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

leisured people to which I belonged formed the whole of humanity, and that

those milliards of others who have lived and are living were cattle of some

sort — not real people.

Strange, incredibly incomprehensible as it now seems to me that I could,

while reasoning about life, overlook the whole life of mankind that

surrounded me on all sides; that I could to such a degree blunder so

absurdly as to think that my life, and Solomon’s and Schopenhauer’s, is the

real, normal life, and that the life of the milliards is a circumstance

undeserving of attention — strange as this now is to me, I see that so it

was. In the delusion of my pride of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable

that I and Solomon and Schopenhauer had stated the question so truly and

exactly that nothing else was possible — so indubitable did it seem that all

those milliards consisted of men who had not yet arrived at an apprehension

of all the profundity of the question — that I sought for the meaning of my

life without it once occurring to 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 very liberal and learned people. But

thanks either to the strange physical affection I have for the real

labouring people, which compelled me to understand them and to see that they

are not so stupid as we suppose, or thanks 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 make life and who support the burden of their own

lives and of ours also. And I considered the enormous masses of those

simple, unlearned, and poor people who have lived and are living and I saw

something quite different. I saw that, with rare exceptions, all those

milliards who have lived and are living do not fit into my divisions, and

that I could not class them as not understanding the question, for they

themselves state it and reply to it with extraordinary clearness. Nor could

I consider them epicureans, for their life consists more of privations and

sufferings than of enjoyments. Still less could I consider them as

irrationally dragging on a meaningless existence, for every act of their

life, as well as death itself, is explained by them. To kill themselves they

consider the greatest evil. It appeared that all mankind had a knowledge,

unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of life. It appeared that

reasonable knowledge does not give the meaning of life, but excludes life:

while the meaning attributed to life by milliards of people, by all

humanity, rests on some despised pseudo-knowledge.

Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of

life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that

meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational knowledge is faith,

that very thing which I could not but reject. It is God, One in 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.

My position was terrible. I knew I could find nothing along the path of

reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there — in faith — was

nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet more impossible for me than a

denial of life. From rational knowledge it appeared that life is an evil,

people know this and it is in their power to end life; yet they lived and

still live, and I myself live, though I have long known that life is

senseless and an evil. By faith it appears that in order to understand the

meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which alone a

meaning is required.

A contradiction arose from which there were two exits. Either that which I

called reason was not so rational as I supposed, or that which seemed to me

irrational was not so irrational as I supposed. And I began to verify the

line of argument of my rational knowledge.

Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found it quite

correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was inevitable; but I noticed a

mistake. The mistake lay in this, that my reasoning was not in accord with

the question I had put. The question was: “Why should I live, that is to

say, what real, permanent result will come out of my illusory transitory

life — what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?” And to

reply to that question I had studied life.

The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not

satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first appeared, included a

demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite, and vice

versa.

I asked: “What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?”

And I replied to quite another question: “What is the meaning of my life

within time, cause, and space?” With the result that, after long efforts of

thought, the answer I reached was: “None.”

In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do otherwise) the finite

with the finite, and the infinite with the infinite; but for that reason I

reached the inevitable result: force is force, matter is matter, will is

will, the infinite is the infinite, nothing is nothing — and that was all

that could result.

It was something like what happens in mathematics, when thinking to solve an

equation, we find we are working on an identity. the line of reasoning is

correct, but results in the answer that a equals a, or x equals x, or �

equals �. the same thing happened with my reasoning in relation to the

question of the meaning of my life. The replies given by all science to that

question only result in — identity.

And really, strictly scientific knowledge — that knowledge which begins, as

Descartes’s did, with complete doubt about everything — rejects all

knowledge admitted on faith and builds everything afresh on the laws of

reason and experience, and cannot give any other reply to the question of

life than that which I obtained: an indefinite reply. Only at first had it

seemed to me that knowledge had given a positive reply — the reply of

Schopenhauer: that life has no meaning and is an evil. But on examining the

matter I understood that the reply is not positive, it was only my feeling

that so expressed it. Strictly expressed, as it is by the Brahmins and by

Solomon and Schopenhauer, the reply is merely indefinite, or an identity: �

equals �, life is nothing. So that philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but

only replies that the question cannot be solved by it — that for it the

solution remains indefinite.

Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible to seek in

rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that the reply given by

rational knowledge is a mere indication that a reply can only be obtained by

a different statement of the question and only when the relation of the

finite to the infinite is included in the question. And I understood that,

however irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they

have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation

between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no solution.

In whatever way I stated 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.

So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only

knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live humanity

has another irrational knowledge — faith which makes it possible to live.

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. Reasonable knowledge had brought

me to acknowledge that life is senseless — my life had come to a halt and I

wished to destroy myself. Looking around on the whole of mankind I saw that

people live and declare that they know the meaning of life. I looked at

myself — I had lived as long as I knew a meaning of life and had made life

possible.

Looking again at people of other lands, at my contemporaries and at their

predecessors, I saw the same thing. 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 identical.

Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give, and to

whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the finite existence of

man an infinite meaning, a meaning not destroyed by sufferings,

deprivations, or death. This means that only in faith can we find for life a

meaning and a possibility. What, then, is this faith? And I understood that

faith is not merely “the evidence of things not seen”, etc., and is not a

revelation (that defines only one of the indications of faith, is not the

relation of man to God (one has first to define faith and then God, and not

define faith through God); it not only agreement with what has been told one

(as faith is most usually supposed to be), but 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 did not believe that one must live for something, he would

not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the

finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of

the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live.

And I recalled the whole course of my mental labour and was horrified. It

was now clear to me that for man to be able to live he must either not see

the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will

connect the finite with the infinite. Such an explanation I had had; but as

long as I believed in the finite I did not need the explanation, and I began

to verify it by reason. And in the light of reason the whole of my former

explanation flew to atoms. But a time came when I ceased to believe in the

finite. And then I began to build up on rational foundations, out of what I

knew, an explanation which would give a meaning to life; but nothing could I

build. Together with the best human intellects I reached the result that �

equals �, and was much astonished at that conclusion, though nothing else

could have resulted.

What was I doing