Looking at the narrow circle of my equals, I saw only people who had not understood the question, or who had understood it and drowned it in life's intoxication, or had understood it and ended their lives, or had understood it and yet, from weakness, were living out their desperate life. And I saw no others. It seemed to me that that narrow circle of rich, learned, and 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 iife, overlook the whole life of mankind that urrounded me on all sides; that I could to uch a degree blunder so absurdly as to think 54 A CONFESSION that my life, and Solomon's and Schopenhauer's,! 0 is the real, normal life, and that the life of the! p milliards is a circumstance undeserving of j I attention — strange as this now is to me, I see if that so it was. In the delusion of my pride of j li intellect, it seemed to me so indubitable that 1 1 a and Solomon and Schopenhauer had stated the j s question so truly and exactly that nothing else j i was possible — so indubitable did it seem that 1 all those milliards consisted of men who had 1 not yet arrived at the apprehension of all the 1 profundity of the question — that I sought for 1 the meaning of my life without it once occurring i to me to ask: 4 But what meaning is, and has 1 been, given to their lives by all the milliards of common folk who live and have lived in the i 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 A CONFESSION 55 A CONFESSION 55 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 under- standing 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 reasbnable knowledge does not give the meaning of life, that it excludes life: while the meaning attri- buted 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, 56 A CONFESSION 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, and people know this — it depends on them not to live; 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 repudiate my reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required.
IX IX 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 con- clusion 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: 4 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? 5 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 A CONFESSION 57 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: 4 What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space? ’ And I replied to the question: 4 What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space? 5 It resulted that, after long efforts of thought, I replied: 4 None.5 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 mathe- matics, 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, oy x equals x, or o equals o. 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 58 A CONFESSION — the reply of Schopenhauer: that life has no t meaning and is an evil. But on examining the! is matter I understood that the reply is not positive, j r( it was only my feeling that so expressed it, J Strictly expressed, as it is by the Brahmins andjn by Solomon and Schopenhauer, the reply is Id merely indefinite, or an identity: o equals o, life t is nothing. So that philosophic knowledge li denies nothing, but only replies that the question I cannot be solved by it — that for it the solution it remains indefinite. c Having understood this, I understood that it l was not possible to seek in rational knowledge a for a reply to my question, and that the reply 1 given by rational knowledge is a mere indica- 1 tion that a reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question, and only when i the relation of the finite to the infinite is included 1 in the question. And I understood that, how- ever irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation j between the finite and the infinite, without! j 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 tor- ment 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 A CONFESSION 59 humanity has another irrational knowledge — Eaith 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 3onsequently it makes life possible. Reasonable knowledge had brought me to acknowledge that jfe is senseless — my life had come to a halt and [ wished to destroy myself. Looking around on bhe whole of mankind I saw that people live and leclare that they know the meaning of life. I ooked at myself, I had lived as long as I knew i meaning of life. As to others so also to me iaith had given a meaning to life and had made life possible.
Looking again at people of other lands, at ny contemporaries and at their predecessors, [ saw the same thing. Where there is life there, since man began, faith has made life possible or him, and the chief outline of that faith is everywhere and always identical.
Whatever the faith might be, and whatever mswers it might give, and to whomsoever it rave them, every such answer gives to the inite existence of man an infinite meaning, a neaning not destroyed by sufferings, depriva- tions, or death. This means that only in faith san we find for life a meaning and a possibility. , jVhat, then, is this faith? ^And I understood i Lat faith is not merely ‘ the evidence of things Lot seen/ etc., and is not a revelation (that i Refines only one of the indications of faith), is tot the relation of man to God (one has first to s lefine faith, and then God, and not define faith 60 A CONFESSION through God); it is not only agreement wit! 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. Fait! 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 4,, U he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he under- stands 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 menta] labour and was horrified. It was now clear tc me that for man to be able to live he must eithei 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 0 equals 0, and was much astonished at that conclusion though nothing else could have resulted.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in the experimental sciences? I wished to know why I live, and for this purpose studied all that A CONFESSION 61 ■jis outside me. Evidently I might learn much, [y blit nothing of what I needed.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in ^ philosophical knowledge? I was studying the a thoughts of those who had found themselves in Jsthe same position as I, lacking a reply to the ie question, 4 Why do I live? 5 Evidently I H could learn nothing but what I knew myself, -e namely that nothing can be known. r. What am I? — A part of the infinite. In those it few words lies the whole problem.
Is it possible that humanity has only put that question to itself since yesterday? And jean no one before me have set himself that 0 question — a question so simple, and one that j springs to the tongue of every wise child?
Q Surely that question has been asked since man e began; and naturally, for the solution of that j question since man began, it has been equally j insufficient to compare the finite with the finite P and the infinite with the infinite, and since man [ began the relation of the finite to the infinite has been sought out and expressed.
All these conceptions in which the finite has been adjusted to the infinite, and a meaning is found for life: the conception of God, of will, of goodness, we submit to logical examination. And all those conceptions fail to stand reason's criticism.
Were it not so terrible, it would be ludicrous, with what pride and self-satisfaction we, like children, pull the watch to pieces, take out the jspring, make a toy of it, and are then surprised that the watch does not go.
62 A CONFESSION A solution of the contradiction between the finite and the infinite, and such a reply to the question of life as will make it possible to live,! is necessary and precious. And that is the only solution which we find everywhere, always, and among all peoples: a solution descending | from times in which we lose sight of the life of man, a solution so difficult that we can compose nothing like it — and this solution we light-] heartedly destroy in order again to set the same question, which is natural to every one and to which we have no answer.
The conception of an infinite God, the divinity of the soul, the connexion of human affairs with God, the unity and existence of the soul, man's conception of moral goodness and evih — are conceptions formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought, they are those conceptions without which neither life nor I should exist; yet rejecting all that labour of the whole of humanity, I wished to remake it afresh myself and in my own manner.
I did not then think like that, but the germs of these thoughts were already in me. I understood, in the first place, that my position with Schopenhauer and Solomon, notwith- standing our wisdom, was stupid: we see that life is an evil and yet continue to live. That is evidently stupid, for if life is senseless, and I am so fond of what is reasonable, it should be destroyed, and then there would be no one to challenge it. Secondly, I understood that all one's reasonings turned in a vicious circle, like a wheel out of gear with its pinion. Howev( cai ah pn an is th of or b f( d i fi t: a ( i A CONFESSION 63 } ever much and however well we may reason, we ) cannot obtain a reply to the question; but o always equals o, and therefore our path is probably erroneous. Thirdly, I began to understand that in the replies given by faith ? is stored up the deepest human wisdom, and f that I had no right to deny them on the ground 3 of reason, and that those answers are the only • ones which reply to life's question.
X 1 ] I understood this, but it made matters no f better for me. X was now ready to accept any - faith, if only it did not demand of me a direct genial of reason — which would be a falsehood. And I studied Buddhism and Mohammedanism Erom books, and most of all I studied Chris- tianity both from books and from the people around me.
Naturally I first of all turned to the Orthodox Df my circle, to people who were learned: to Dhurch theologians, monks, to theologians of the newest shade, and even to Evangelicals, who profess salvation by belief in the Redemp- tion. And I seized on these believers and questioned them as to their beliefs and their jinderstanding of the meaning of life.
But though I made all possible concessions, md avoided all disputes, I could not accept the faith of these people. I saw that what they ;ave out as their faith did not explain the neaning of life but obscured it, and that they 64 A CONFESSION themselves affirm their belief, not to answeil that question of life which brought me to faith.! ( but for some other aims alien to me.
I remember the painful feeling of fear of being thrown back into my former state of c despair, after the hope I often and often expe-j £ rienced in my intercourse with these people. I The more fully they explained to me their j doctrines, the more clearly did I perceive their | y error and realized that my hope of finding in! c their belief an explanation of the meaning of life was vain.
It was not that in their doctrines they mixed J many unnecessary and unreasonable things with the Christian truths that had always been near to me: that was not what repelled me.j I was repelled by the fact that these people's! • lives were like my own, with only this difference ■ —that such a life did not correspond to the! principles they expounded in their teachings.
I clearly felt that they deceived themselves and that they, like myself, found no other 1 meaning in life than to live while life lasts,; taking all one's hands can seize. I saw this ^ because if they had had a meaning which 1 destroyed the fear of loss, suffering, and death, ^ they would not have feared these things. But J they, these believers of our circle, just like D myself, living in sufficiency and superfluity, tried to increase or preserve them, feared n privations, suffering, and death, and just like jil myself and all of us unbelievers, lived to satisfy j? their desires, and lived just as badly, if not \ worse, than the unbelievers. Itf A CONFESSION 65 No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith. Only deeds which showed that they saw a meaning in life, which made what was so dreadful to me — poverty, sickness, and death — not dreadful to them,> could convince me. And such deeds I did not see among the various believers in our circle. On the contrary, I saw such deeds done 1 * * * by people of our circle who were the most unbelieving, but never by our so-called believers.
And I understood that the belief of these people was not the faith I sought, and that their faith is not a real faith but an epicurean consolation in life.
I understood that that faith may perhaps serve, if not for a consolation, at least for some [distraction for a repentant Solomon on his Ideath-bed, but it cannot serve for the great majority of mankind, who are called on not to amuse themselves while consuming the labour of others, but to create life.
For all humanity to be able to live, and continue to live attributing a meaning to life, they, those milliards, must have a different, a real knowledge of faith. Indeed, it was not the fact that we, with Solomon and Schopen- hauer, did not kill ourselves that convinced me i 1 This passage is noteworthy as being one of the few ] References made by Tolstoy at this period to the revoe jutionary or ‘ Back-to-the-Peopie 5 movement, in which nany young men! and women were risking and sacrifici ng home, property, and life itself, from motives which t lad much in common with his own perception that fhe upper layers of Society are parasitic, and prey >n the vitals of the people who support them.
66 A CONFESSION of the existence of faith, but the fact that those & milliards of people have lived and are living, } and have borne Solomon and us on the current v of their lives.
And I began to draw near to the believers 4 among the poor, simple, unlettered folk: pil- grims, monks, sectarians, and peasants. The ^ faith of these common people was the same 4 Christian faith as was professed by the pseudo- I ® believers of our circle. Among them, too, I 0 found a great deal of superstition mixed with a the Christian truths; but the difference was P that the superstitions of the believers of our 5 circle were quite unnecessary to them, and.4 were not in conformity with their lives, being k merely a kind of epicurean diversion; but 81 the superstitions of the believers among the a labouring masses conformed so with their a lives that it was impossible to imagine them a to oneself without those superstitions, which & were a necessary condition of their life. The h whole life of believers in our circle was a con- 4 tradiction of their faith, but the whole life of.4 the working-folk believers was a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith gave § them. And I began to look well into the life J and faith of these people, and the more I n considered it the more I became convinced I that they have a real faith, which is a necessity U to them and alone gives their life a meaning and g makes it possible for them to live. In contrast Hi with what I had seen in our circle — where life « without faith is possible, and where hardly one in a thousand acknowledges himself to be a A CONFESSION 67 believer — among them there is hardly one unbeliever in a thousand. In contrast with what I had seen in our circle, where the whole of life is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction, I saw that the whole life of these people was passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life. In contra- distinction to the way in which people of our circle oppose fate and complain of it on account of deprivations and sufferings, these people accepted illness and sorrow without any per- plexity or opposition, and with a quiet and firm conviction that all is good. In contra- distinction to us, who the wiser we are the less we understand the meaning of life, and see some evil irony in the fact that we suffer and die, these folk live and suffer, and they approach death and suffering with tranquillity and in most cases gladly. In contrast to the ract that a tranquil death, a death without aorror and despair, is a very rare exception n our circle, a troubled, rebellious, and unhappy leath is the rarest exception among the people. knd such people, lacking all that for us and for Solomon is the only good of life, and yet ex- periencing the greatest happiness, are a great nultitude. I looked more widely around me.
considered the life of the enormous mass of he people in the past and the present. And f such people, understanding the meaning of ife and able to live and to die, I saw not two r three, or tens, but hundreds, thousands, and aillions. And they all — endlessly different in heir manners, minds, education, and position 68 A CONFESSION as they were — all alike, in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, laboured quietly, endured deprivations and sufferings, and lived and died, seeing therein not vanity but good.
And I learnt to love these people. The more I came to know their life, the life of those who are living and of others who are dead, of whom I read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier it became for me to live. So I went on for about two years, and a change took place in me which had long been preparing, and the promise of which had always been in me. It came about that the life of our circle, the rich and learned, not merely became distaste- ful to me, but lost all meaning in my eyes. All our actions, discussions, science and art, presented itself to me in a new light. I under- stood that it is all merely self-indulgence, and that to find a meaning in it is impossible; ] while the life of the whole labouring people,: the whole of mankind who produce life, appeared ' to me in its true significance. I understood ' that that is life itself, and that the meaning 1 given to that life is true: and I accepted it. { j i i 1 XI 1 i i 1 XI 1 And remembering how those very beliefs had I j repelled me and had seemed meaningless when g professed by people whose lives conflicted with ^ them, and how these same beliefs attracted me s and seemed reasonable when I saw that people ( A CONFESSION 69 lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly, as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me, so much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life; but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil and an absurd- ity. And really my life — a life of indulgence of desires — was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, ‘ Life is evil and an absurdity/ referred only to my life, but not to human life in general. I understood the truth, which I afterwards found in the Gospels, ‘ that men loved darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil. For every one that doeth ill hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved.’ I perceived that to understand the meaning of life it is necessary first that life should not be meaningless and evil, and then reason is needed to explain it. I understood why I had so long wandered round so evident a truth, and that if one is to think and speak of the life of mankind, one must think and speak of that life, and not of the life of some of life’s parasites. That truth was always as 70 A CONFESSION true as that two and two are four, but I had not j acknowledged it, because on admitting two and two to be four, I had also to admit that I was bad; and to feel myself to be good was for me more important and necessary than for two and two to be four. I came to love good people, hated myself, and confessed the truth. Now; all became clear to me.
What if an executioner passing his whole life in torturing people and cutting off their heads— or a hopeless drunkard, or a madman settled for life in a dark room which he has fouled, and imagined that he would perish if he left — what if he asked himself: ‘ What is life? ’ Evi- dently he could get no other reply to that question than that life is the greatest evil; and j the madman’s answer would be perfectly correct, but only as applied to himself. What if I am such a madman? What if all we rich and leisured people are such madmen? and I under- stood that we are really such madmen. I at any rate was certainly such.
And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a nest, and when I see that a bird does this, I have pleasure in its joy. A goat, a hare, and a wolf are so made that they 1 must feed themselves, and must breed and feed their family, and when they do so, I feel firmly assured that they are happy and that their life is a reasonable one. Then what should a man do? He too should produce his living as the animals do, but with this difference, that he will perish if he does it alone; he must obtain it not for himself but for all. And when he A CONFESSION 71 does that, I have a firm assurance that he is happy and that his life is reasonable. But what had I done during the whole thirty years of my responsible life? Far from producing suste- nance for all, I did not even produce it for myself. I lived as a parasite, and on asking myself, what is the use of my life? I got the reply: 4 No use.’ If the meaning of human life lies in supporting it, how could I — who for thirty years had been engaged not on supporting life but on destroying it in myself and in others — how could I obtain any other answer than that my life was senseless and an evil?...It was both senseless and evil.