You ask me:
1. Should people who are not particularly advanced mentally seek
an expression in words for the truths of the inner life, as
comprehended by them?
2. Is it worth while in one's inner life to strive after complete
consciousness?
3. What are we to be guided by in moments of struggle and wavering,
that we may know whether it is indeed our conscience that is
speaking in us, or whether it is reflection, which is bribed by our
weakness? (The third question I for brevity's sake expressed in my
own words, without having changed its meaning, I hope.)
These three questions in my opinion reduce themselves to one,--the
second, because, if it is not necessary for us to strive after a
full consciousness of our inner life, it will be also unnecessary
and impossible for us to express in words the truths which we
have grasped, and in moments of wavering we shall have nothing to
be guided by, in order to ascertain whether it is our conscience
or a false reflection that is speaking within us. But if it is
necessary to strive after the greatest consciousness accessible to
human reason (whatever this reason may be), it is also necessary to
express the truths grasped by us in words, and it is these expressed
truths which have been carried into full consciousness that we have
to be guided by in moments of struggle and wavering. And so I answer
your radical question in the affirmative, namely, that every man,
for the fulfilment of his destiny upon earth and for the attainment
of the true good (the two things go together), must strain all the
forces of his mind for the purpose of elucidating to himself those
religious bases by which he lives, that is, the meaning of his life.
I have frequently met among illiterate earth-diggers, who have
to figure out cubic contents, the wide-spread conviction that
the mathematical calculation is deceptive, and that it is not
to be trusted. Either because they do not know any mathematics,
or because the men who figured things out mathematically for
them had frequently consciously or unconsciously deceived them,
the opinion that mathematics was inadequate and useless for the
calculation of measures has established itself as an undoubted
truth which they think it is even unnecessary to prove. Just such
an opinion has established itself among, I shall say it boldly,
irreligious men,--an opinion that reason cannot solve any religious
questions,--that the application of reason to these questions is the
chief cause of errors, that the solution of religious questions by
means of reason is criminal pride.
I say this, because the doubt, expressed in your questions, as
to whether it is necessary to strive after consciousness in our
religious convictions, can be based only on this supposition,
namely, that reason cannot be applied to the solution of religious
questions. However, such a supposition is as strange and obviously
false as the supposition that calculation cannot settle any
mathematical questions.
God has given man but one tool for the cognition of himself and
his relation to the world,--there is no other,--and this tool is
reason, and suddenly he is told that he can use his reason for
the elucidation of his domestic, economic, political, scientific,
artistic questions, but not for the elucidation of what it is
given him for. It turns out that for the elucidation of the most
important truths, of those on which his whole life depends, a man
must by no means employ reason, but must recognize these truths as
beyond reason, whereas beyond reason a man cannot cognize anything.
They say, "Find it out, through revelation, faith." But a man cannot
even believe outside of reason. If a man believes in this, and not
in that, he does so only because his reason tells him that he ought
to believe in this, and not to believe in that. To say that a man
should not be guided by reason is the same as saying to a man, who
in a dark underground room is carrying a lamp, that, to get out from
this underground room and find his way, he ought to put out his lamp
and be guided by something different from the light.
But, perhaps, I shall be told, as you say in your letter, that
not all men are endowed with a great mind and with a special
ability for expressing their thoughts, and that, therefore, an
awkward expression of their thoughts concerning religion may lead
to error. To this I will answer in the words of the Gospel, "What
is hidden from the wise is revealed to babes." This saying is not
an exaggeration and not a paradox, as people generally judge of
those utterances of the Gospel which do not please them, but the
assertion of a most simple and unquestionable truth, which is,
that to every being in the world a law is given, which this being
must follow, and that for the cognition of this law every being is
endowed with corresponding organs. And so every man is endowed with
reason, and in this reason there is revealed to him the law which he
must follow. This law is hidden only from those who do not want to
follow it and who, in order not to follow it, renounce reason and,
instead of using their reason for the cognition of the truth, use
for this purpose the indications, taken upon faith, of people like
themselves, who also reject reason.
But the law which a man must follow is so simple that it is
accessible to any child, the more so since a man has no longer any
need of discovering the law of his life. Men who lived before him
discovered and expressed it, and all a man has to do is to verify
them with his reason, to accept or not to accept the propositions
which he finds expressed in the tradition, that is, not as people,
who wish not to fulfil the law, advise us to do, by verifying reason
through tradition, but by verifying tradition through reason.
Tradition may be from men, and false, but reason is certainly
from God, and cannot be false. And so, for the cognition and the
expression of truth, there is no need of any especial prominent
capacity, but only of the faith that reason is not only the highest
divine quality of man, but also the only tool for the cognition of
truth.
A special mind and gifts are not needed for the cognition and
exposition of the truth, but for the invention and exposition of the
lie. Having once departed from the indications of reason, men heap
up and take upon faith, generally in the shape of laws, revelations,
dogmas, such complicated, unnatural, and contradictory propositions
that, in order to expound them and harmonize them with the lie,
there is actually a need of astuteness of mind and of a special
gift. We need only think of a man of our world, educated in the
religious tenets of any Christian profession,--Catholic, Orthodox,
Protestant,--who wants to elucidate to himself the religious tenets
inculcated upon him since childhood, and to harmonize them with
life,--what a complicated mental labour he must go through in
order to harmonize all the contradictions which are found in the
profession inoculated in him by his education: God, the Creator and
the good, created evil, punishes people, and demands redemption, and
so forth, and we profess the law of love and of forgiveness, and we
punish, wage war, take away the property from poor people, and so
forth, and so forth.
It is for the unravelling of these contradictions, or rather,
for the concealment of them from ourselves, that a great mind and
special gifts are needed; but for the discovery of the law of our
life, or, as you express it, in order to bring our faith into full
consciousness, no special mental gifts are needed,--all that is
necessary is not to admit anything that is contrary to reason, not
to reject reason, religiously to guard reason, and to believe in
nothing else. If the meaning of a man's life presents itself to him
indistinctly, that does not prove that reason is of no use for the
elucidation of this meaning, but only this, that too much of what is
irrational has been taken upon faith, and that it is necessary to
reject everything which is not confirmed by reason.
And so my answer to your fundamental question, as to whether it is
necessary to strive after consciousness in our inner life, is this,
that this is the most necessary and important work of our life. It
is necessary and important because the only rational meaning of our
life consists in the fulfilment of the will of God who sent us into
this life. But the will of God is not recognized by any special
miracle, by the writing of the law on tablets with God's finger, or
by the composition of an infallible book with the aid of the Holy
Ghost, or by the infallibility of some holy person or of an assembly
of men,--but only by the activity of the reason of all men who in
deeds and words transmit to one another the truths which have become
more and more elucidated to their consciousness. This cognition has
never been and never will be complete, but is constantly increased
with the movement of humanity: the longer we live, the more clearly
do we recognize God's will and, consequently, what we ought to do
for its fulfilment. And so I think that the elucidation by any man
(no matter how small he himself and others may consider him to
be--it is the little ones who are great) of the whole religious
truth, as it is accessible to him, and its expression in words
(since the expression in words is the one unquestionable symptom of
a complete clearness of ideas) is one of the most important and most
sacred duties of man.
I shall be very much pleased if my answer shall satisfy you even in
part.