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

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.

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