A Confession by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best sales books of all time txt) 📕

to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers

cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and

brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is increased in proportion to

one’s greater knowledge of theology. And to me who considered that truth lay

in union by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying

what it ought to produce.

This offence is so obvious to us educated people who have lived in countries

where various religions are professed and have seen the contempt,

self-assurance, and invincible contradiction with which Catholics behave to

the Orthodox Greeks and to the Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics

and Protestants, and the Protestants to the two others, and the similar

attitude of Old-Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and

all religions — that the very obviousness of the temptation at first

perplexes us. One says to oneself: it is impossible that it is so simple and

that people do not see that if two assertions are mutually contradictory,

then neither of them has the sole truth which faith should possess. There is

something else here, there must be some explanation. I thought there was,

and sought that explanation and read all I could on the subject, and

consulted all whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation, except the

one which causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the best

regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans to consider that the best

regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans. The ecclesiastics of all the

different creeds, through their best representatives, told me nothing but

that they believed themselves to have the truth and the others to be in

error, and that all they could do was to pray for them. I went to

archimandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked

them; but none of them made any attempt to explain the matter to me except

one man, who explained it all and explained it so that I never asked any one

any more about it. I said that for every unbeliever turning to a belief (and

all our young generation are in a position to do so) the question that

presents itself first is, why is truth not in Lutheranism nor in

Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy? Educated in the high school he cannot help

knowing what the peasants do not know — that the Protestants and Catholics

equally affirm that their faith is the only true one. Historical evidence,

twisted by each religion in its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not

possible, said I, to understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from

its height the differences should disappear, as they do for one who believes

truly? Can we not go further along a path like the one we are following with

the Old-Believers? They emphasize the fact that they have a differently

shaped cross and different alleluias and a different procession round the

altar. We reply: You believe in the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments,

and so do we. Let us hold to that, and in other matters do as you pease. We

have united with them by placing the essentials of faith above the

unessentials. Now with the Catholics can we not say: You believe in so and

so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as for the Filioque

clause and the Pope — do as you please. Can we not say the same to the

Protestants, uniting with them in what is most important?

My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such conceptions

would bring reproach o the spiritual authorities for deserting the faith of

our forefathers, and this would produce a schism; and the vocation of the

spiritual authorities is to safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian

Orthodox faith inherited from our forefathers.

And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of life; and they

are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of men certain human

obligations. and fulfilling these human affairs they fulfil them in a human

way. However much they may talk of their pity for their erring brethren, and

of addressing prayers for them to the throne of the Almighty — to carry out

human purposes violence is necessary, and it has always been applied and is

and will be applied. If of two religions each considers itself true and the

other false, then men desiring to attract others to the truth will preach

their own doctrine. And if a false teaching is preached to the inexperienced

sons of their Church — which as the truth — then that Church cannot but burn

the books and remove the man who is misleading its sons. What is to be done

with a sectarian — burning, in the opinion of the Orthodox, with the fire of

false doctrine — who in the most important affair of life, in faith,

misleads the sons of the Church? What can be done with him except to cut off

his head or to incarcerate him? Under the Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich people

were burned at the stake, that is to say, the severest method of punishment

of the time was applied, and in our day also the severest method of

punishment is applied — detention in solitary confinement. [11]

The second relation of the Church to a question of life was with regard to

war and executions.

At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of Christian love,

began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible not to think about this,

and not to see that killing is an evil repugnant to the first principles of

any faith. Yet prayers were said in the churches for the success of our

arms, and the teachers of the Faith acknowledged killing to be an act

resulting from the Faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw,

during the disturbances which followed the war, Church dignitaries and

teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter orders who approved the

killing of helpless, erring youths. And I took note of all that is done by

men who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.

[10] A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual.

[11] At the time this was written capital punishment was considered to be

abolished in Russia.—A.M.

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