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

see, for that alone is true. All else is false.

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

than the rest: my love of family, and of writing — art as I called it — were

no longer sweet to me.

“Family”…said I to myself. But my family — wife and children — are also

human. They are placed just as I am: they must either live in a lie or see

the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, guard

them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I

feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them:

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

“Art, poetry?”…Under the influence of success and the praise of men, I

had long assured myself that this was a thing one could do though death was

drawing near — death which destroys all things, including my work and its

remembrance; but soon I saw that that too was a fraud. It was plain to me

that art is an adornment of life, an allurement to life. But life had lost

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

living my own life but was borne on the waves of some other life — as long

as I believed that life had a meaning, though one I could not express — the

reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds afforded me pleasure: it

was pleasant to look at life in the mirror of art. But when I began to seek

the meaning of life and felt the necessity of living my own life, that

mirror became for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. I

could no longer soothe myself with what I now saw in the mirror, namely,

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

sight when in the depth of my soul I believed that my life had a meaning.

Then the play of lights — comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible

— in life amused me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw

the dragon and saw the mice gnawing away my support.

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

have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my lot. But I could not satisfy

myself with that. Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows

there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who,

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

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

cannot help rushing about.

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

myself. I experienced terror at what awaited me — knew that that terror was

even worse than the position I was in, but still I could not patiently await

the end. However convincing the argument might be that in any case some

vessel in my heart would give way, or something would burst and all would be

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

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

or bullet. that was the feeling which drew me most strongly towards suicide.

“But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something?” said

to myself several times. “It cannot be that this condition of despair is

natural to man!” And I sought for an explanation of these problems in all

the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I sought painfully and long, not

from idle curiosity or listlessly, but painfully and persistently day and

night — sought as a perishing man seeks for safety — and I found nothing.

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

convinced that all who like myself had sought in knowledge for the meaning

of life had found nothing. And not only had they found nothing, but they had

plainly acknowledged that the very thing which made me despair — namely the

senselessness of life — is the one indubitable thing man can know.

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

to my relations with the scholarly world, I had access to scientists and

scholars in all branches of knowledge, and they readily showed me all their

knowledge, not only in books but also in conversation, so that I had at my

disposal all that science has to say on this question of life.

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

questions than that which it actually does give. It long seemed to me, when

I saw the important and serious air with which science announces its

conclusions which have nothing in common with the real questions of human

life, that there was something I had not understood. I long was timid before

science, and it seemed to me that the lack of conformity between the answers

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

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

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

were the only legitimate ones, forming the basis of all knowledge, and that

I with my questions was not to blame, but science if it pretends to reply to

those questions.

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

suicide — was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from

the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer

to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will

come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my

whole life?”

Differently expressed, the question is: “Why should I live, why wish for

anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: “Is there any

meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not

destroy?”

To this one question, variously expressed, I sought an answer in science.

And I found that in relation to that question all human knowledge is divided

as it were into 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