But the objection to Christ's teaching (that it is good, but impracticable) is made not only by believers but also by unbelievers, by people who do not believe, or think they do not believe, in the dogma of the fall and redemption. The objection to Christ's teaching on the score of its impracticability is made also by scientists, philosophers, and in general by people who are educated and consider themselves quite free from any superstition, and who do not believe, or think they do not believe, in any- thing; and who therefore consider themselves free from the superstitions of the fall and the redemption. And so at first it seemed to me. I too thought that these learned people Russo-Greek Church at a particularly somnolent and subservient period, and also the fact that in the early ’eighties, when he was writing this book, religious opinions were still current to which the assent of no educated man is likely to be demanded to-day.
1 Tolstoy counts from the First General Council of f Christians at Nicsea, under Constantine, in a.d. 325.
CHRIST’S TEACHING I had other grounds for their denial of the prac- ticability of Christ's teaching. But, on pene- trating deeper into the reason of their denial, I became convinced that the non-believers have the same false perception, that our life is not what it is, but is what they imagine it to be; and that this conception rests on the same basis as the believers' conception. Those who con- sider themselves unbelievers do not, it is true, believe in God, nor in Christ, nor in Adam; but in the fundamental, false conception of man's right to a blissful life, on which everything rests, they believe as firmly, or even more firmly, than the theologians.
However much privileged science and philo- sophy may boast themselves, asserting that they are the guides and directors of man's mind— they are not the directors but the servants. A ready-made outlook on life is always supplied to science by religion; and science only works along the paths indicated to it by religion. Religion shows man the meaning of life, and science and philosophy apply this meaning to various sides of life. And therefore, if religion gives a false meaning to life, science, educated to that religious outlook, will apply that false perception to the various phases of human life. And that is what has hap- pened with our European-Christian science and philosophy.
Church teaching has presented the funda- mental meaning of human life as being this, that man has a right to a blissful life, and that this bliss is not obtainable by man’s exertion but 236 WHAT I BELIEVE by something outside himself; and this idea underlies all our science and philosophy.
Religion, science, and public opinion, all with one voice declare that the life we lead is bad; but that the teaching which shows how we ourselves can become better, and thereby make life better, is impracticable.
The teaching of Christ, aiming at improving human life by man’s own reasonable efforts, is impracticable, says religion, because Adam j fell and the world is in an evil state.
That teaching is impracticable because man’s life is regulated by certain laws which are independent of man’s will, says our philosophy.; Philosophy and all science only repeat in other words just what religion announces by the dogma of original sin and redemption.
In the doctrine of redemption there are two fundamental propositions on which everything depends: (1) Real human life is a blissful life, but life in the world here is a bad life, irreparable by any effort of man; and (2) Redemption from I this life lies in faith.
These two propositions have come to under- lie the outlook on life both of believers and of unbelievers in our pseudo-Christian society, j From the second proposition arose the Church, j with her institutions. From the first come our public opinion and our philosophic and political theories.
All the philosophic and political theories that justify the existing order, Hegelianism and its children, are founded on that basis. Pessimism, demanding of life what life cannot!
CHRIST S TEACHING give, and therefore repudiating life, also arose from it. Materialism, with its wonderful and enthusiastic assertion that man is a process and nothing else, is the lawful child of this doctrine which acknowledges life here to be a fallen life. Spiritualism, with its scientific followers, is the best proof that the scientific and philo- sophic outlook is not free, but based on the religious doctrine that a blissful eternal life is natural to man.
This perversion of the meaning of life has perverted the whole rational activity of man. The dogma of man’s fall and redemption has hidden from men the most important and legitimate realm of human activity, and has shut out of the realm of human knowledge the knowledge of what man should do that he may become happier and better. Science and philosophy, imagining that they are counter- acting pseudo-Christianity, and priding them- selves thereon, are only serving it. Science and philosophy deal with anything you please, only not with the question how man can himself become better and lead a better life. What is called ethics — moral teaching — has quite disappeared from our pseudo -Christian society.
Neither believers nor unbelievers ask them- selves how they should live, and how use the reason that has been given us; but they ask: Why is our human life not such as we have imagined it should be, and when will it become what we desire?
Only as a result of that false teaching, absorbed into the flesh and blood of our generation, WHAT I BELIEVE could such an astonishing thing occur as that man — as though he had spat out the apple of knowledge of good and evil, which tradition ca says he ate in paradise, and had forgotten that at the progress of mankind lies only in solving L the contradictions between our rational and ^ our animal natures — should set to work to! f use his reason in discovering the historic laws ^ of his animal nature and of that alone.
Except the philosophic teaching of our pseudo-Christian world, the religions and philo- sophic teachings of all the nations known to us — Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Brahminism, and the philosophy of the Greeks — all aim at arranging human life, and explaining to people how each one should strive to be better, and to lead a better life. All Confucianism consists in personal perfecting of oneself; Judaism, in the personal following of each law of God; Buddhism, in the teaching of how each man can save himself from the evil of life. Socrates taught the personal perfecting of oneself in the name of reason, and the Stoics acknowledged rational freedom as the only basis of a true life.
Man’s whole rational activity could not but consist, and has always consisted, in one thing — in illuminating by reason the striving towards what is good. Free-will, says our philosophy, is an illusion; and it prides itself much on the boldness of this assertion. But free-will is not merely an illusion; it is a phrase devoid of meaning. It is a phrase invented by the theologians and criminalists, and to refute that phrase is to tilt at windmills; but reason FALSE DOCTRINE — that which illumines our life and obliges us to alter our actions — is not an illusion and cannot be denied. To follow wisdom for the attainment of what is good — in that has always consisted the doctrine of the true teachers of humanity, and in that lies the whole teaching of Christ, and that, being reason, can in no way be rejected by reason.
The teaching of Christ is the teaching of the son of man that is present in us all — that is to say, it is the teaching of the strife common to all men after what is good, and of the reason, shared by all, which illuminates that striving. (To prove that 4 the son of man ’ means 4 son of man ’ is quite superfluous. To understand by 4 son of man ’ something else instead of what the words mean, one would have to show that Christ, to indicate what he meant to say, intentionally used words which have quite another meaning. But even if, as the Church wishes to make out, 4 son of man 5 means son of God, even then 4 son of man ’ also essentially means man, for Christ calls all men the sons of God.)
Christ’s teaching of the son of man— son of God — which forms the basis of all the Gospels, is expressed most clearly in his talk with Nicodemus. Each man, says he, besides con- sciousness of his personal life in the flesh, which proceeds from a male parent in the womb of his physical mother, cannot but be conscious of his birth from above (John iii. 5, 6, 7). That which man is conscious of in himself as free is that which is born of the WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE eternal— that which we call God (w. 11, 14). That which is horn of God (the son of God in man) we should exalt in ourselves in order to attain true life (vv. 14,17). The son of man is the son of God ‘ of a like nature ’ (not ‘ only begotten ’). He who exalts in himself that son of God above all else, he who believes that life dwells only in that, will not be in discord with life. Discord with life results only because people do not believe in the light within them- selves (vv. 18-21). (That light of which it is said in John’s Gospel that in it is life, and the life was the light of man.)
Christ taught us to exalt the son of man, who is the son of God and the light of men, above all else. He says: When you exalt [honour, raise up] the son of man, you will know that I speak nothing of myself (John xii. 32, 44, 49). The Jews did not understand his teaching, and asked: £ Who is this son of man, that must be lifted up V (John xii. 34) And to this question he replies (v. 35): ‘Yet a little while is the light in you.1 Walk while ye have the light, that darkness overtake you not; he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.’ To the question, what 1 In all the Church’s translations an intentionally false rendering is given: instead of the words ‘ in you,’ wherever those words occur the rendering is given ‘ with you.’ — L. T.
The English Authorized Version gives ‘ with you,’ but our Revised Version, published in 1881, gives 4 among you,’ and in a footnote adds the translation 4 in you ’; so that the meaning Tolstoy considers correct is not entirely inaccessible to English readers of the Gospel MAN IS A SON OF GOD is meant by 4 lift up the son of man/ Christ replies: Live in the light that is in man.
The son of man, according to Christ’s reply, is that light in which men ought to walk while they have light within them.
Luke xi. 35: 4 Look therefore whether the light that is in thee be not darkness/ Matt. vi. 23: 4 If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness! * says he, teaching the multitude.
Before and after Christ men have said the same thing: that a divine light dwells in man, v/hich has descended from heaven, and that that light is reason, and that one must serve it only, and by its aid seek for what is good. This was i said by the teachers among the Brahmans and by the Hebrew prophets, and by Confucius, and Socrates, and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, and by all the true sages — not the compilers of philosophic theories, but those who sought truth for their own welfare and for that of all men.1 1 Marcus Aurelius says: ‘ Honour that which is more powerful than anything on earth, which rules and guides all men. Honour also that which is most powerful within thyself. The latter is like the former, because it uses what is within thee to guide thy life.’
Epictetus says: ‘ God sowed His seed not only in my father and grandfather, but in all that live on the earth, especially in those that reason, for they alone enter into relation with God, through the reason by which they are united with Him.’
In the book of Confucius it is said: ‘ The law of great science consists in developing and establishing the principle of the light of reason, which we have received from heaven.’ That proposition is repeated several times, and serves as the basis of Confucius’s teaching. — L. T.
WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE But suddenly, according to the dogma of a redemption, we admit that it is quite unneces- ^ sary to speak or think about this light within cj us. We must think, say the believers, about ^ the nature of each separate person of the ^ Trinity; what sacraments must, or must not, ag be performed; because the salvation of man f comes not from our efforts, but from the Trinity ^ and the correct observance of the sacraments. ^ We must think, say the non-believers, of the f laws which regulate the movements of infinitely small atoms of matter in infinite space and ^ infinite time; but of what man’s reason f demands for his good there is no need to think, fj because the betterment of man’s condition ii a does not depend on him, but on general laws | which we discover.
I am convinced that a few centuries hence the so-called ‘ scientific ’ activity of our belauded recent centuries of European humanity will furnish an inextinguishable fund of mirth and pity to future generations. For some centuries the learned men of a small western part of the great continent were in a condition of epidemic madness, imagining that eternal blissful life belonged to them, and they occupied themselves with every kind of investigation as to how, and according to what laws, this life would come to them; but they themselves did nothing,: and never thought of doing anything, to make their life better. And what will seem yet more pathetic to the future historian is that he j will find that these people had had a teacher who clearly and definitely indicated to them MAN IS A SON OF GOD ; what they should do to live more happily, and that the words of this teacher were explained by some to mean that he would come on the ^ clouds to arrange everything, and by others that this teacher’s words were excellent but impracticable, because man’s life was not such as they wished it to be and therefore it was not l worth while to concern themselves with it, but man’s reason had to be directed to the investigation of the laws of life, without regard ; to what is good for man.
The Church says: Christ’s teaching is imprac- ticable because life here is but an imitation of true life; it cannot be good, it is all evil. The best way to live such a life is to despise it and live by faith — that is, by imagining a future, blissful, eternal life, and to live here as one is living, and to pray.
Philosophy, science, and public opinion say: Christ’s teaching is impracticable because man’s life depends not on that light of reason by which he can himself illuminate this life, but on general laws; and therefore it is not necessary to illu- minate this life by reason and to live in accord therewith, but one must live as one is living, firmly believing that, according to historical, sociological, and other laws of progress, after we have lived badly a very long time, our life will of itself become very good.
People come to a farm, and there find every- thing necessary for their life: a house with all needful utensils, barns full of corn, cellars, vaults containing all kinds of supplies; in the yard are agricultural implements, tools, harness, WHAT I BELIEVE horses, cows, sheep, and a complete inventory — all that is needful for a well-supplied life. People from various parts come to this farm and begin to make use of all they find there, each only for himself, not thinking of leaving any- thing either for those who are there with him in the house or for those who will come later. Each wishes to have everything for himself. Each hastens to make use of what he can seize, and the destruction of everything begins — strife and a struggle for possession. A milch cow, unshorn sheep and sheep bearing young, are killed for meat; fires are fed with benches and carts, and people fight for milk and grain, and spill, scatter, and destroy more than they use. No one eats a morsel quietly; he eats and snarls; a stronger than he comes and takes the piece away, and another takes it from him. Having tormented themselves, these people, beaten and hungry, leave the place. Again the master arranges everything in the place so that people could live quietly in it. Again in the farm there is abundance, and again passers-by come in; but again there is a scrimmage and a fight; all is wasted in vain; and again, tormented and embittered, people go away, scolding, angry with their comrades and also with their host for having prepared the place badly and insufficiently. Again the good host rearranges the place so that people could live in it; and again the same thing occurs, and again, and again, and again. Then in one of the fresh parties a teacher is found who says to the others, ‘ Brothers, we are not acting rightly. See how MAN IS A SON OF GOD many goods there are in the place, and how well it is all arranged! There is enough for us all, : and there will be a surplus for those who come after us, only let us live reasonably. We will i not snatch from one another, but will help one another. Let us sow, and plough, and tend the cattle, and all will be able to live well.’ And it happened that some people understood . what the teacher said, and those who under- stood began to do as he bade them; they ceased fighting and snatching from one another, and began to work. But the rest, who had either not heard the words of the teacher, or had heard 4 but did not believe him, did not follow his advice, but fought as before and spoilt their host’s goods and went away. Others came and the same thing occurred. Those who attended to the teacher ever repeated the same thing: ‘ Do not fight, do not destroy the host’s goods, 5 and it will be better for you all. Do as the teacher says.’
But there were still many who had not heard, or did not believe, and matters long went on in the old way. This was all comprehensible, and things might happen so as long as people did , not believe what the teacher said. But at last, it is told, a time came when all in the place had heard the teacher’s words, all understood them, and not only understood them but- acknowledged that it was God Himself who spoke through the teacher, and that the teacher was himself God, and all believed every word the teacher spoke to be sacred. And it is told that after this, instead of all living as the teacher WHAT I BELIEVE advised, no one any longer refrained from the ^ brawls, and they started thrashing one another, ga and all began to say that we know now for ^ certain that it should be so and that nothing! ar else is possible! al What does it all mean? Even cattle ar- | ^ range how to eat their fodder so that one should not disturb another, and men, having learnt j a how they might live better, and believing that I g God Himself ordered them to do so, live yet g worse, because they say it is impossible to live otherwise. These people have imagined ^ something that is not true. Well, what could ‘ these people at the farm have imagined, that J they, having believed the teacher’s words,: should continue to live as before, snatching from one another, fighting, and ruining the goods j and themselves? The teacher had told them: ‘ Your life at this farm is bad; live better and your life will become good; 5 but they imagined that the teacher had condemned any kind of life at that farm, and had promised them another, a good life, not at that farm but somewhere else. And they decided that this farm was a temporary inn, and that it was not worth while arranging to live well in it, but that it was only necessary to be on the alert not to miss the good life promised in another place. Only so can the strange conduct of these people at the farm be explained who believed the teacher to be God, and of those others who! considered him a wise man and his words to j be true, but continued to live as before, in con- tradiction to the teacher’s advice.
MAN IS A SON OF GOD Men have heard all and understood all; but have let slip past their ears that the teacher said that men must create their own happiness here, at this farm at which they have met; and have imagined that this farm was an inn, and that the real one will be somewhere else. And from this has come their amazing argu- ment that the words of the teacher were very admirable, and were even the words of God Himself, but that it was now difficult to obey them.
If only people would cease from destroying themselves and expecting some one to come and help them — Christ on the clouds with the sound of trumpets, or an historic law, or a law of the differentiation and integration of forces! No one will help them unless they help themselves. Nor need they even help themselves: if only they will cease to expect anything from heaven or from earth, and cease to destroy themselves.
CHAPTER VIII ft THE PATH OF LIFE g] But granting that Christ’s teaching is bene- j( ficial to the world — granting that it is rational and that one has no reasonable right to reject it — 0 still, what can one man do in a world of those j who do not act on Christ’s law? If all men \ suddenly agreed to fulfil Christ’s teaching, its observance would be possible; but one man cannot go against the whole world.
‘ If,’ it is generally said, £ I alone in a world of those people who do not fulfil Christ’s law fulfil it: give away what I have, turn my cheek to the smiter without defending myself, do not even put in an appearance to take the appointed oaths, or when summoned to war, and if I submit to be plundered; I shall, if I do not die of hunger, get beaten to death, or, if not beaten, imprisoned or shot. So I shall have sacrificed all my happiness in vain, and ruined! my whole life.’
This reply is based upon the same misunder- standing as the reply about the impracticability of Christ’s teaching.
It is what one usually hears said, and I myself agreed with it until I had quite emanci- pated myself from Church teaching, and so THE PATH OF LIFE 249 became able to understand the full meaning □f Christ’s doctrine about life.
Christ offers his teaching of life to redeem us from the ruinous life people live who do not follow his teaching; and suddenly we declare that we should be glad to follow his teaching were we not sorry to ruin our life. Christ teaches as how to escape from our ruinous life, and we grudge the sacrifice of that ruinous life. It follows that we are far from considering our fife ruinous, but consider it something in our possession, real and valuable. In that acknow- ledgement of our present worldly life as a real thing, and something that is our own, lies the mistake which hinders a comprehension of Christ’s teaching. Christ was aware of this mistake, which causes people to consider this worldly life of theirs as something real that belongs to them; and by a whole series of discourses and parables he showed them that they have no right to life, and possess no life till they obtain true life by rejecting the shadow they now call their ‘ life.’
In order to understand Christ’s doctrine of saving one’s life, one must first understand what was said by all the prophets, what was said by Solomon, by Buddha, and by all the sages of the world, concerning man’s personal life. One may, as Pascal expresses it, disregard the matter and carry a shield before one to hide the abyss of death towards which we are all running; but one need only consider what man’s jisolated personal life is, to convince oneself that this whole life, if it be only a personal life, has WHAT I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE for each separate person no sense or meaning, ui but is a malicious mockery of one’s heart and t in reason and of all that is good in man. There- oi fore, to understand Christ’s teaching, one has ci first of all to bethink oneself and to consider. It It is necessary that in us ^rdvoia should take i place: that is what Christ’s forerunner, John; u the Baptist, when preaching, said to people! who were ensnared like ourselves. He said: c 4 First of all, repent — that is, bethink yourselves. 1 Even now is the axe laid to the root of the trees! t to cut them down. Death and destruction are j here, beside each one of you. Do not forget it: c bethink yourselves.’ And Christ, beginning t his teaching, says the same thing: 4 Repent, l or ye will all perish.’ t In Luke xiii. 1-5, Christ spoke of the destruc- g tion of the Gaiilaeans slain by Pilate, and he said: 4 Think ye that these Galileeans were i sinners above all the Galilaeans because they i have suffered these things? I tell you, Nay: j but, except ye repent, ye shall all in like manner perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed them, think ye that they were offenders above all the men that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’
Had he lived in our day, in Russia, he would have said: Think ye that those who were burnt in the circus at Berdichev, or those who perished at the Kukuevsky embankment 1 were worse than others? You will all also perish 1 The reference is to two disasters which occurred in Russia at the time Tolstoy was writing this book.
THE PATH OF LIFE unless you bethink yourselves, and find that 1 in your life which does not perish. The death of those crushed by the tower, or burnt in the circus, horrifies you; but your death, just as terrible and as unavoidable, awaits you, and in vain do you try to forget it. If it comes unexpectedly it will be all the more terrible.
He says (Luke xii. 54-7): 4 When ye see a cloud rising in the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it cometh to pass. And when ye see a south wind blowing, ye say, There will be a scorching heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye know how to interpret the face of the earth and the heaven; but how is it that ye know not how to interpret this time? And why even concerning your- selves judge ye not what is right? ’ You can forecast the weather by its indications; how is it you perceive not what will befall yourselves? Avoid danger, safe- guard your life as much as you please, and all the same, if Pilate does not kill you, a tower will fall on you, or, if neither Pilate nor the tower destroys you, you will die in your bed with yet greater suffering.
Make a simple calculation, as worldly people do when they undertake anything: either to build a tower, or to go to war, or to erect a factory. They plan and toil at an undertaking that may have a reasonable end.
Luke xiv. 28-31: 4 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply, when he hath laid 252 WHAT I BELIEVE a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that behold begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, as he goeth to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? * Is it not really senseless to work at something which, however much you may try, will never be accomplished? Death will always come sooner than the completion of the tower of your worldly happiness. And if you know in advance that, however you may strive against death, not you, but he, will conquer, is it not better to refrain from struggling against it, and not to devote your life to what will certainly perish, but rather seek some undertaking which will not be destroyed by inevitable death?
Luke xii. 22-7: ‘ And he said unto his