CONFESSION
What is the meaning of life? Thoughts of suicide. The traveller in the
well. Schopenhauer and Solomon. Four ways of meeting the problem. The
peasants' answer. The finite linked to the infinite. Faith essential.
Faiths that obscure. Why life seemed meaningless. The search for God.
The infallibility of the Church. Rites and prayers. Communion. The
lives of the Saints. The Orthodox and the Sectarians. War. The need to
unravel truth from error.
THIS chapter is a summary of Tolstoy's _Confession_,[54] or
'Introduction to a Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and to an
Investigation of the Christian Teachings,' as the Russian title ran,
from the first pages of which I have already quoted freely in the
preceding chapters. I have kept as much to Tolstoy's words as possible,
but having to condense, I have not only omitted much, but have also
paraphrased some passages to avoid repetition. The plan I have
adopted, since this is a _Life_ and not a theological treatise, has
been to cut down to a mere skeleton the abstract argument of Tolstoy's
_Confession_, while giving almost in full what he says about his own
experience.
[54] It is strange that Tolstoy's _Confession_ has not
yet been put into English at all reproducing the vigorous
simplicity of the original. There is, I think, nothing better
than the threepenny edition issued by the _Free Age Press_
under the title, _How I Came to Believe_; and on looking at
that to see if I could quote from it, I find that it is not
good enough.
Many men, at the age of puberty, or at any rate while their minds were
still maturing, have experienced the change known as 'Conversion.' That
is to say, they have more or less suddenly turned round and looked at
life from a fresh point of view: what in their nature had been latent
or secondary has become dominant and primary, and things temporal and
material have become subordinate to things spiritual and eternal.
What is unusual about the story of Tolstoy's conversion is that it came
so late in life and so gradually, and that the intellect played so
large a part in it.
Some men take to religion at the prompting of the heart, others at the
prompting of the brain; and Tolstoy belongs to the latter category,
not from lack of heart, but because strong as are his emotions, his
intellectual power is stronger still.
His _Confession_ was written in 1879, and in it he says:
Five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: At first
I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, as though I
did not know how to live or what to do; 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's 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 more and more insistently to demand replies;
and like drops of ink always falling on one place, they ran together
into one black blot.
That occurred which happens to every one 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 was what happened to me. I understood that it was no casual
indisposition, but something very important, and that if these
questions constantly repeated themselves, it would be necessary to
answer them. And I tried to do so. The questions seemed such stupid
simple childish questions; but as soon as I touched them and tried to
solve them, I at once became convinced (1) that they are not childish
and stupid, but the most important and the deepest of life's questions;
and (2) that, try as I would, I could not solve them. Before occupying
myself with my Samára 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 to me: 'Well, you will have 16,000 acres of land
in Samára Government and 300 horses, and what next?'... And I was quite
disconcerted, and did not know what to think. Or, when considering
my plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself:
What for? Or when considering how the peasants might be prosperous, I
suddenly said to myself, 'But what business is it of mine?' Or when
thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I said to myself, 'Very
well: you will be more famous than Gógol or Poúshkin or Shakespear or
Molière, or than all the writers in the world--and what will it lead
to?' 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 broken down, and that I had
nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on, no longer existed; and
I had nothing left to live on.
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 fulfilment of which I could consider
reasonable.... Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires, I
should not have known what to ask.... If in moments of intoxication I
felt something which I cannot call a wish, but a habit left by former
wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion, and that there
is really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the
truth, for I guessed in 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.
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 so seductive
that I had to be wily with myself, lest I should carry it out too
hastily: '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.
[Illustration: TOLSTOY'S LIBRARY.
(FORMERLY HIS STUDY AND DRESSING-ROOM.) SHOWING THE WOODEN CROSS-PIECE
FROM WHICH HE WISHED TO HANG HIMSELF.]
And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is
considered complete good fortune. I was not yet fifty; I had a good
wife who loved me and whom I loved; good children, and a large estate
which without much effort on my part improved and increased. I was
respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any previous
time. I was praised by others, and without much self-deception could
consider that my name was famous. And far from being insane or
mentally unwell,--on the contrary I enjoyed 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 to ten hours at a stretch without experiencing any ill results
from such exertion....
My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my life
is a stupid and spiteful joke some one has played on me. Though I
did not acknowledge a 'some one' who created me, yet that form of
representation--that some one had played an evil and stupid joke on me
by placing me in the world--was the form of expression that suggested
itself most naturally to me.
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, is some one
who amuses himself by watching how I live for thirty or forty years:
learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how--having now
with matured mental powers reached the summit of life, from which it
all lies before me, I stand 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 is amused....
But whether that 'some one' 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. To-day or to-morrow sickness and death will come (they
have come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but
stench and worms. Sooner or later my deeds, whatever they may have
been, 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 when 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 leaps into a
dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened
its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb
out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to
leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon,
seizes a twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His
hands are growing weaker, and he feels he will soon have to resign
himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below; but still
he clings on; and he sees that two mice, a black 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 and finds
some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig and 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. 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 deceives me. No matter how much 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 too are placed 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 that 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 I soon saw that that too was a fraud.
It was plain to me that art is an adornment to 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 on my own account, that
mirror became for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful.
I could no longer soothe myself with what I saw in the mirror, for what
I saw was, 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. But when I knew life to be
meaningless and terrible, the play in the mirror could no longer amuse
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 has 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, yet knows that each step he takes
confuses him more and more; and still cannot help rushing about.
It was indeed terrible. And to rid myself of the terror, I wished to
kill myself. I experienced terror at what awaited me--knew that that
terror was even worse than the position I was in; but still I could not
patiently await the end. However convincing the argument might be that,
in any case, some vessel in my heart would give way, or something would
burst and all would be over, I could not patiently await that end. The
horror of darkness was too great, and I wished to free myself from it
as quickly as possible by noose or bullet. That was the feeling which
drew me most strongly towards suicide.
* * * * *
'But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something?
It cannot be that this condition of despair is natural to man!' thought
I, and as a perishing man seeks safety, I sought some way of escape.
I sought everywhere; and thanks to a life spent in learning, and thanks
also to the relations I had 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 knowledge has to
say on this question of life....
The question 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
answering which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was,
What will come of what I am doing to-day or shall do to-morrow--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 life, that the inevitable death awaiting one, does not
destroy? All human knowledge I found divided into two kinds. One kind,
such as chemistry and mathematics and the exact sciences, did not deal
with my question. They were interesting, attractive, and wonderfully
definite, but made no attempt to solve the question; while on the other
hand the speculative sciences, culminating in metaphysics, dealt with
the question, but supplied no satisfactory answer.
Where philosophy does not lose sight of the essential question, its
answer is always one and the same: an answer 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 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 does not fear
death.'
And Schopenhauer also says that life is an evil; and Solomon (or
whoever wrote the works attributed to him) says:
'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath man of all his
labour under the sun?... 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....
'Therefore I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun
is grievous to me; for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.'
And Sakya Muni when he learnt what age and sickness and death are,
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 then are the direct replies that human wisdom gives, when it
replies to the question of life:
'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--are vanity and emptiness. Man dies and nothing is left
of him. And that is stupid,' says Solomon.
'To live 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.
One cannot deceive 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.
Then I began to consider the lives of the men of my own kind; and I
found that they met the problem in one or other of four ways.
The first way was that of ignorance. Some people--mostly women, or very
young or very dull people--have not yet understood the question of
life; but I, having understood it, could not again shut my eyes.
The second way was that of the Epicureans, expressed by Solomon when he
said: 'Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under
the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.'
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
an accidental advantage, and that not every one can have a thousand
wives and a thousand palaces like Solomon, and that for every man with
a thousand wives there are a thousand without wives, 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 to-day made me a Solomon,
may to-morrow make me Solomon's slave. The dullness of these people's
imaginations enables them to forget what gave no peace to Buddha--the
inevitability of sickness, age and death, which to-day or to-morrow
will destroy all these pleasures. I could not imitate these people: I
had not their dullness of imagination, and I could not artificially
produce it in myself.
The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in
understanding that life is an evil and an absurdity, and in destroying
it. It is a way adopted by a few exceptionally strong and consistent
people. I saw that it was the worthiest way of escape, and I wished to
adopt it.
The fourth escape is that of weakness. It consists in seeing the truth
of the situation, and yet clinging to life as though one still hoped
something from it; and I found myself in that category.
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, was to me repulsive
and tormenting, but I remained in that position.
I now see that if I did not kill myself, it was due to some dim
consciousness of the invalidity of my thoughts. And I began to feel,
rather than argue, in this way: 'I, my reason, has acknowledged life
to be unreasonable. If there be no higher 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
denies life itself!' I felt that there was something wrong here.
Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide. Well then, kill yourself,
and cease discussing. 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 like
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?
'There is something wrong,' said I to myself; but what was wrong, I
could in no way make out. It was long before the fog began to clear,
and I began to be able to restate my position.
It had seemed to me that the narrow circle of rich learned and leisured
people to whom I belonged, formed the whole of humanity, and that the
milliards of others who have lived and are living, were cattle of some
sort--not real people.... And it was long before it dawned upon 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 Liberal and learned people. But
whether the strange physical affection I have for the real labouring
people compelled me to understand them and to see that they are not
so stupid as we suppose; or whether it was due 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 know it, and
who support the burden of their own lives and of ours also.
And on examining the matter I saw that the milliards of mankind always
have had and still have a knowledge of the meaning of life, but _that_
knowledge is their faith, which I could not but reject. 'It is God, one
and 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,' said I to
myself.
My position was terrible. I knew I could find nothing along the path
of reasonable knowledge, except a denial of life; and in faith I could
find nothing but a denial of reason, still more impossible to me than a
denial of life.
Finally I saw that my mistake lay in ever expecting an examination of
finite things to supply a meaning to life. The finite has no ultimate
meaning apart from the infinite. The two must be linked together before
an answer to life's problems can be reached.
It had only appeared to me that knowledge gave a definite
answer--Schopenhauer's answer: that life has no meaning, and is an
evil. On examining the matter further, I understood that the reply is
not positive: it was only my feeling that made it seem so. The reply,
strictly expressed as the Brahmins and Solomon and Schopenhauer express
it, amounts only to an indefinite answer, like the reply given in
mathematics when instead of solving an equation we find we have solved
an identity: X = X, or 0 = 0. The answer is, that life is nothing.
So that philosophic knowledge merely asserts that it cannot solve
the question, and the solution remains, as far as it is concerned,
indefinite. And I understood, further, that however unreasonable
and monstrous might be the replies given by faith, they had this
advantage, that they introduce into each reply a relation between the
finite and the infinite, without which relation no reply is possible.
Whichever way I put 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.
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.
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 one and the same. Faith does not consist in agreeing with
what some one has said, as is usually supposed; 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 does not see and recognise the visionary
nature of the finite, then he believes in the finite; if he understands
the visionary nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite.
Without faith he cannot live.
* * * * *
What am I?--A part of the infinite. In those few words lies the whole
problem.
I began dimly to understand that in the replies given by faith, is
stored up the deepest human wisdom.
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 living people.
Naturally I first of all turned to the Orthodox of my circle, to
people who were learned: to Church theologians, the monks, to the
theologians of the newest shade, and even to the Evangelicals[55]
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.
[55] Readers of _Resurrection_ (Book II, Chap. 17) will
remember the vivid description of the Evangelical meeting
addressed by Kiesewetter, who spoke in English. The original
from whom Tolstoy drew Kiesewetter was Baedeker, a well-known
Evangelical preacher who lived in England, but visited Russia
frequently.
But in spite of my readiness to make all possible concessions, I saw
that what they gave out as their faith did not explain the meaning of
life, but obscured it.
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 see their error.... 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.
No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith. Only deeds
which showed that they saw a meaning in life, which made 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 bodies of
believers in our circle. On the contrary, I saw such deeds done by
people of our circle who were the most unbelieving, but never by the
so-called believers of our circle.[56]
[56] This passage is the more noteworthy because it is almost
the only reference (and even this is indirect) made by Tolstoy
at this period to the revolutionary or 'To-the-People'
movement in which so many young men and women were risking and
sacrificing home, property, freedom, 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.
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.
And I began to draw near to the believers among the poor simple
unlettered folk: pilgrims, monks, sectarians and peasants. Among them,
too, I found a great deal of superstition mixed with the Christian
truths; but their superstitions seemed a necessary and natural part of
their lives.... 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 the whole of life
is passed in idleness and amusements and dissatisfaction, I saw that
the whole life of these people was passed in heavy labour, and that
they were content with life.... While we think it terrible that we have
to suffer and die, these folk live and suffer, and approach death with
tranquillity, and in most cases gladly.
And I learnt to love these people. The more I came to know their life
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. The life of our circle, the rich and learned, not merely became
distasteful to me but lost all meaning for me; while the life of the
whole labouring people, the whole of mankind who produce life, appeared
to me in its true light. I understood that _that_ is life itself, and
that the meaning given to that life is true; and I accepted it.
I then understood that my answer to the question, 'What is life?' when
I said that life is 'evil,' was quite correct. The only mistake was,
that that answer referred to _my_ life, but not to life in general. My
life, a life of indulgence and desires, was meaningless and evil....
And I understood the truth, which I afterwards found in the Gospels,
that men love darkness rather than the light because their deeds are
evil; and that to see things as they are, one must think and speak
of the life of humanity, and not of the life of the minority who are
parasites on life.
And indeed, the bird lives so that it must fly, collect food and
build its nest; and when I see the bird doing that, I joy in its joy.
The goat, hare and wolf live so that they must feed themselves, and
propagate and feed their families, and when they do so, I feel firmly
assured that they are happy and that their life is a reasonable one.
And what does man do? He should earn a living as the beasts do, but
with this difference--that he would perish if he did it alone; he has
to procure it not for himself but for all. When he does _that_, I have
a firm assurance that he is happy and that his life is reasonable. And
what had I done during the whole thirty years of my conscious life? I
had not only not been earning a living for all, I had not even earned
my own living. I had lived as a parasite, and when I asked myself what
use my life was, I found that my life was useless. If the meaning of
human life lies in supporting it, how could I, who for thirty years
had occupied myself not with supporting life but with destroying it in
myself and in others--how could I obtain any other reply than that my
life was senseless and an evil? It was both senseless and evil.
The conviction that a knowledge of life can only be found by living,
led me to doubt the goodness of my own life.... 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, alongside 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 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
refute them. Cause, said I to myself, is not a category 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 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 I returned to the same admission 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 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 she has deserted me, who is it that has done so? I cannot
hide from myself that some one bore me, loving me. Who was that some
one? Again 'God'?
'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 relations 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, melts like a
block of ice, melts before my eyes, and again nothing remains, and
again the spring of life dries up within me, and I despair, and feel
that I have nothing to do but to kill myself. And the worst of all is,
that I feel I cannot 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 perceptions, besides being irrational.'
'But my _perception_ of God, of him whom I seek,' asked I of 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 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 in him, and I die.... '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.... 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 me, has
produced for its guidance: that is to say, I returned to a belief in
God, in moral perfecting, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning
of life....
I turned from the life of our circle: acknowledging that theirs is
not life but only a simulacrum of life, and that the conditions
of superfluity in which we live deprive us of the possibility of
understanding life.... The simple labouring people around me were the
Russian people, and I turned to them and to the meaning which they give
to life. That meaning, if one can put it into words, was the following.
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.... The meaning of this
was clear 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 it 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. What had formerly seemed to me impossible, did not now
evoke in me any resistance....
I told myself that 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, and of all sorts of people, young and
old, wise and foolish,--its answers must be expressed in all sorts
of different ways.... 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 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 recognising 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.
When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason, submitted
to tradition, united myself with my forefathers: the father, mother
and grandparents I loved, and with all those millions of the common
people whom I respected. When rising before dawn for the early Church
services, I knew I was doing well, if only because I was sacrificing
my bodily ease to humble my mental pride, and for the sake of finding
the meaning of life. 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.
But this reading of meanings into the rites had its limits.... If I
explained to myself the frequent repetition of prayers for the Tsar and
his relatives, by the fact that they are more exposed to temptation
than other people and therefore more in need of being prayed for, the
prayers about subduing enemies and foes under his feet (even though
one tried to say that sin was the foe prayed against) and many other
unintelligible prayers--nearly two-thirds of the whole service--either
remained quite incomprehensible or, when I forced an explanation into
them, made me feel that I was lying, and thereby quite destroying my
relation to God and losing all possibility of believing....
Never shall I forget the painful feeling I experienced the day I
received the eucharist for the first time after many years. The
service, confession and prayers were quite intelligible and produced
in me a glad consciousness that the meaning of life was being revealed
to me. The communion itself I explained as an act performed in
remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purification from sin and
the full acceptance of Christ's teaching. If that explanation was
artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so happy was I at
humbling and abasing myself before the priest--a simple timid country
clergyman--turning all the dirt out of my soul and confessing my vices,
so glad was I to merge in thought with the humility of the Fathers who
wrote the prayers of the Office, so glad was I of union with all who
have believed and now believe, that I did not notice the artificiality
of my explanation. But when I approached the altar gates, and the
priest made me say that I believed that what I was about to swallow was
truly flesh and blood, I felt a pain in my heart: it was not merely
a false note, it was a cruel demand made by some one 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. At the time, 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 on life and faith, and I understood the truth. So also
was it when I read the Lives of the Saints, 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, of the Tsarévitch Joasafa
(the story of Buddha) and there were the stories of the traveller in
the well, and the monk who found some gold. There were stories of the
martyrs, all announcing that death does not exclude life; and there
were the stories of ignorant, stupid men, and such as knew nothing of
the teaching of the Church, but who yet were saved.
But as soon as I met learned believers, or took up their books, doubt
of myself, dissatisfaction, and exasperated disputation, were roused
within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the meaning of
these men's speech, the more I went astray from truth and approached
an abyss. How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack
of learning! Those statements in the creeds, which to me were evident
absurdities, for them contained nothing false. 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 did not understand
something, I said, 'It is my fault, I am sinful'; but the more I
fathomed the truth, the clearer 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 own that
communion with Orthodoxy is 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, Molokáns and others. And
I met 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, is 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 to me, who considered
that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that the faith
was itself destroying what it ought to produce.
As people of many different religions behave to one another in this
same contemptuous, self-assured manner--the error of such conduct was
obvious; and I thought on the matter and read all I could about it,
and consulted all whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation
except the one which causes the Soúmsky Hussars to consider the Soúmsky
Hussars the best regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to
consider that the best regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans....
I went to Archimandrites, archbishops, 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 asked him why we should not unite on those main points on which we
could agree, and leave the rest for each to decide as he pleases. My
collocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such concessions
would bring reproach on the spiritual authorities for deserting the
faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a split; 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 before men certain human
obligations.... And I noticed what is done in the name of religion, and
was horrified; and I almost entirely abjured Orthodoxy.
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 they prayed in the churches for the
success of our arms, and the teachers of the faith acknowledged killing
to be an act resulting from the faith. And besides the murders during
the war, I saw during the disturbances which followed the war, Church
dignitaries and teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter Orders,
who approved the killing of helpless erring youths. And I took note of
all that is done by men who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.
And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true
in the religion I had joined. Formerly I should have said that it was
all false; but I could not say so now, for I had felt its truth and had
lived by it. But I no longer doubted that there is in it much that is
false. And though among the peasants there was less admixture of what
repelled me, still I saw that in their belief also, falsehood was mixed
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 Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the truth had been handed down
by what is called the Church.
And whether I liked to 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.... On it religious doctrine rests, or at
least with it the only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have
found, is inseparably connected.... 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 recognise 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
recognise 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. 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 find in the teaching, and
what I find of truth, and to what conclusions I come, will form the
following parts of this work, which if it be worth it, and if any one
wants it, will probably some day be printed somewhere.
* * * * *
These closing words in which Tolstoy expresses the hope that his work
'will probably some day be printed somewhere,' are a reminder of the
difficulties and dangers that had to be encountered in Russia by any
man who set out to challenge the authority of the Orthodox Church,
whose affairs were managed by the Holy Synod, presided over by a
Procurator able to call on the secular powers to enforce his decisions.
AUTHORITY FOR CHAPTER XI
Tolstoy's _Ispoved_: Christchurch, 1901.
Tolstoy's _Confession_ being prohibited in Russia, had to be printed
abroad. The edition mentioned above is a reliable one.