not play a part in

 

life, in intercourse with others it is never encountered, and in a

 

man's own life he never has to reckon with it.  Religious doctrine

 

is professed far away from life and independently of it.  If it is

 

encountered, it is only as an external phenomenon disconnected from

 

life.

 

     Then as now, it was and is quite impossible to judge by a

 

man's life and conduct whether he is a believer or not.  If there

 

be a difference between a man who publicly professes orthodoxy and

 

one who denies it, the difference is not in favor of the former.

 

Then as now, the public profession and confession of orthodoxy was

 

chiefly met with among people who were dull and cruel and who

 

considered themselves very important.  Ability, honesty,

 

reliability, good-nature and moral conduct, were often met with

 

among unbelievers.

 

     The schools teach the catechism and send the pupils to church,

 

and government officials must produce certificates of having

 

received communion.  But a man of our circle who has finished his

 

education and is not in the government service may even now (and

 

formerly it was still easier for him to do so) live for ten or

 

twenty years without once remembering that he is living among

 

Christians and is himself reckoned a member of the orthodox

 

Christian Church.

 

     So that, now as formerly, religious doctrine, accepted on

 

trust and supported by external pressure, thaws away gradually

 

under the influence of knowledge and experience of life which

 

conflict with it, and a man very often lives on, imagining that he

 

still holds intact the religious doctrine imparted to him in

 

childhood whereas in fact not a trace of it remains.

 

     S., a clever and truthful man, once told me the story of how

 

he ceased to believe.  On a hunting expedition, when he was already

 

twenty-six, he once, at the place where they put up for the night,

 

knelt down in the evening to pray -- a habit retained from

 

childhood.  His elder brother, who was at the hunt with him, was

 

lying on some hay and watching him.  When S. had finished and was

 

settling down for the night, his brother said to him:  "So you

 

still do that?"

 

     They said nothing more to one another.  But from that day S.

 

ceased to say his prayers or go to church.  And now he has not

 

prayed, received communion, or gone to church, for thirty years.

 

And this not because he knows his brother's convictions and has

 

joined him in them, nor because he has decided anything in his own

 

soul, but simply because the word spoken by his brother was like

 

the push of a finger on a wall that was ready to fall by its own

 

weight.  The word only showed that where he thought there was

 

faith, in reality there had long been an empty space, and that

 

therefore the utterance of words and the making of signs of the

 

cross and genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions.

 

Becoming conscious of their senselessness he could not continue

 

them.

 

     So it has been and is, I think, with the great majority of

 

people.  I am speaking of people of our educational level who are

 

sincere with themselves, and not of those who make the profession

 

of faith a means of attaining worldly aims.  (Such people are the

 

most fundamental infidels, for if faith is for them a means of

 

attaining any worldly aims, then certainly it is not faith.)  these

 

people of our education are so placed that the light of knowledge

 

and life has caused an artificial erection to melt away, and they

 

have either already noticed this and swept its place clear, or they

 

have not yet noticed it.

 

     The religious doctrine taught me from childhood disappeared in

 

me as in others, but with this difference, that as from the age of

 

fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my rejection of the

 

doctrine became a conscious one at a very early age.  From the time

 

I was sixteen I ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to church

 

or to fast of my own volition.  I did not believe what had been

 

taught me in childhood but I believed in something.  What it was I

 

believed in I could not at all have said.  I believed in a God, or

 

rather I did not deny God -- but I could not have said what sort of

 

God.  Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his

 

teaching consisted in I again could not have said.

 

     Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith --

 

my only real faith -- that which apart from my animal instincts

 

gave impulse to my life -- was a belief in perfecting myself.  But

 

in what this perfecting consisted and what its object was, I could

 

not have said.  I tried to perfect myself mentally -- I studied

 

everything I could, anything life threw in my way; I tried to

 

perfect my will, I drew up rules I tried to follow; I perfected

 

myself physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts

 

of exercises, and accustoming myself to endurance and patience by

 

all kinds of privations.  And all this I considered to be the

 

pursuit of perfection.  the beginning of it all was of course moral

 

perfection, but that was soon replaced by perfection in general:

 

by the desire to be better not in my own eyes or those of God but

 

in the eyes of other people.  And very soon this effort again

 

changed into a desire to be stronger than others:  to be more

 

famous, more important and richer than others.

 

 

 

                               II

 

 

 

     Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive history

 

of my life during those ten years of my youth.  I think very many

 

people have had a like experience.  With all my soul I wished to be

 

good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when

 

I sought goodness.  Every time I tried to express my most sincere

 

desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and

 

ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised

 

and encouraged.

 

     Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride,

 

anger, and revenge -- were all respected.

 

     Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and

 

felt that they approved of me.  The kind aunt with whom I lived,

 

herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing

 

she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a

 

married woman:  'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison

 

avec une femme comme il faut'.  [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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                               III

 

 

 

     So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six

 

years, till my marriage.  During that time I went abroad.  Life in

 

Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans

 

[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 aborad, 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.

 

 

 

                               IV

 

 

 

     My life came to a standstill.  I could breathe, eat, drink,

 

and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was

 

no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could

 

consider reasonable.  If I desired anything, I knew in advance that

 

whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it.

 

Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have

 

know what to ask.  If in moments of intoxication I felt something

 

which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in

 

sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was

 

really nothing to wish for.  I could not even wish to know the

 

truth, for I guessed of what it consisted.  The truth was that life

 

is meaningless.  I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked,

 

till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was

 

nothing ahead of me but destruction.  It was impossible to stop,

 

impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid

 

seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death --

 

complete annihilation.

 

     It had come to this, that I, a healthy, fortunate man, felt I

 

could no longer live: some irresistible power impelled me to rid

 

myself one way or other of life.  I cannot say I *wished* to kill

 

myself.  The power which drew me away from life was stronger,

 

fuller, and more widespread than any mere wish.  It was a force

 

similar to the former striving to live, only in a contrary

 

direction.  All my strength drew me away from life.  The thought of

 

self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to

 

improve my life had come formerly.  and it was seductive that I had

 

to be cunning with myself lest I should carry it out too hastily.

 

 I did not wish to hurry, because I wanted to use all efforts to

 

disentangle the matter.  "If I cannot unravel matters, there will

 

always be time."  and it was then that I, a man favoured by

 

fortune, hid a cord from myself lest I should hang myself from the

 

crosspiece of the partition in my room where I undressed alone

 

every evening, and I ceased to go out shooting with a gun lest I

 

should be tempted by so easy a way of ending my life.  I did not

 

myself know what I wanted:  I feared life, desired to escape from

 

it, yet still hoped something of it.

 

     And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what

 

is considered complete good fortune.  I was not yet fifty; I had a

 

good wife who lived 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 s

 

twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it.  His hands

 

are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself

 

to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he

 

clings on.  Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white

 

one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he

 

is clinging and gnaw at it.  And soon the twig itself will snap and

 

he will fall into the dragon's jaws.  The traveller sees this and

 

knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he

 

looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig,

 

reaches them with his tongue and licks them.  So I too clung to the

 

twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably

 

awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand

 

why I had fallen into such torment.  I tried to lick the honey

 

which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me

 

pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at

 

the branch by which I hung.  I saw the dragon clearly and the honey

 

no longer tasted sweet.  I only saw the unescapable dragon and the

 

mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them.  and this is not a

 

fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.

 

     The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my

 

terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me.  No matter how

 

often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so

 

do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have

 

already done it too long.  I cannot now help seeing day and night

 

going round and bringing me to death.  That is all I see, for that

 

alone is true.  All else is false.

 

     The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel

 

truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing --

 

art as I called it -- were no longer sweet to me.

 

     "Family"...said I to myself.  But my family -- wife and

 

children -- are also human.  They are placed just as I am: they

 

must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth.  Why should

 

they live?  Why should I love them, guard them, bring them up, or

 

watch them?  That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else

 

be stupid?  Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each

 

step in knowledge leads them to the truth.  And the truth is death.

 

     "Art, poetry?"...Under the influence of success and the praise

 

of men, I had long assured myself that this was a thing one could

 

do though death was drawing near -- death which destroys all

 

things, including my work and its remembrance; but soon I saw that

 

that too was a fraud.  It was plain to me that art is an adornment

 

of life, an allurement to life.  But life had lost its attraction

 

for me, so how could I attract others?  As long as I was not living

 

my own life but was borne on the waves of some other life -- as

 

long as I believed that life had a meaning, though one I could not

 

express -- the reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds

 

afforded me pleasure:  it was pleasant to look at life in the

 

mirror of art.  But when I began to seek the meaning of life and

 

felt the necessity of living my own life, that mirror became for me

 

unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful.  I could no

 

longer soothe myself with what I now saw in the mirror, namely,

 

that my position was stupid and desperate.  It was all very well to

 

enjoy the sight when in the depth of my soul I believed that my

 

life had a meaning.  Then the play of lights -- comic, tragic,

 

touching, beautiful, and terrible -- in life amused me.  No

 

sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw the dragon and

 

saw the mice gnawing away my support.

 

     Nor was that all.  Had I simply understood that life had no

 

meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my

 

lot.  But I could not satisfy myself with that.  Had I been like a

 

man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could

 

have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at

 

having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road.  He

 

knows that each step he takes confuses him more and more, but still

 

he cannot help rushing about.

 

     It was indeed terrible.  And to rid myself of the terror I

 

wished to kill myself.  I experienced terror at what awaited me --

 

knew that that terror was even worse than the position I was in,

 

but still I could not patiently await the end.  However convincing

 

the argument might be that in any case some vessel in my heart

 

would give way, or something would burst and all would be over, I

 

could not patiently await that end.  The horror of darkness was too

 

great, and I wished to free myself from it as quickly as possible

 

by noose or bullet.  that was the feeling which drew me most

 

strongly towards suicide.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

                                V

 

 

 

     "But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood

 

something?" said to myself several times.  "It cannot be that this

 

condition of despair is natural to man!"  And I sought for an

 

explanation of these problems in all the branches of knowledge

 

acquired by men.  I sought painfully and long, not from idle

 

curiosity or listlessly, but painfully and persistently day and

 

night -- sought as a perishing man seeks for safety -- and I found

 

nothing.

 

     I sought in all the sciences, but far from finding what I

 

wanted, became convinced that all who like myself had sought in

 

knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing.  And not only

 

had they found nothing, but they had plainly acknowledged that the

 

very thing which made me despair -- namely the senselessness of

 

life -- is the one indubitable thing man can know.

 

     I sought everywhere; and thanks to a life spent in learning,

 

and thanks also to my relations with the scholarly world, I had

 

access to scientists and scholars in all branches of knowledge, and

 

they readily showed me all their knowledge, not only in books but

 

also in conversation, so that I had at my disposal all that science

 

has to say on this question of life.

 

     I was long unable to believe that it gives no other reply to

 

life's questions than that which it actually does give.  It long

 

seemed to me, when I saw the important and serious air with which

 

science announces its conclusions which have nothing in common with

 

the real questions of human life, that there was something I had

 

not understood.  I long was timid before science, and it seemed to

 

me that the lack of conformity between the answers and my questions

 

arose not by the fault of science but from my ignorance, but the

 

matter was for me not a game or an amusement but one of life and

 

death, and I was involuntarily brought to the conviction that my

 

questions were the only legitimate ones, forming the basis of all

 

knowledge, and that I with my questions was not to blame, but

 

science if it pretends to reply to those questions.

 

     My question -- that which at the age of fifty brought me to

 

the verge of suicide -- was the simplest of questions, lying in the

 

soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it

 

was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had

 

found by experience.  It was: "What will come of what I am doing

 

today or shall do tomorrow?  What will come of my whole life?"

 

     Differently expressed, the question is:  "Why should I live,

 

why wish for anything, or do anything?"  It can also be expressed

 

thus:  "Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death

 

awaiting me does not destroy?"

 

     To this one question, variously expressed, I sought an answer

 

in science.  And I found that in relation to that question all

 

human knowledge is divided as it were into tow 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 wa a time when I seemed satisfied with that.  It

 

was just the time when I was myself becoming more complex and was

 

developing. My muscles were growing and strengthening, my memory

 

was being enriched, my capacity to think and understand was

 

increasing, I was growing and developing; and feeling this growth

 

in myself it was natural for me to think that such was the

 

universal law in which I should find the solution of the question

 

of my life.  But a time came when the growth within me ceased.  I

 

felt that I was not developing, but fading, my muscles were

 

weakening, my teeth falling out, and I saw that the law not only

 

did not explain anything to me, but that there never had been or

 

could be such a law, and that I had taken for a law what I had

 

found in myself at a certain period of my life.  I regarded the

 

definition of that law more strictly, and it became clear to me

 

that there could be no law of endless development; it became clear

 

that to say, "in infinite space and time everything develops,

 

becomes more perfect and more complex, is differentiated", is to

 

say nothing at all.  These are all words with no meaning, for in

 

the infinite there is neither complex nor simple, neither forward

 

nor backward, nor better or worse.

 

     Above all, my personal question, "What am I with my desires?"

 

remained quite unanswered.  And I understood that those sciences

 

are very interesting and attractive, but that they are exact and

 

clear in inverse proportion to their applicability to the question

 

of life: the less their applicability to the question of life, the

 

more exact and clear they are, while the more they try to reply to

 

the question of life, the more obscure and unattractive they

 

become.  If one turns to the division of sciences which attempt to

 

reply to the questions of life -- to physiology, psychology,

 

biology, sociology -- one encounters an appalling poverty of

 

thought, the greatest obscurity, a quite unjustifiable pretension

 

to solve irrelevant question, and a continual contradiction of each

 

authority by others and even by himself.  If one turns to the

 

branches of science which are not concerned with the solution of

 

the questions of life, but which reply to their own special

 

scientific questions, one is enraptured by the power of man's mind,

 

but one knows in advance that they give no reply to life's

 

questions.  Those sciences simply ignore life's questions.  They

 

say:  "To the question of what you are and why you live we have no

 

reply, and are not occupied with that; but if you want to know the

 

laws of light, of chemical combinations, the laws of development of

 

organisms, if you want to know the laws of bodies and their form,

 

and the relation of numbers and quantities, if you want to know the

 

laws of your mind, to all that we have clear, exact and

 

unquestionable replies."

 

     In general the relation of the experimental sciences to life's

 

question may be expressed thus:  Question: "Why do I live?"

 

Answer: "In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small

 

particles change their forms in infinite complexity, and when you

 

have under stood the laws of those mutations of form you will

 

understand why you live on the earth."

 

     Then in the sphere of abstract science I said to myself:  "All

 

humanity lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles

 

and ideals which guide it.  Those ideals are expressed in

 

religions, in sciences, in arts, in forms of government.  Those

 

ideals become more and more elevated, and humanity advances to its

 

highest welfare.  I am part of humanity, and therefore my vocation

 

is to forward the recognition and the realization of the ideals of

 

humanity."  And at the time of my weak-mindedness I was satisfied

 

with that; but as soon as the question of life presented itself

 

clearly to me, those theories immediately crumbled away.  Not to

 

speak of the unscrupulous obscurity with which those sciences

 

announce conclusions formed on the study of a small part of mankind

 

as general conclusions; not to speak of the mutual contradictions

 

of different adherents of this view as to what are the ideals of

 

humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theory

 

consists in the fact that in order to reply to the question facing

 

each man:  "What am I?" or "Why do I live?" or "What must I do?"

 

one has first to decide the question: "What is the life of the

 

whole?" (which is to him unknown and of which he is acquainted with

 

one tiny part in one minute period of time.  To understand what he

 

is, one man must first understand all this mysterious humanity,

 

consisting of people such as himself who do not understand one

 

another.

 

     I have to confess that there was a time when I believed this.

 

It was the time when I had my own favourite ideals justifying my

 

own caprices, and I was trying to devise a theory which would allow

 

one to consider my caprices as the law of humanity.  But as soon as

 

the question of life arose in my soul in full clearness that reply

 

at once few to dust.  And I understood that as in the experimental

 

sciences there are real sciences, and semi-sciences which try to

 

give answers to questions beyond their competence, so in this

 

sphere there is a whole series of most diffused sciences which try

 

to reply to irrelevant questions.  Semi-sciences of that kind, the

 

juridical and the social-historical, endeavour to solve the

 

questions of a man's life by pretending to decide each in its own

 

way, the question of the life of all humanity.

 

     But as in the sphere of man's experimental knowledge one who

 

sincerely inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the

 

reply -- "Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time

 

and in complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will

 

understand your life" -- so also a sincere man cannot be satisfied

 

with the reply: "Study the whole life of humanity of which we

 

cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which we do not

 

even know a small part, and then you will understand your own

 

life." And like the experimental semi-sciences, so these other

 

semi-sciences are the more filled with obscurities, inexactitudes,

 

stupidities, and contradictions, the further they diverge from the

 

real problems.  The problem of experimental science is the sequence

 

of cause and effect in material phenomena.  It is only necessary

 

for experimental science to introduce the question of a final cause

 

for it to become nonsensical.  The problem of abstract science is

 

the recognition of the primordial essence of life.  It is only

 

necessary to introduce the investigation of consequential phenomena

 

(such as social and historical phenomena) and it also becomes

 

nonsensical.

 

     Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and

 

displays the greatness of the human mind when it does not introduce

 

into its investigations the question of an ultimate cause.  And, on

 

the contrary, abstract science is only then science and displays

 

the greatness of the human mind when it puts quite aside questions

 

relating to the consequential causes of phenomena and regards man

 

solely in relation to an ultimate cause.  Such in this realm of

 

science -- forming the pole of the sphere -- is metaphysics or

 

philosophy.  That science states the question clearly:  "What am I,

 

and what is the universe?  And why do I exist, and why does the

 

universe exist?"  And since it has existed it has always replied in

 

the same way.  Whether the philosopher calls the essence of life

 

existing within me, and in all that exists, by the name of "idea",

 

or "substance", or "spirit", or "will", he says one and the same

 

thing:  that this essence exists and that I am of that same

 

essence; but why it is he does not know, and does not say, if he is

 

an exact thinker.  I ask:  "Why should this essence exist?  What

 

results from the fact that it is and will be?" ... And philosophy

 

not merely does not reply, but is itself only asking that question.

 

And if it is real philosophy all its labour lies merely in trying

 

to put that question clearly.  And if it keeps firmly to its task

 

it cannot reply to the question otherwise than thus:  "What am I,

 

and what is the universe?"  "All and nothing"; and to the question

 

"Why?" by "I do not know".

 

     So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can

 

never obtain anything like an answer -- and not because, as in the

 

clear experimental sphere, the reply does not relate to my

 

question, but because here, though all the mental work is directed

 

just to my question, there is no answer, but instead of an answer

 

one gets the same question, only in a complex form.

 

 

 

 

 

                               VI

 

 

 

     In my search for answers to life's questions I experienced

 

just what is felt by a man lost in a forest.

 

     He reaches a glade, climbs a tree, and clearly sees the

 

limitless distance, but sees that his home is not and cannot be

 

there; then he goes into the dark wood and sees the darkness, but

 

there also his home is not.

 

     So I wandered n that wood of human knowledge, amid the gleams

 

of mathematical and experimental science which showed me clear

 

horizons but in a direction where there could be no home, and also

 

amid the darkness of the abstract sciences where I was immersed in

 

deeper gloom the further I went, and where I finally convinced

 

myself that there was, and could be, no exit.

 

     Yielding myself to the bright side of knowledge, I understood

 

that I was only diverting my gaze from the question.  However

 

alluringly clear those horizons which opened out before me might

 

be, however alluring it might be to immerse oneself in the

 

limitless expanse of those sciences, I already understood that the

 

clearer they were the less they met my need and the less they

 

applied to my question.

 

     "I know," said I to myself, "what science so persistently

 

tries to discover, and along that road there is no reply to the

 

question as to the meaning of my life."  In the abstract sphere I

 

understood that notwithstanding the fact, or just because of the

 

fact, that the direct aim of science is to reply to my question,

 

there is no reply but that which I have myself already given:

 

"What is the meaning of my life?"  "There is none."  Or:  "What

 

will come of my life?" "Nothing."  Or:  "Why does everything exist

 

that exists, and why do I exist?"  "Because it exists."

 

     Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an

 

innumerable quantity of exact replies concerning matters about

 

which I had not asked:  about the chemical constituents of the

 

stars, about the movement of the sun towards the constellation

 

Hercules, about the origin of species and of man, about the forms

 

of infinitely minute imponderable particles of ether; but in this

 

sphere of knowledge the only answer to my question, "What is the

 

meaning of my life?" was: "You are what you call your 'life'; you

 

are a transitory, casual cohesion of particles.  The mutual

 

interactions and changes of these particles produce in you what you

 

call your "life".  That cohesion will last some time; afterwards

 

the interaction of these particles will cease and what you call

 

"life" will cease, and so will all your questions.  You are an

 

accidentally united little lump of something.  that little lump

 

ferments.  The little lump calls that fermenting its 'life'.  The

 

lump will disintegrate and there will be an end of the fermenting

 

and of all the questions."  So answers the clear side of science

 

and cannot answer otherwise if it strictly follows its principles.

 

     From such a reply one sees that the reply does not answer the

 

question.  I want to know the meaning of my life, but that it is a

 

fragment of the infinite, far from giving it a meaning destroys its

 

every possible meaning.  The obscure compromises which that side of

 

experimental exact science makes with abstract science when it says

 

that the meaning of life consists in development and in cooperation

 

with development, owing to their inexactness and obscurity cannot

 

be considered as replies.

 

     The other side of science -- the abstract side -- when it

 

holds strictly to its principles, replying directly to the

 

question, always replies, and in all ages has replied, in one and

 

the same way:  "The world is something infinite and

 

incomprehensible part of that incomprehensible 'all'."  Again I

 

exclude all those compromises between abstract and experimental

 

sciences which supply the whole ballast of the semi-sciences called

 

juridical, political, and historical. In those semi-sciences the

 

conception of development and progress is again wrongly introduced,

 

only with this difference, that there it was the development of

 

everything while here it is the development of the life of mankind.

 

The error is there as before: development and progress in infinity

 

can have no aim or direction, and, as far as my question is

 

concerned, no answer is given.

 

     In truly abstract science, namely in genuine philosophy -- not

 

in that which Schopenhauer calls "professorial philosophy" which

 

serves only to classify all existing phenomena in new philosophic

 

categories and to call them by new names -- where the philosopher

 

does not lose sight of the essential question, the reply is always

 

one and the same -- the reply given by Socrates, Schopenhauer,

 

Solomon, and buddha.

 

     "We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life", said

 

Socrates when preparing for death.  "For what do we, who love

 

truth, strive after in life?  To free ourselves from the body, and

 

from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body!  If so,

 

then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us?

 

     "The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is

 

not terrible to him."

 

     And Schopenhauer says:

 

     "Having recognized the inmost essence of the world as *will*,

 

and all its phenomena -- from the unconscious working of the

 

obscure forces of Nature up to the completely conscious action of

 

man -- as only the objectivity of that will, we shall in no way

 

avoid the conclusion that together with the voluntary renunciation

 

and self-destruction of the will all those phenomena also

 

disappear, that constant striving and effort without aim or rest on

 

all the stages of objectivity in which and through which the world

 

exists; the diversity of successive forms will disappear, and

 

together with the form all the manifestations of will, with its

 

most universal forms, space and time, and finally its most

 

fundamental form -- subject and object.  Without will there is no

 

concept and no world.  Before us, certainly, nothing remains.  But

 

what resists this transition into annihilation, our nature, is only

 

that same wish to live -- *Wille zum Leben* -- which forms

 

ourselves as well as our world.  That we are so afraid of

 

annihilation or, what is the same thing, that we so wish to live,

 

merely means that we are ourselves nothing else but this desire to

 

live, and know nothing but it.  And so what remains after the

 

complete annihilation of the will, for us who are so full of the

 

will, is, of course, nothing; but on the other hand, for those in

 

whom the will has turned and renounced itself, this so real world

 

of ours with all its suns and milky way is nothing."

 

     "Vanity of vanities", says Solomon -- "vanity of vanities --

 

all is vanity.  What profit hath a man of all his labor which he

 

taketh under the sun?  One generation passeth away, and another

 

generation commeth: but the earth abideth for ever....The thing

 

that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is

 

that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

 

Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath

 

been already of old time, which was before us.  there is no

 

remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any

 

remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come

 

after.  I the Preacher was King over Israel in Jerusalem.  And I

 

gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that

 

is done under heaven:  this sore travail hath God given to the sons

 

of man to be exercised therewith.  I have seen all the works that

 

are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of

 

spirit....I communed with my own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to

 

great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have

 

been before me over Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath great experience

 

of wisdom and knowledge.  And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and

 

to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation

 

of spirit.  For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that

 

increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

 

     "I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth,

 

therefore enjoy pleasure: and behold this also is vanity. I said of

 

laughter, It is mad:  and of mirth, What doeth it?  I sought in my

 

heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, and while my heart was

 

guided by wisdom, to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it

 

was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven the

 

number of the days of their life.  I made me great works; I builded

 

me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards,

 

and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits: I made me pools

 

of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared: I

 

got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house;

 

also I had great possessions of herds and flocks above all that

 

were before me in Jerusalem: I gathered me also silver and gold and

 

the peculiar treasure from kings and from the provinces: I got me

 

men singers and women singers; and the delights of the sons of men,

 

as musical instruments and all that of all sorts.  So I was great,

 

and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also

 

my wisdom remained with me.  And whatever mine eyes desired I kept

 

not from them.  I withheld not my heart from any joy....Then I

 

looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the

 

labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and

 

vexation of spirit, and there was no profit from them under the

 

sun.  And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and

 

folly.... But I perceived that one even happeneth to them all.

 

Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it

 

happeneth even to me, and why was I then more wise?  then I said in

 

my heart, that this also is vanity.  For there is no remembrance of

 

the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is

 

in the days to come shall all be forgotten.  And how dieth the wise

 

man? as the fool.  Therefore I hated life; because the work that is

 

wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and

 

vexation of spirit.  Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken

 

under the sun: seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall

 

be after me.... For what hath  man of all his labour, and of the

 

vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?  For

 

all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, even in the

 

night his heart taketh no rest.  this is also vanity.  Man is not

 

blessed with security that he should eat and drink and cheer his

 

soul from his own labour.... All things come alike to all: there is

 

one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to

 

the evil; to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth

 

and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner;

 

and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.  This is an evil

 

in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event unto

 

all; yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and

 

madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go

 

to the dead.  For him that is among the living there is hope: for

 

a living dog is better than a dead lion.  For the living know that

 

they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they

 

any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.  also their

 

love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither

 

have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done

 

under the sun."

 

     So said Solomon, or whoever wrote those words.  [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.

 

 

 

 

 

                               VII

 

 

 

     Not finding an explanation in science I began to seek for it

 

in life, hoping to find it among the people around me.  And I began

 

to observe how the people around me -- people like myself -- lived,

 

and what their attitude was to this question which had brought me

 

to despair.

 

     And this is what I found among people who were in the same

 

position as myself as regards education and manner of life.

 

     I found that for people of my circle there were four ways out

 

of the terrible position in which we are all placed.

 

     The first was that of ignorance. It consists in not knowing,

 

not understanding, that life is an evil and an absurdity.  People

 

of this sort -- chiefly women, or very young or very dull people --

 

have not yet understood that question of life which presented

 

itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, and Buddha.  They see neither the

 

dragon that awaits them nor the mice gnawing the shrub by which

 

they are hanging, and they lick the drops of honey.  but they lick

 

those drops of honey only for a while:  something will turn their

 

attention to the dragon and the mice, and there will be an end to

 

their licking.  From them I had nothing to learn -- one cannot

 

cease to know what one does know.

 

     The second way out is epicureanism.  It consists, while

 

knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the

 

advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and

 

licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of

 

it within reach.  Solomon expresses this way out thus:  "Then I

 

commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun,

 

than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: and that this should

 

accompany him in his labour the days of his life, which God giveth

 

him under the sun.

 

     "Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a

 

merry heart.... Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all

 

the days of the life of thy vanity...for this is thy portion in

 

life and in thy labours which thou takest under the sun....

 

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there

 

is not work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave,

 

whither thou goest."

 

     That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle

 

make life possible for themselves.  Their circumstances furnish

 

them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral

 

dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of

 

their position is accidental, and that not everyone can have a

 

thousand wives and palaces like Solomon, that for everyone who has

 

a thousand wives there are a thousand without a wife, and that for

 

each palace there are a thousand people who have to build it in the

 

sweat of their brows; and that the accident that has today made me

 

a Solomon may tomorrow make me a Solomon's slave.  The dullness of

 

these people's imagination enables them to forget the things that

 

gave Buddha no peace -- the inevitability of sickness, old age, and

 

death, which today or tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures.

 

     So think and feel the majority of people of our day and our

 

manner of life.  The fact that some of these people declare the

 

dullness of their thoughts and imaginations to be a philosophy,

 

which they call Positive, does not remove them, in my opinion, from

 

the ranks of those who, to avoid seeing the question, lick the

 

honey.  I could not imitate these people; not having their dullness

 

of imagination I could not artificially produce it in myself.  I

 

could not tear my eyes from the mice and the dragon, as no vital

 

man can after he has once seen them.

 

     The third escape is that of strength and energy.  It consists

 

in destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and

 

an absurdity.  A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act

 

so.  Having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been

 

played on them, and having understood that it is better to be dead

 

than to be alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act

 

accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are

 

means:  a rope round one's neck, water, a knife to stick into one's

 

heart, or the trains on the railways; and the number of those of

 

our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for

 

the most part they act so at the best time of their life, when the

 

strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to

 

the mind have as yet been acquired.

 

     I saw that this was the worthiest way of escape and I wished

 

to adopt it.

 

     The fourth way out is that of weakness.  It consists in seeing

 

the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in

 

advance that nothing can come of it.  People of this kind know that

 

death is better than life, but not having the strength to act

 

rationally -- to end the deception quickly and kill themselves --

 

they seem to wait for something.  This is the escape of weakness,

 

for if I know what is best and it is within my power, why not yield

 

to what is best? ... I found myself in that category.

 

     So people of my class evade the terrible contradiction in four

 

ways.  Strain my attention as I would, I saw no way except those

 

four.  One way was not to understand that life is senseless,

 

vanity, and an evil, and that it is better not to live.  I could

 

not help knowing this, and when I once knew it could not shut my

 

eyes to it.  the second way was to use life such as it is without

 

thinking of the future.  And I could not do that.  I, like Sakya

 

Muni, could not ride out hunting when I knew that old age,

 

suffering, and death exist.  My imagination was too vivid.  Nor

 

could I rejoice in the momentary accidents that for an instant

 

threw pleasure to my lot.  The third way, having under stood that

 

life is evil and stupid, was to end it by killing oneself.  I

 

understood that, but somehow still did not kill myself.  The fourth

 

way was to live like Solomon and Schopenhauer -- knowing that life

 

is a stupid joke played upon us, and still to go on living, washing

 

oneself, dressing, dining, talking, and even writing books.  This

 

was to me repulsive and tormenting, but I remained in that

 

position.

 

     I see now that if I did not kill myself it was due to some dim

 

consciousness of the invalidity of my thoughts.  However convincing

 

and indubitable appeared to me the sequence of my thoughts and of

 

those of the wise that have brought us to the admission of the

 

senselessness of life, there remained in me a vague doubt of the

 

justice of my conclusion.

 

     It was like this:  I, my reason, have acknowledged that life

 

is senseless.  If there is nothing higher than reason (and there is

 

not: nothing can prove that there is), then reason is the creator

 

of life for me.  If reason did not exist there would be for me no

 

life.  How can reason deny life when it is the creator of life?  Or

 

to put it the other way: were there no life, my reason would not

 

exist; therefore reason is life's son.  Life is all.  Reason is its

 

fruit yet reason rejects life itself!  I felt that there was

 

something wrong here.

 

     Life is a senseless evil, that is certain, said I to myself.

 

Yet I have lived and am still living, and all mankind lived and

 

lives.  How is that?  Why does it live, when it is possible not to

 

live?  Is it that only I and Schopenhauer are wise enough to

 

understand the senselessness and evil of life?

 

     The reasoning showing the vanity of life is not so difficult,

 

and has long been familiar to the very simplest folk; yet they have

 

lived and still live.  How is it they all live and never think of

 

doubting the reasonableness of life?

 

     My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, has shown

 

me that everything on earth -- organic and inorganic -- is all most

 

cleverly arranged -- only my own position is stupid.  and those

 

fools -- the enormous masses of people -- know nothing about how

 

everything organic and inorganic in the world is arranged; but they

 

live, and it seems to them that their life is very wisely arranged!

 

...

 

     And it struck me:  "But what if there is something I do not

 

yet know?  Ignorance behaves just in that way.  Ignorance always

 

says just what I am saying.  When it does not know something, it

 

says that what it does not know is stupid.  Indeed, it appears that

 

there is a whole humanity that lived and lives as if it understood

 

the meaning of its life, for without understanding it could not

 

live; but I say that all this life is senseless and that I cannot

 

live.

 

     "Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide.  well then,

 

kill yourself, and you won't discuss.  If life displeases you, kill

 

yourself!  You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life --

 

then finish it, and do not fool about in life, saying and writing

 

that you do not understand it.  You have come into good company

 

where people are contented and know what they are doing; if you

 

find it dull and repulsive -- go away!"

 

     Indeed, what are we who are convinced of the necessity of

 

suicide yet do not decide to commit it, but the weakest, most

 

inconsistent, and to put it plainly, the stupidest of men, fussing

 

about with our own stupidity as a fool fusses about with a painted

 

hussy?  For our wisdom, however indubitable it may be, has not

 

given us the knowledge of the meaning of our life.  But all mankind

 

who sustain life -- millions of them -- do not doubt the meaning of

 

life.

 

     Indeed, from the most distant time of which I know anything,

 

when life began, people have lived knowing the argument about the

 

vanity of life which has shown me its senselessness, and yet they

 

lived attributing some meaning to it.

 

     From the time when any life began among men they had that

 

meaning of life, and they led that life which has descended to me.

 

All that is in me and around me, all, corporeal and incorporeal, is

 

the fruit of their knowledge of life.  Those very instruments of

 

thought with which I consider this life and condemn it were all

 

devised not be me but by them.  I myself was born, taught, and

 

brought up thanks to them.  They dug out the iron, taught us to cut

 

down the forests, tamed the cows and horses, taught us to sow corn

 

and to live together, organized our life, and taught me to think

 

and speak.  And I, their product, fed, supplied with drink, taught

 

by them, thinking with their thoughts and words, have argued that

 

they are an absurdity!  "There is something wrong," said I to

 

myself.  "I have blundered somewhere."  But it was a long time

 

before I could find out where the mistake was.

 

 

 

 

 

                              VIII

 

 

 

     All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less

 

systematically, I could not then have expressed.  I then only felt

 

that however logically inevitable were my conclusions concerning

 

the vanity of life, confirmed as they were by the greatest

 

thinkers, there was something not right about them.  Whether it was

 

in the reasoning itself or in the statement of the question I did

 

not know -- I only felt that the conclusion was rationally

 

convincing, but that that was insufficient.  All these conclusions

 

could not so convince me as to make me do what followed from my

 

reasoning, that is to say, kill myself.  And I should have told an

 

untruth had I, without killing myself, said that reason had brought

 

me to the point I had reached.  Reason worked, but something else

 

was also working which I can only call a consciousness of life.  A

 

force was working which compelled me to turn my attention to this

 

and not to that; and it was this force which extricated me from my

 

desperate situation and turned my mind in quite another direction.

 

This force compelled me to turn my attention to the fact that I and

 

a few hundred similar people are not the whole of mankind, and that

 

I did not yet know the life of mankind.

 

     Looking at the narrow circle of my equals, I saw only people

 

who had not understood the question, or who had understood it and

 

drowned it in life's intoxication, or had understood it and ended

 

their lives, or had understood it and yet from weakness were living

 

out their desperate life.  And I saw no others.  It seemed to me

 

that that narrow circle of rich, learned, and leisured people to

 

which I belonged formed the whole of humanity, and that those

 

milliards of others who have lived and are living were cattle of

 

some sort -- not real people.

 

     Strange, incredibly incomprehensible as it now seems to me

 

that I could, while reasoning about life, overlook the whole life

 

of mankind that surrounded me on all sides; that I could to such a

 

degree blunder so absurdly as to think that my life, and Solomon's

 

and Schopenhauer's, is the real, normal life, and that the life of

 

the milliards is a circumstance undeserving of attention -- strange

 

as this now is to me, I see that so it was.  In the delusion of my

 

pride of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable that I and

 

Solomon and Schopenhauer had stated the question so truly and

 

exactly that nothing else was possible -- so indubitable did it

 

seem that all those milliards consisted of men who had not yet

 

arrived at an apprehension of all the profundity of the question --

 

that I sought for the meaning of my life without it once occurring

 

to me to ask:  "But what meaning is and has been given to their

 

lives by all the milliards of common folk who live and have lived

 

in the world?"

 

     I long lived in this state of lunacy, which, in fact if not in

 

words, is particularly characteristic of us very liberal and

 

learned people.  But thanks either to the strange physical

 

affection I have for the real labouring people, which compelled me

 

to understand them and to see that they are not so stupid as we

 

suppose, or thanks to the sincerity of my conviction that I could

 

know nothing beyond the fact that the best I could do was to hang

 

myself, at any rate I instinctively felt that if I wished to live

 

and understand the meaning of life, I must seek this meaning not

 

among those who have lost it and wish to kill themselves, but among

 

those milliards of the past and the present who make life and who

 

support the burden of their own lives and of ours also.  And I

 

considered the enormous masses of those simple, unlearned, and poor

 

people who have lived and are living and I saw something quite

 

different.  I saw that, with rare exceptions, all those milliards

 

who have lived and are living do not fit into my divisions, and

 

that I could not class them as not understanding the question, for

 

they themselves state it and reply to it with extraordinary

 

clearness.  Nor could I consider them epicureans, for their life

 

consists more of privations and sufferings than of enjoyments.

 

Still less could I consider them as irrationally dragging on a

 

meaningless existence, for every act of their life, as well as

 

death itself, is explained by them.  To kill themselves they

 

consider the greatest evil.  It appeared that all mankind had a

 

knowledge, unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of

 

life.  It appeared that reasonable knowledge does not give the

 

meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed to

 

life by milliards of people, by all humanity, rests on some

 

despised pseudo-knowledge.

 

     Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies

 

the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of

 

mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that

 

irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not

 

but reject.  It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the

 

devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as

 

I retain my reason.

 

     My position was terrible.  I knew I could find nothing along

 

the path of reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there

 

-- in faith -- was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet

 

more impossible for me than a denial of life.  From rational

 

knowledge it appeared that life is an evil, people know this and it

 

is in their power to end life; yet they lived and still live, and

 

I myself live, though I have long known that life is senseless and

 

an evil.  By faith it appears that in order to understand the

 

meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which

 

alone a meaning is required.

 

 

 

 

 

                               IX

 

 

 

     A contradiction arose from which there were two exits.  Either

 

that which I called reason was not so rational as I supposed, or

 

that which seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I

 

supposed.  And I began to verify the line of argument of my

 

rational knowledge.

 

     Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found

 

it quite correct.  The conclusion that life is nothing was

 

inevitable; but I noticed a mistake.  The mistake lay in this, that

 

my reasoning was not in accord with the question I had put.  The

 

question was:  "Why should I live, that is to say, what real,

 

permanent result will come out of my illusory transitory life --

 

what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?"  And

 

to reply to that question I had studied life.

 

     The solution of all the possible questions of life could

 

evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first

 

appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in

 

terms of the infinite, and vice versa.

 

     I asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause,

 

and space?"  And I replied to quite another question:  "What is the

 

meaning of  my life within time, cause, and space?"  With the

 

result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached

 

was: "None."

 

     In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do

 

otherwise) the finite with the finite, and the infinite with the

 

infinite; but for that reason I reached the inevitable result:

 

force is force, matter is matter, will is will, the infinite is the

 

infinite, nothing is nothing -- and that was all that could result.

 

     It was something like what happens in mathematics, when

 

thinking to solve an equation, we find we are working on an

 

identity.  the line of reasoning is correct, but results in the

 

answer that a equals a, or x equals x, or 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.

 

 

 

 

 

                                X

 

 

 

     I understood this, but it made matters no better for me.  I

 

was now ready to accept any faith if only it did not demand of me

 

a direct denial of reason -- which would be a falsehood.  And I

 

studied Buddhism and Mohammedanism from books, and most of all I

 

studied Christianity both from books and from the people around me.

 

     Naturally I first of all turned to the orthodox of my circle,

 

to people who were learned:  to Church theologians, monks, to

 

theologians of the newest shade, and even to Evangelicals who

 

profess salvation by belief in the Redemption.  And I seized on

 

these believers and questioned them as to their beliefs and their

 

understanding of the meaning of life.

 

     But though I made all possible concessions, and avoided all

 

disputes, I could not accept the faith of these people.  I saw that

 

what they gave out as their faith did not explain the meaning of

 

life but obscured it, and that they themselves affirm their belief

 

not to answer that question of life which brought me to faith, but

 

for some other aims alien to me.

 

     I remember the painful feeling of fear of being thrown back

 

into my former state of despair, after the hope I often and often

 

experienced in my intercourse with these people.

 

     The more fully they explained to me their doctrines, the more

 

clearly did I perceive their error and realized that my hope of

 

finding in their belief an explanation of the meaning of life was

 

vain.

 

     It was not that in their doctrines they mixed many unnecessary

 

and unreasonable things with the Christian truths that had always

 

been near to me: that was not what repelled me.  I was repelled by

 

the fact that these people's lives were like my own, with only this

 

difference -- that such a life did not correspond to the principles

 

they expounded in their teachings.  I clearly felt that they

 

deceived themselves and that they, like myself found no other

 

meaning in life than to live while life lasts, taking all one's

 

hands can seize.  I saw this because if they had had a meaning

 

which destroyed the fear of loss, suffering, and death, they would

 

not have feared these things.  But they, these believers of our

 

circle, just like myself, living in sufficiency and superfluity,

 

tried to increase or preserve them, feared privations, suffering,

 

and death, and just like myself and all of us unbelievers, lived to

 

satisfy their desires, and lived just as badly, if not worse, than

 

the unbelievers.

 

     No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith.

 

Only deeds which showed that they saw a meaning in life making what

 

was so dreadful to me -- poverty, sickness, and death -- not

 

dreadful to them, could convince me.  And such deeds I did not see

 

among the various believers in our circle.  On the contrary, I saw

 

such deeds done [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

 

the 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.

 

 

 

 

 

                               XI

 

 

 

     And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had

 

seemed meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted

 

with them, and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed

 

reasonable when I saw that people lived in accord with them, I

 

understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them

 

meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning.

 

I understood that I had erred, and why I erred.  I had erred not so

 

much because I thought incorrectly as because I lived badly.  I

 

understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid

 

truth from me as much as my life itself in the exceptional

 

conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed

 

it.  I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the

 

answer -- and evil -- was quite correct.  The only mistake was that

 

the answer referred only to my life, while I had referred it to

 

life in general.  I asked myself what my life is, and got the

 

reply: An evil and an absurdity.  and really my life -- a life of

 

indulgence of desires -- was senseless and evil, and therefore the

 

reply, "Life is evil and an absurdity", referred only to my life,

 

but not to human life in general.  I understood the truth which I

 

afterwards found in the Gospels, "that men loved darkness rather

 

than the light, for their works were evil.  For everyone that doeth

 

ill hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works

 

should be reproved."  I perceived that to understand the meaning of

 

life it is necessary first that life should not be meaningless and

 

evil, then we can apply reason to explain it.  I understood why I

 

had so long wandered round so evident a truth, and that if one is

 

to think and speak of the life of mankind, one must think and speak

 

of that life and not of the life of some of life's parasites.  That

 

truth was always as true as that two and two are four, but I had

 

not acknowledged it, because on admitting two and two to be four I

 

had also to admit that I was bad; and to feel myself to be good was

 

for me more important and necessary than for two and two to be

 

four.  I came to love good people, hated myself, and confessed the

 

truth.  Now all became clear to me.

 

     What if an executioner passing his whole life in torturing

 

people and cutting off their heads, or a hopeless drunkard, or a

 

madman settled for life in a dark room which he has fouled and

 

imagines that he would perish if he left -- what if he asked

 

himself: "What is life?"  Evidently he could not other reply to

 

that question than that life is the greatest evil, and the madman's

 

answer would be perfectly correct, but only as applied to himself.

 

What if I am such a madman?  What if all we rich and leisured

 

people are such madmen? and I understood that we really are such

 

madmen.  I at any rate was certainly such.

 

     And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food,

 

and build a nest, and when I see that a bird does this I have

 

pleasure in its joy.  A goat, a hare, and a wolf are so made that

 

they must feed themselves, and must breed and feed their family,

 

and when they do so I feel firmly assured that they are happy and

 

that their life is a reasonable one.  then what should a man do?

 

He too should produce his living as the animals do, but with this

 

difference, that he will perish if he does it alone; he must obtain

 

it not for himself but for all.  And when he does that, I have a

 

firm assurance that he is happy and that his life is reasonable.

 

But what had I done during the whole thirty years of my responsible

 

life?  Far from producing sustenance for all, I did not even

 

produce it for myself.  I lived as a parasite, and on asking

 

myself, what is the use of my life? I got the reply: "No use."  If

 

the meaning of human life lies in supporting it, how could I -- who

 

for thirty years had been engaged not on supporting life but on

 

destroying it in myself and in others -- how could I obtain any

 

other answer than that my life was senseless and an evil? ... It

 

was both senseless and evil.

 

     The life of the world endures by someone's will -- by the life

 

of the whole world and by our lives someone fulfills his purpose.

 

To hope to understand the meaning of that will one must first

 

perform it by doing what is wanted of us.  But if I will not do

 

what is wanted of me, I shall never understand what is wanted of

 

me, and still less what is wanted of us all and of the whole world.

 

     If a naked, hungry beggar has been taken from the cross-roads,

 

brought into a building belonging to a beautiful establishment,

 

fed, supplied with drink, and obliged to move a handle up and down,

 

evidently, before discussing why he was taken, why he should move

 

the handle, and whether the whole establishment is reasonably

 

arranged -- the begger should first of all move the handle.  If he

 

moves the handle he will understand that it works a pump, that the

 

pump draws water and that the water irrigates the garden beds; then

 

he will be taken from the pumping station to another place where he

 

will gather fruits and will enter into the joy of his master, and,

 

passing from lower to higher work, will understand more and more of

 

the arrangements of the establishment, and taking part in it will

 

never think of asking why he is there, and will certainly not

 

reproach the master.

 

     So those who do his will, the simple, unlearned working folk,

 

whom we regard as cattle, do not reproach the master; but we, the

 

wise, eat the master's food but do not do what the master wishes,

 

and instead of doing it sit in a circle and discuss: "Why should

 

that handle be moved?  Isn't it stupid?"  So we have decided.  We

 

have decided that the master is stupid, or does not exist, and that

 

we are wise, only we feel that we are quite useless and that we

 

must somehow do away with ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

                               XII

 

 

 

     The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge helped

 

me to free myself from the temptation of idle ratiocination.  the

 

conviction that knowledge of truth can only be found by living led

 

me to doubt the rightness of my life; but I was saved only by the

 

fact that I was able to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to

 

see the real life of the plain working people, and to understand

 

that it alone is real life.  I understood that if I wish to

 

understand life and its meaning, I must not live the life of a

 

parasite, but must live a real life, and -- taking the meaning

 

given to live by real humanity and merging myself in that life --

 

verify it.

 

     During that time this is what happened to me.  During that

 

whole year, when I was asking myself almost every moment whether I

 

should not end matters with a noose or a bullet -- all that time,

 

together with the course of thought and observation about which I

 

have spoken, my heart was oppressed with a painful feeling, which

 

I can only describe as a search for God.

 

     I say that that search for God was not reasoning, but a

 

feeling, because that search proceeded not from the course of my

 

thoughts -- it was even directly contrary to them -- but proceeded

 

from the heart. It was a feeling of fear, orphanage, isolation in

 

a strange land, and a hope of help from someone.

 

     Though I was quite convinced of the impossibility of proving

 

the existence of a Deity (Kant had shown, and I quite understood

 

him, that it could not be proved), I yet sought for god, hoped that

 

I should find Him, and from old habit addressed prayers to that

 

which I sought but had not found.  I went over in my mind the

 

arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer showing the impossibility of

 

proving the existence of a God, and I began to verify those

 

arguments and to refute them.  Cause, said I to myself, is not a

 

category of thought such as are Time and Space.  If I exist, there

 

must be some cause for it, and a cause of causes.  And that first

 

cause of all is what men have called "God".  And I paused on that

 

thought, and tried with all my being to recognize the presence of

 

that cause.  And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a force in

 

whose power I am, I at once felt that I could live.  But I asked

 

myself: What is that cause, that force?  How am I to think of it?

 

What are my relations to that which I call "God"?  And only the

 

familiar replies occurred to me:  "He is the Creator and

 

Preserver."  This reply did not satisfy me, and I felt I was losing

 

within me what I needed for my life.  I became terrified and began

 

to pray to Him whom I sought, that He should help me.  But the more

 

I prayed the more apparent it became to me that He did not hear me,

 

and that there was no one to whom to address myself.  And with

 

despair in my heart that there is no God at all, I said:  "Lord,

 

have mercy, save me!  Lord, teach me!"  But no one had mercy on me,

 

and I felt that my life was coming to a standstill.

 

     But again and again, from various sides, I returned to the

 

same conclusion that I could not have come into the world without

 

any cause or reason or meaning; I could not be such a fledgling

 

fallen from its nest as I felt myself to be.  Or, granting that I

 

be such, lying on my back crying in the high grass, even then I cry

 

because I know that a mother has borne me within her, has hatched

 

me, warmed me, fed me, and loved me.  Where is she -- that mother?

 

If I have been deserted, who has deserted me?  I cannot hide from

 

myself that someone bored me, loving me.  Who was that someone?

 

Again "God"?  He knows and sees my searching, my despair, and my

 

struggle."

 

     "He exists," said I to myself.  And I had only for an instant

 

to admit that, and at once life rose within me, and I felt the

 

possibility and joy of being.  But again, from the admission of the

 

existence of a God I went on to seek my relation with Him; and

 

again I imagined *that* God -- our Creator in Three Persons who

 

sent His Son, the Saviour -- and again *that* God, detached from

 

the world and from me, melted like a block of ice, melted before my

 

eyes, and again nothing remained, and again the spring of life

 

dried up within me, and I despaired and felt that I had nothing to

 

do but to kill myself.  And the worst of all was, that I felt I

 

could not do it.

 

     Not twice or three times, but tens and hundreds of times, I

 

reached those conditions, first of joy and animation, and then of

 

despair and consciousness of the impossibility of living.

 

     I remember that it was in early spring: I was alone in the

 

wood listening to its sounds.  I listened and thought ever of the

 

same thing, as I had constantly done during those last three years.

 

I was again seeking God.

 

     "Very well, there is no God," said I to myself; "there is no

 

one who is not my imagination but a reality like my whole life. 

 

He does not exist, and no miracles can prove His existence, because

 

the miracles would be my imagination, besides being irrational.

 

     "But my *perception* of God, of Him whom I seek," I asked

 

myself, "where has that perception come from?"  And again at this

 

thought the glad waves of life rose within me.  All that was around

 

me came to life and received a meaning.  But my joy did not last

 

long.  My mind continued its work.

 

     "The conception of God is not God," said I to myself.  "The

 

conception is what takes place within me.  The conception of God is

 

something I can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself.  That

 

is not what I seek.  I seek that without which there can be no

 

life."  And again all around me and within me began to die, and

 

again I wished to kill myself.

 

     But then I turned my gaze upon myself, on what went on within

 

me, and I remembered all those cessations of life and reanimations

 

that recurred within me hundreds of times.  I remembered that I

 

only lived at those times when I believed in God.  As it was

 

before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need

 

only forget Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died.

 

     What is this animation and dying?  I do not live when I lose

 

belief in the existence of God.  I should long ago have killed

 

myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him.  I live, really

 

live, only when I feel Him and seek Him.  "What more do you seek?"

 

exclaimed a voice within me.  "This is He.  He is that without

 

which one cannot live.  To know God and to live is one and the same

 

thing.  God is life."

 

     "Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God."

 

And more than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and

 

the light did not again abandon me.

 

     And I was saved from suicide.  When and how this change

 

occurred I could not say.  As imperceptibly and gradually the force

 

of life in me had been destroyed and I had reached the

 

impossibility of living, a cessation of life and the necessity of

 

suicide, so imperceptibly and gradually did that force of life

 

return to me.  And strange to say the strength of life which

 

returned to me was not new, but quite old -- the same that had

 

borne me along in my earliest days.

 

     I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and

 

youth.  I returned to the belief in that Will which produced me and

 

desires something of me.  I returned to the belief that the chief

 

and only aim of my life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord

 

with that Will.  and I returned to the belief that I can find the

 

expression of that Will in what humanity, in the distant past

 

hidden from, has produced for its guidance:  that is to say, I

 

returned to a belief in God, in moral perfection, and in a

 

tradition transmitting the meaning of life.  There was only this

 

difference, that then all this was accepted unconsciously, while

 

now I knew that without it I could not live.

 

     What happened to me was something like this:  I was put into

 

a boat (I do not remember when) and pushed off from an unknown

 

shore, shown the direction of the opposite shore, had oars put into

 

my unpractised hands, and was left alone.  I rowed as best I could

 

and moved forward; but the further I advanced towards the middle of

 

the stream the more rapid grew the current bearing me away from my

 

goal and the more frequently did I encounter others, like myself,

 

borne away by the stream.  There were a few rowers who continued to

 

row, there were others who had abandoned their oars; there were

 

large boats and immense vessels full of people.  Some struggled

 

against the current, others yielded to it.  And the further I went

 

the more, seeing the progress down the current of all those who

 

were adrift, I forgot the direction given me.  In the very centre

 

of the stream, amid the crowd of boats and vessels which were being

 

borne down stream, I quite lost my direction and abandoned my oars.

 

Around me on all sides, with mirth and rejoicing, people with sails

 

and oars were borne down the stream, assuring me and each other

 

that no other direction was possible.  And I believed them and

 

floated with them.  And I was carried far; so far that I heard the

 

roar of the rapids in which I must be shattered, and I saw boats

 

shattered in them.  And I recollected myself.  I was long unable to

 

understand what had happened to me.  I saw before me nothing but

 

destruction, towards which I was rushing and which I feared.  I saw

 

no safety anywhere and did not know what to do; but, looking back,

 

I perceived innumerable boats which unceasingly and strenuously

 

pushed across the stream, and I remembered about the shore, the

 

oars, and the direction, and began to pull back upwards against the

 

stream and towards the whore.

 

     That shore was God; that direction was tradition; the oars

 

were the freedom given me to pull for the shore and unite with God.

 

And so the force of life was renewed in me and I again began to

 

live.

 

 

 

 

 

                              XIII

 

 

 

     I turned from the life of our circle, acknowledging that ours

 

is not life but a simulation of life -- that the conditions of

 

superfluity in which we live deprive us of the possibility of

 

understanding life, and that in order to understand life I must

 

understand not an exceptional life such as our who are parasites on

 

life, but the life of the simple labouring folk -- those who make

 

life -- and the meaning which they attribute to it.  The simplest

 

labouring people around me were the Russian people, and I turned to

 

them and to the meaning of life which they give.  That meaning, if

 

one can put it into words, was as follows:  Every man has come into

 

this world by the will of God.  And God has so made man that every

 

man can destroy his soul or save it.  The aim of man in life is to

 

save his soul, and to save his soul he must live "godly" and to

 

live "godly" he must renounce all the pleasures of life, must

 

labour, humble himself, suffer, and be merciful.  That meaning the

 

people obtain from the whole teaching of faith transmitted to them

 

by their pastors and by the traditions that live among the people.

 

This meaning was clear to me and near to my heart.  But together

 

with this meaning of the popular faith of our non-sectarian folk,

 

among whom I live, much was inseparably bound up that revolted me

 

and seemed to me inexplicable: sacraments, Church services, fasts,

 

and the adoration of relics and icons.  The people cannot separate

 

the one from the other, nor could I.  And strange as much of what

 

entered into the faith of these people was to me, I accepted

 

everything, and attended the services, knelt morning and evening in

 

prayer, fasted, and prepared to receive the Eucharist: and at first

 

my reason did not resist anything.  The very things that had

 

formerly seemed to me impossible did not now evoke in me any

 

opposition.

 

     My relations to faith before and after were quite different.

 

Formerly life itself seemed to me full of meaning and faith

 

presented itself as the arbitrary assertion of propositions to me

 

quite unnecessary, unreasonable, and disconnected from life.  I

 

then asked myself what meaning those propositions had and,

 

convinced that they had none, I rejected them.  Now on the contrary

 

I knew firmly that my life otherwise has, and can have, no meaning,

 

and the articles of faith were far from presenting themselves to me

 

as unnecessary --  on the contrary I had been led by indubitable

 

experience to the conviction that only these propositions presented

 

by faith give life a meaning.  formerly I looked on them as on some

 

quite unnecessary gibberish, but now, if I did not understand them,

 

I yet knew that they had a meaning, and I said to myself that I

 

must learn to understand them.

 

     I argued as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of

 

faith flows, like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious

 

source.  That source is God, the origin both of the human body and

 

the human reason.  As my body has descended to me from God, so also

 

has my reason and my understanding of life, and consequently the

 

various stages of the development of that understanding of life

 

cannot be false.  All that people sincerely believe in must be

 

true; it may be differently expressed but it cannot be a lie, and

 

therefore if it presents itself to me as a lie, that only means

 

that I have not understood it.  Furthermore I said to myself, the

 

essence of every faith consists in its giving life a meaning which

 

death does not destroy.  Naturally for a faith to be able to reply

 

to the questions of a king dying in luxury, of an old slave

 

tormented by overwork, of an unreasoning child, of a wise old man,

 

of a half-witted old woman, of a young and happy wife, of a youth

 

tormented by passions, of all people in the most varied conditions

 

of life and education -- if there is one reply to the one eternal

 

question of life:  "Why do I live and what will result from my

 

life?" -- the reply, though one in its essence, must be endlessly

 

varied in its presentation; and the more it is one, the more true

 

and profound it is, the more strange and deformed must it naturally

 

appear in its attempted expression, conformably to the education

 

and position of each person.  But this argument, justifying in my

 

eyes the queerness of much on the ritual side of religion, did not

 

suffice to allow me in the one great affair of life -- religion --

 

to do things which seemed to me questionable.  With all my soul I

 

wished to be in a position to mingle with the people, fulfilling

 

the ritual side of their religion; but I could not do it.  I felt

 

that I should lie to myself and mock at what was sacred to me, were

 

I to do so.  At this point, however, our new Russian theological

 

writers came to my rescue.

 

     According to the explanation these theologians gave, the

 

fundamental dogma of our faith is the infallibility of the Church.

 

From the admission of that dogma follows inevitably the truth of

 

all that is professed by the Church.  The Church as an assembly of

 

true believers united by love and therefore possessed of true

 

knowledge became the basis of my belief.  I told myself that divine

 

truth cannot be accessible to a separate individual; it is revealed

 

only to the whole assembly of people united by love.  To attain

 

truth one must not separate, and in order not to separate one must

 

love and must endure things one may not agree with.

 

     Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the

 

rites of the Church you transgress against love; and by

 

transgressing against love you deprive yourself of the possibility

 

of recognizing the truth.  I did not then see the sophistry

 

contained in this argument.  I did not see that union in love may

 

give the greatest love, but certainly cannot give us divine truth

 

expressed in the definite words of the Nicene Creed.  I also did

 

not perceive that love cannot make a certain expression of truth an

 

obligatory condition of union.  I did not then see these mistakes

 

in the argument and thanks to it was able to accept and perform all

 

the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding most of

 

them.  I then tried with all strength of my soul to avoid all

 

arguments and contradictions, and tried to explain as reasonably as

 

possible the Church statements I encountered.

 

     When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason

 

and submitted to the tradition possessed by all humanity.  I united

 

myself with my forefathers: the father, mother, and grandparents I

 

loved. They and all my predecessors believed and lived, and they

 

produced me.  I united myself also with the missions of the common

 

people whom I respected.  Moveover, those actions had nothing bad

 

in themselves ("bad" I considered the indulgence of one's desires).

 

When rising early for Church services I knew I was doing well, if

 

only because I was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental

 

pride, for the sake of union with my ancestors and contemporaries,

 

and for the sake of finding the meaning of life.  It was the same

 

with my preparations to receive Communion, and with the daily

 

reading of prayers with genuflections, and also with the observance

 

of all the fasts.  However insignificant these sacrifices might be

 

I made them for the sake of something good.  I fasted, prepared for

 

Communion, and observed the fixed hours of prayer at home and in

 

church.  During Church service I attended to every word, and gave

 

them a meaning whenever I could.  In the Mass the most important

 

words for me were: "Let us love one another in conformity!"  The

 

further words, "In unity we believe in the Father, the Son, and

 

Holy Ghost", I passed by, because I could not understand them.

 

 

 

 

 

                               XIV

 

 

 

     In was then so necessary for me to believe in order to live

 

that I unconsciously concealed from myself the contradictions and

 

obscurities of theology.  but this reading of meanings into the

 

rites had its limits.  If the chief words in the prayer for the

 

Emperor became more and more clear to me, if I found some

 

explanation for the words "and remembering our Sovereign Most-Holy

 

Mother of God and all the Saints, ourselves and one another, we

 

give our whole life to Christ our God", if I explained to myself

 

the frequent repetition of prayers for the Tsar and his relations

 

by the fact that they are more exposed to temptations than other

 

people and therefore are more in need of being prayed for -- the

 

prayers about subduing our enemies and evil under our feet (even if

 

one tried to say that *sin* was the enemy prayed against), these

 

and other prayers, such as the "cherubic song" and the whole

 

sacrament of oblation, or "the chosen Warriors", etc. -- quite two-

 

thirds of all the services -- either remained completely

 

incomprehensible or, when I forced an explanation into them, made

 

me feel that I was lying, thereby quite destroying my relation to

 

God and depriving me of all possibility of belief.

 

     I felt the same about the celebration of the chief holidays.

 

To remember the Sabbath, that is to devote one day to God, was

 

something I could understand.  But the chief holiday was in

 

commemoration of the Resurrection, the reality of which I could not

 

picture to myself or understand.  And that name of "Resurrection"

 

was also given the weekly holiday.   [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 forge the painful feeling I experienced the day

 

I received the Eucharist for the first time after many years.  The

 

service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and

 

produced in me a glad consciousness that the meaning of life was

 

being revealed to me.  The Communion itself I explained as an act

 

performed in remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purification

 

from sin and the full acceptance of Christ's teaching.  If that

 

explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so

 

happy was I at humbling and abasing myself before the priest -- a

 

simple, timid country clergyman -- turning all the dirt out of my

 

soul and confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought

 

with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the

 

office, so glad was I of union with all who have believed and now

 

believe, that I did not notice the artificiality of my explanation.

 

But when I approached the altar gates, and the priest made me say

 

that I believed that what I was about to swallow was truly flesh

 

and blood, I felt a pain in my heart: it was not merely a false

 

note, it was a cruel demand made by someone or other who evidently

 

had never known what faith is.

 

     I now permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand, but I

 

did not then think so: only it was indescribably painful to me.  I

 

was no longer in the position in which I had been in youth when I

 

thought all in life was clear; I had indeed come to faith because,

 

apart from faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, except

 

destruction; therefore to throw away that faith was impossible and

 

I submitted.  And I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to

 

endure it.  This was the feeling of self-abasement and humility.

 

I humbled myself, swallowed that flesh and blood without any

 

blasphemous feelings and with a wish to believe.  But the blow had

 

been struck and, knowing what awaited me, I could not go a second

 

time.

 

     I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church and still

 

believed that the doctrine I was following contained the truth,

 

when something happened to me which I now understand but which then

 

seemed strange.

 

     I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant,

 

a pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation, when a knowledge

 

of faith revealed itself to me.  I drew near to the people,

 

listening to their opinions of life and faith, and I understood the

 

truth more and more.  So also was it when I read the Lives of Holy

 

men, which became my favourite books.  Putting aside the miracles

 

and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this reading

 

revealed to me life's meaning.  There were the lives of Makarius

 

the Great, the story of Buddha, there were the words of St. John

 

Chrysostom, and there were the stories of the traveller in the

 

well, the monk who found some gold, and of Peter the publican.

 

There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does

 

not exclude life, and there were the stories of ignorant, stupid

 

men, who knew nothing of the teaching of the Church but who yet

 

were saves.

 

     But as soon as I met learned believers or took up their books,

 

doubt of myself, dissatisfaction, and exasperated disputation were

 

roused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the

 

meaning of these men's speech, the more I went astray from truth

 

and approached an abyss.

 

 

 

 

 

                               XV

 

 

 

     How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of

 

learning!  Those statements in the creeds which to me were evident

 

absurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept

 

them and could believe in the truth -- the truth I believed in.

 

Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was

 

interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it in

 

that form.

 

     So I lived for about three years.  At first, when I was only

 

slightly associated with truth as a catechumen and was only

 

scenting out what seemed to me clearest, these encounters struck me

 

less.  When I did not understand anything, I said, "It is my fault,

 

I am sinful";  but the more I became imbued with the truths I was

 

learning, the more they became the basis of my life, the more

 

oppressive and the more painful became these encounters and the

 

sharper became the line between what I do not understand because I

 

am not able to understand it, and what cannot be understood except

 

by lying to oneself.

 

     In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to the

 

Orthodox Church.  But questions of life arose which had to be

 

decided; and the decision of these questions by the Church --

 

contrary to the very bases of the belief by which I lived --

 

obliged me at last to renounce communion with Orthodoxy as

 

impossible.  These questions were:  first the relation of the

 

Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches -- to the Catholics and

 

to the so-called sectarians.  At that time, in consequence of my

 

interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of various

 

faiths:  Catholics, protestants, Old-Believers, Molokans [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 pease.  We have united

 

with them by placing the essentials of faith above the

 

unessentials.  Now with the Catholics can we not say:  You believe

 

in so and so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as

 

for the Filioque clause and the Pope -- do as you please.  Can we

 

not say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is

 

most important?

 

     My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such

 

conceptions would bring reproach o the spiritual authorities for

 

deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a

 

schism; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to

 

safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith

 

inherited from our forefathers.

 

     And I understood it all.  I am seeking a faith, the power of

 

life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of

 

men certain human obligations.  and fulfilling these human affairs

 

they fulfil them in a human way.  However much they may talk of

 

their pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers for

 

them to the throne of the Almighty -- to carry out human purposes

 

violence is necessary, and it has always been applied and is and

 

will be applied.  If of two religions each considers itself true

 

and the other false, then men desiring to attract others to the

 

truth will preach their own doctrine.  And if a false teaching is

 

preached to the inexperienced sons of their Church -- which as the

 

truth -- then that Church cannot but burn the books and remove the

 

man who is misleading its sons.  What is to be done with a

 

sectarian -- burning, in the opinion of the Orthodox, with the fire

 

of false doctrine -- who in the most important affair of life, in

 

faith, misleads the sons of the Church?  What can be done with him

 

except to cut off his head or to incarcerate him?  Under the Tsar

 

Alexis Mikhaylovich people were burned at the stake, that is to

 

say, the severest method of punishment of the time was applied, and

 

in our day also the severest method of punishment is applied --

 

detention in solitary confinement.  [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.

 

 

 

 

 

                               XVI

 

 

 

     And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all

 

was true in the religion I had joined.  Formerly I should have said

 

that it was all false, but I could not say so now.  The whole of

 

the people possessed a knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they

 

could not have lived.  Moreover, that knowledge was accessible to

 

me, for I had felt it and had lived by it.  But I no longer doubted

 

that there was also falsehood in it.  And all that had previously

 

repelled me now presented itself vividly before me.  And though I

 

saw that among the peasants there was a smaller admixture of the

 

lies that  repelled me than among the representatives of the

 

Church, I still saw that in the people's belief also falsehood was

 

mingled with the truth.

 

     But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from?

 

Both the falsehood and the truth were contained in the so-called

 

holy tradition and in the Scriptures.  Both the falsehood and the

 

truth had been handed down by what is called the Church.

 

     And whether I liked or not, I was brought to the study and

 

investigation of these writings and traditions -- which till now I

 

had been so afraid to investigate.

 

     And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I

 

had once rejected with such contempt as unnecessary.  Formerly it

 

seemed to me a series of unnecessary absurdities, when on all sides

 

I was surrounded by manifestations of life which seemed to me clear

 

and full of sense; now I should have been glad to throw away what

 

would not enter a health head, but I had nowhere to turn to.  On

 

this teaching religious doctrine rests, or at least with it the

 

only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have found is

 

inseparably connected.  However wild it may seem too my firm old

 

mind, it was the only hope of salvation.  It had to be carefully,

 

attentively examined in order to understand it, and not even to

 

understand it as I understand the propositions of science:  I do

 

not seek that, nor can I seek it, knowing the special character of

 

religious knowledge.  I shall not seek the explanation of

 

everything.  I know that the explanation of everything, like the

 

commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity.  But I

 

wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is

 

inevitably inexplicable.  I wish to recognize anything that is

 

inexplicable as being so not because the demands of my reason are

 

wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand

 

nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my intellect.  I

 

wish to understand in such a way that everything that is

 

inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily

 

inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary

 

obligation to believe.

 

     That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable, but

 

it is also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I must find

 

what is true and what is false, and must disentangle the one from

 

the other.  I am setting to work upon this task.  What of falsehood

 

I have found in the teaching and what I have found of truth, and to

 

what conclusions I came, will form the following parts of this

 

work, which if it be worth it and if anyone wants it, will probably

 

some day be printed somewhere.

 

     1879.

 

 

 

     The foregoing was written by me some three years ago, and will

 

be printed.

 

     Now a few days ago, when revising it and returning to the line

 

of thought and to the feelings I had when I was living through it

 

all, I had a dream.  This dream expressed in condensed form all

 

that I had experienced and described, and I think therefore that,

 

for those who have understood me, a description of this dream will

 

refresh and elucidate and unify what has been set forth at such

 

length in the foregoing pages.  The dream was this:

 

     I saw that I was lying on a bed.  I was neither comfortable

 

nor uncomfortable: I was lying on my back.  But I began to consider

 

how, and on what, I was lying -- a question which had not till then

 

occurred to me.  And observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited

 

string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on one

 

such support, by calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable.

 

I seemed to know that those supports were movable, and with a

 

movement of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet -

 

- it seemed to me that it would be more comfortable so.  But I

 

pushed it away too far and wished to reach it again with my foot,

 

and that movement caused the next support under my calves to slip

 

away also, so that my legs hung in the air.  I made a movement with

 

my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so

 

at once; but the movement caused the other supports under me to

 

slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going

 

quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and

 

hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground.  I was holding

 

on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become

 

uncomfortable but I was even frightened.  And then only did I ask

 

myself about something that had not before occurred to me.  I asked

 

myself:  Where am I and what am I lying on? and I began to look

 

around and first of all to look down in the direction which my body

 

was hanging and whiter I felt I must soon fall.  I looked down and

 

did not believe my eyes.  I was not only at a height comparable to

 

the height of the highest towers or mountains, but at a height such

 

as I could never have imagined.

 

     I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below,

 

in that bottomless abyss over which I was hanging and whiter I was

 

being drawn.  My heart contracted, and I experienced horror.  To

 

look thither was terrible.  If I looked thither I felt that I

 

should at once slip from the last support and perish.  And I did

 

not look.  But not to look was still worse, for I thought of what

 

would happen to me directly I fell from the last support.  And I

 

felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back

 

was slowly slipping lower and lower.  Another moment and I should

 

drop off.  And then it occurred to me that this cannot e real.  It

 

is a dream.  Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so.

 

What am I to do?  What am I to do?  I ask myself, and look upwards.

 

Above, there is also an infinite space.  I look into the immensity

 

of sky and try to forget about the immensity below, and I really do

 

forget it.  The immensity below repels and frightens me; the

 

immensity above attracts and strengthens me.  I am still supported

 

above the abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from

 

under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my

 

fear passes.  As happens in dreams, a voice says: "Notice this,

 

this is it!"  And I look more and more into the infinite above me

 

and feel that I am becoming calm.  I remember all that has

 

happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs,

 

how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from

 

fear by looking upwards.  And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not

 

hanging just the same?  And I do not so much look round as

 

experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am

 

held.  I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am

 

firmly held.  I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round,

 

and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one

 

support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position

 

of securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before.  And

 

then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of

 

which I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means,

 

though to one awake that mechanism has no sense.  I was even

 

surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner.  It

 

appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of

 

that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing to

 

support it.  From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet

 

simply, and if one lay with the middle of one's body in that loop

 

and looked up, there could be no question of falling.  This was all

 

clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil.  And it seemed as if

 

someone said to me:  "See that you remember."

 

     And I awoke.

 

     1882.