And it seemed to me that I had learnt this abroad, and in the year of the peasants' emanci- pation (1861) I returned to Russia armed with all this wisdom; and having become an Arbiter,1 I began to teach, both the uneducated peasants in schools and the educated classes through a magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well, but I felt I was not quite sound mentally, and that matters could not long con- tinue in that way. And I should perhaps then have come to the state of despair I reached fifteen years later, had there not been one side of life still unexplored by me, which promised me happiness: that was marriage.
For a year I busied myself with arbitration work, the schools, and the magazine; and I became so worn out — as a result especially of my mental confusion — and so hard was my 1 To keep peace between peasants and owners.
A CONFESSION 17 struggle as Arbiter, so obscure the results of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to one and the same thing: a desire to teach everybody, and to hide the fact that I did not know what to teach), that I fell ill, mentally rather than physically, threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkirs in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink kumys,1 and live a merely animal life.
Returning from there I married. The new conditions of happy family life completely diverted me from all search for the general mean- ing of life. My whole life was centred at that time in my family, wife and children, and there- fore in care to increase our means of livelihood. My striving after self-perfection, for which I had already substituted a striving for perfection in general, i.e. Progress, was now again replaced by the effort simply to secure the best possible con- ditions for myself and my family.
So another fifteen years passed.
In spite of the fact that I now regarded author- ship as of no importance, I yet, during those fifteen years, continued to write. I had already tasted the temptation of authorship: the temp- tation of immense monetary rewards and ap- plause for my insignificant work; and I devoted myself to it as a means of improving my material position, and of stifling in my soul all questions as to the meaning of my own life, or of life in general.
I wrote, teaching what was for me the only 1 A fermented drink prepared from mare’s milk.
18 A CONFESSION truth, that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one's family.
So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, as though I did not know how to live or what to do; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed, and I went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What's it for? What does it lead to? & At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known, and that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution, it would not cost me much effort; just at present I had no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be able to find the answer. The questions, however, began to repeat themselves frequently, and more and more insistently to demand replies; and like drops of ink always falling on one place, they ran together into one black blot.
That occurred which happens to every one sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear, to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can look round, what he took for a mere indis- position has already become more important to him than anything else in the world — it is death!
That was what happened to me. I understood A CONFESSION 19 that it was no casual indisposition, but some- ; thing very important, and that if these questions I constantly repeated themselves, they would ^ have to be answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed such stupid, simple, childish questions; but as soon as I touched them and tried to solve them, I at once became convinced (1) that they are not childish and stupid, but the most important and profound of life’s questions; and (2) that, try as I would, I could not solve them. Before occupying myself with my Samara estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing, and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management which greatly occupied me at that time, the question would suddenly occur to me: ‘Well, you will have 6,000 desyatinas 1 of land in Samara Govern- ment and 300 horses, and what next? ’...And I was quite disconcerted, and did not know what to think. Or, when considering my plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: ‘ What for? ’ Or when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I suddenly said to myself: £ But what does it matter to me? ’ Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I said to myself, ‘ Very well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or than all the writers in the world — and what of it? 9 And I could find no reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be 1 The desyatina is about 2| acres.
20 A CONFESSION answered at once, and if I did not answer them, l it was impossible to live. But there was no P answer.
I felt that what I had been standing on had p collapsed, and that I had nothing left under ^ my feet. What I had lived on no longer j * existed; and I had nothing left to live on.
My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which « I could consider reasonable. If I desired any- thing, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion, and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had, as it were, lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction.
It was impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death — complete annihilation. ^ It had come to this, that I, a healthy, fortunate A CONFESSION man, felt I could no longer live: some irresistible ■ power impelled me to rid myself one way or other of life. I cannot say I wished to kill myself. The power which drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, and more widespread than any mere wish. It was a force similar to the former striving to live, only in a contrary I direction. All my strength drew me away from life. The thought of self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had come formerly. And it was so seductive that I had to be wily with myself lest I should carry it out too hastily. I did not wish * to hurry, only because I wanted to use all efforts to disentangle the matter. £ If I cannot unravel matters, there will always be time.' And it was then that I, a man favoured by fortune, hid a cord from myself, lest I should hang myself from the crosspiece of the partition in my room, where I undressed alone every evening; and I ceased to go out shooting with a gun, lest I should be tempted by so easy a way of ending my life. I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it; yet still hoped something of it.
And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is considered; complete good fortune. I wasTioFyet fifty; I had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved, good children, and a large estate which without much effort on my part improved and increased. I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any previous time. I was praised by others, and without much self-deception 22 A CONFESSION could consider that my name was famous. And fa far from being insane or mentally diseased, I fa enjoyed on the contrary a strength of mind and a body such as I have seldom met with among men t of my kind; physically, I could keep up with s the peasants at mowing, and mentally I could ^ work for eight and ten hours at a stretch without s experiencing any ill results from such exertion. <■ ' And in this situation I came to this — that I could not live, and, fearing death, had to employ cunning with myself to avoid taking my own life.
My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my life is a stupid and spiteful joke some one has played on me. Though I did not * acknowledge a ‘ some one 5 who created me, yet such a presentation — that some one had played an evil and stupid joke on me by placing me in the world — was the form of expression that suggested itself most naturally to me.
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was some one who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how — having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit — like an arch- fool— seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, c! and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused...But whether that 4 some one * laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action, or to my whole life. I was only surprised i that I could have avoided understanding this A CONFESSION 23 from the very beginning — it has been so long known to all. To-day or to-morrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to I those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?...How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is sur- prising! One can only live while one is intoxi- cated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: , there is nothing either amusing or witty about it: it is simply cruel and stupid.
There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a , dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes a twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker, and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below; but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging, and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he 24 A CONFESSION 24 A CONFESSION will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was in- evitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly, and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. And this is not a fable, but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.
The deception of the j oys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, ‘ You cannot understand the meaning of life, so do not think about it, but live/ I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I 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 A CONFESSION 25 Ue 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 remem- brance; but soon I saw that that too was a fraud. It was plain to me that art is an adorn- ment 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, beauti- ful, and terrible — in life amused me. But when I knew life to be meaningless and terrible, the 26 26 A CONFESSION play in the mirror could no longer amuse me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw the dragon, and saw the mice gnaw- ing 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 con- fuses 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 feel- ing which drew me most strongly towards suicide.
y y c But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something? 9 said I to myself A CONFESSION 27 several times. c 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 equally found nothing. And not only had found nothing, but 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 scien- tists 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 28 A CONFESSION by the fault of science, but from my ignorance, but the matter was for me not a game or an * j amusement, but one of life and death, and I was involuntarily brought to the conviction that my j questions were the only legitimate ones, forming the basis of all knowledge, and that not I with j my questions was to blame, but science if it pre- 1 tends to reply to those questions.
My question — that which at the age of fifty 1 brought me to the verge of suicide — was the 1 simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every 1 man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without answering which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: ‘ What will come of what I am doing to-day or shall do to-morrow — What will come of my whole life? 5 Differently expressed, the question is: ‘ Why i should I live, why wish for anything, or do any- thing? ’ It can also be expressed thus: 4 Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? 5 To this one question, variously expressed, I sought an answer in science. And I found that in relation to that question all human know- ledge is divided as it were into two 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 the answer to life’s questions.
The one series of sciences seems not to recog- nize the question, but clearly and exactly replies to its own independent questions: that is the. series of experimental sciences, and at the ex- | A CONFESSION 29 treme end of them 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 them 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 my- self: 6 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.5 Ashamed as I am to confess it, there was a time when I seemed satisfied with that. It was just the time when I was myself becoming more com- plex and was developing. My muscles were growing and strengthening, my memory was being enriched, my capacity to think and under- stand was increasing, I was growing and develop- ing; and feeling this growth in myself it was (natural for me to think that such was the uni- versal 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 weak- ening, my teeth falling out, and I saw that the 30 A CONFESSION 30 A CONFESSION law not only did not explain anything to me, but v that there never had been or could be such a law, j and that I had taken for a law what I had found D in myself at a certain period of my life. I re- 0 garded the definition of that law more strictly; s and it became clear to me that there could be no j j law of endless development; it became clear ^ that to say, ‘ in infinite space and time every- 1 thing develops, becomes more perfect and more, complex, is differentiated/ is to say nothing, at all. Those are all words with no meaning, ■ for in the infinite there is neither complex nor simple, no forward or backward, no better or worse.
Above all, my personal question, ‘ What am I with my desires? 5 remained quite un- answered. And I understood that those sciences are very interesting, very 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 pre- tension to solve irrelevant questions, and a con- i tinual contradiction of each authority by others j 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 I A CONFESSION 31 which reply to their own special scientific ques- tions, 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: 4 To the question of what you are and why you live we have no reply, and are not occupied there- with; but if you want to know the laws of light, of chemical combinations, the laws of develop- ment 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: 4 Why do I live? ’ Answer: 4 In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small particles change their forms in infinite com- plexity, and when you have understood 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: 4 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 voca- tion is to forward the recognition and the realization of the ideals of humanity.’ And at the time of my weak-mindedness I was satisfied with that; but as soon as the question of life 32 A CONFESSION 32 A CONFESSION presented itself clearly to me, those theories s immediately crumbled away. Not to speak of ~ * the unscrupulous obscurity with which those j ^ sciences announce conclusions formed on the study of a small part of mankind, as general ' conclusions; not to speak of the mutual con- 1 tradictions of different adherents of this view, as to what are the ideals of humanity; the c! strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theory consists in the fact that in order to reply to the question facing each man: 4 What am I? ’ or * Why do I live % J or 4 What must I do % 9 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, man must first understand all this mys- terious 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 flew to dust. And I understood that as *j in the experimental sciences there are real j sciences, and semi-sciences which try to give j 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 M juridical and the social-historical, endeavour to A CONFESSION 33 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 I 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. vIt is only necessary for experimental science to introduce the question of a final cause, and it becomes nonsensical. The problem of abstract science is the recog- nition 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 then only 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 C 34 A CONFESSION 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: 4 What am I, and what is the universe? And why do I exist, and why does the universe j exist? * And since it has existed it has always replied in the same way. Whether the philo- sopher calls the essence of life existing within me, and in all that exists, by the name of 4 idea/ or 4 substance/ or 4 spirit/ or 4 will/ he says one and the same thing, that this essence exists, and that I am of the same essence; but why it is he does not know, and does not say, if he is an exact thinker. I ask: 4 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 philo- j sophy, all its labour lies merely in trying to put that question clearly. And if it keeps firmly to j its task, it cannot reply to the question others wise than thus: 4 What am I, and what is the