The life of the world endures by some one’s will — by the life of the whole world and by our lives some one fulfils his purpose. To hope to understand the meaning of that will one must first perform it by doing what is wanted of us. Bat if I will not do what is wanted of me, I shall never understand what is wanted of me, and still less what is wanted of us all and of the whole world.
If a naked, hungry beggar has been taken from the cross-roads, brought into a building belong- ing to a beautiful establishment, fed, supplied with drink, and obliged to move a handle up and down, evidently, before discussing why he was taken, why he should move the handle, and whether the whole establishment is reasonably j | arranged — the beggar should first of all move > the handle. If he moves the handle, he will , understand that it works a pump, that the pump draws water and that the water irrigates the 72 A CONFESSION 72 A CONFESSION garden beds; then he will be taken from ^ the pumping station to another place where gj he will gather fruits and will enter into the joy ffi of his master, and, passing from lower to higher work, will understand more and more of the j arrangements of the establishment, and taking j ai part in it will never think of asking why he is s] there, and will certainly not reproach the j j master. 0 So those who do his will, the simple, unlearned g working folk, whom we regard as cattle, do not j reproach the master; but we, the wise, eat the j master’s food but do not do what the master wishes, and instead of doing it sit in a circle and; discuss: ‘ Why should that handle be moved? } Isn’t it stupid! ’ So we have decided. We ( have decided that the master is stupid, or does j not exist, and that we are wise, only we feel ( that we are quite useless and that we must somehow do away with ourselves.
XII XII The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge helped me to free myself from the temptation of idle ratiocination. The convic- tion that knowledge of truth can only be found by living led me to doubt the rightness of my life; but I was saved only by the fact that I was able to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to see the real life of the plain, working people, j and to understand that it alone is real life. I understood that if I wish to understand life and j its meaning, I must not live the life of a parasite, j A CONFESSION 73 but must live a real life, and — taking the meaning given to life by real humanity, and merging myself in that life — verify it.
During that time this is what happened to me. During that whole year, when I was asking myself almost every moment whether I should not end matters with a noose or a bullet — all that time, together with the course of thought and observation about which I have spoken, my heart was oppressed with a painful feeling, which I can only describe as a search for God.
I say that that search for God was not reason- ing but a feeling, because that search proceeded not from the course of my thoughts — it was even directly contrary to them — but proceeded from the heart. It was a feeling of fear, orphanage, isolation in a strange land, and a jhope of help from some one.
Though I was quite convinced of the impossi- bility of proving the existence of a Deity (Kant- had shown, and I quite understood him, that it could not be proved), I yet sought for God, I; hoped that I should find Him, and from old habit addressed prayers to that which I sought but had not found. I went over in my mind the argu- ments of Kant and Schopenhauer showing the impossibility of proving the existence of a God, and I began to verify those arguments and to refute them. Cause, said I to myself, is not a category of thought such as are Time and Space. If I exist, there must be some cause for it, and a cause of causes. And that first cause of all is what men have called ‘ God.’ And X D* 74 A CONFESSION paused on that thought, and tried with all my being to recognize the presence of that cause. And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a force in whose power I am, I at once felt that I could live. But I asked myself: What is that cause, that force? How am I to think of it? What are my relations to that which I call ‘ God 5? And only the familiar replies occurred to me: ‘ He is the Creator and Preserver.5 This reply did not satisfy me, and I felt I was losing within me what I needed for my life. I became terrified and began to pray to Him whom I sought, that He should help me. But the more I prayed the more apparent it became to me that He did not hear me, and that there was no one to whom to address myself. And with despair in my heart that there is no God at all, I said: 'Lord, have mercy, save me! Lord, teach me! 5 But no one had mercy on me, and I felt that my life was coming to a standstill.
But again and again, from various sides, I returned to the same admission that I could not have come into the world without any cause or reason or meaning; I could not be such a fledgling fallen from its nest as I felt myself to be. Or, granting that I be such, lying on my back crying in the high grass, even then I cry because I know that a mother has borne me within her, has hatched me, warmed me, fed me, and loved me. Where is she — that mother? If I have been deserted, who has deserted me? I cannot hide from myself that some one bore me, loving me. Who was that some one?
A CONFESSION 75 A CONFESSION 75 Again 4 God ’? He knows and sees my search- 1 ing, my despair, and my struggle, j 4 He exists,’ said I to myself. And I had only for an instant to admit that, and at once life rose within me, and I felt the possibility and joy of being. But again, from the admission of the existence of a God I went on to seek my relation with Him; and again I imagined that God — our Creator in Three Persons who sent His Son, the Saviour — and again that God, detached from the world and from me, melted like a block of ice, melted before my eyes, and again nothing remained, and again the spring of life dried up within me, and I despaired, and felt that I had nothing to do but to kill myself. And the worst of all was, that I felt I could not do it.
Not twice or three times, but tens and hundreds of times, I reached those conditions, first of joy and animation, and then of despair and consciousness of the impossibility of living.
I remember that it was in early spring: I was alone in the wood listening to its sounds. I listened and thought ever of the same thing, as I had constantly done during those last three years. I was again seeking God.
4 Very well, there is no God,’ said I to myself; 4 there is no one who is not my imagination but a reality like my whole life. He does not exist, and no miracles can prove His existence, because the miracles would be my imagination, i besides being irrational.
4 But my perception of God, of Him whom I - seek,’ asked I of myself, 4 where has that per- j ception come from? ’ And again at this thought 76 A CONFESSION the glad waves of life rose within me. All that was around me came to life and received a meaning. But my joy did not last long. My mind continued its work.
‘ The conception of God is not God/ said I to myself. £ The conception is what takes place within me. The conception of God is something I can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself. That is not what I seek. I seek that without which there can be no life/ And again all around me and within me began to die, and again I wished to kill myself.
But then I turned my gaze upon myself, on what went on within me, and I remembered all those cessations of life and reanimations that recurred within me hundreds of times. I remembered that I only lived at those times when I believed in God. As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget Him, or disbelieve in Him, and I died.
What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek Him. ‘ What more do you seek? ’ exclaimed a voice within me. ‘ This is He. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life/ e Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God/ And more than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me.
A CONFESSION 77 And I was saved from suicide. When and ' how this change occurred I could not say. As imperceptibly and gradually the force of life in me had been destroyed and I had reached the impossibility of living, a cessation of life and the necessity of suicide, so imperceptibly and grad- ually did that force of life return to me. And strange to say the strength of life which returned to me was not new, but quite old — the same that had borne me along in my earliest days.
I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief in that Will which produced me, and desires something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim of my life is tcTbe better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will. And I returned to the belief that I can find the expression of that Will in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from me, has produced for its guidance: that is to say, I returned to a be- lief in God, in moral perfection, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life. There was only this difference, that then all this was accepted unconsciously, while now I knew that without it I could not live.
What happened to me was something of this kind: I was put into a boat (I do not remember when) and pushed off from an unknown shore, shown the direction to the opposite shore, had oars put into my unpractised hands, and was left alone. I rowed as best I could and moved forward; but the further I advanced towards the middle of the stream the more rapid grew the current bearing me away from my goal, and 78 A CONFESSION the more frequently did I encounter others, like myself, borne away by the stream. There were a few rowers who continued to row, there were others who had abandoned their oars; there were large boats and immense vessels full of people. Some struggled against the current, others yielded to it. And the further I went the more I forgot, seeing the progress down the current of all those who were adrift, the direction given me. In the very centre of the stream, amid the crowd of boats and vessels which were being borne down stream, I quite lost my direc- tion and abandoned my oars. Around me, on all sides, with mirth and rejoicing, people with sails and oars were borne down the stream, assuring me and each other that no other direc- tion was possible. And I believed them and floated with them. And I was carried far; so far that I heard the roar of the rapids in which I must be shattered, and I saw boats shattered in them. And I recollected myself. I was long unable to understand what had happened to me. I saw before me nothing but destruction, towards which I was rushing, and which I feared. I saw no safety anywhere, and did not know what to do; but, looking back, I perceived innumerable boats which unceasingly and strenuously pushed across the stream, and I remembered about the shore, the oars, and the direction, and began to pull back upwards against the stream and towards the shore.
That shore was God; that direction was tradition; the oars were the freedom given me to pull for the shore and unite with God. And A CONFESSION 79 so the force of life was renewed in me, and I again began to live.
XIII I turned from the life of our circle, acknow- ledging that ours is not life, but a simula- tion of life— that the conditions of superfluity in which we live deprive us of the possibility of understanding life, and that in order to under- stand life I must understand not an exceptional life such as ours who are parasites on life, but the life of the simple labouring folk — those who make life — and the meaning which they attri- bute to it. The simple labouring people around me were the Russian people, and I turned to them, and to the meaning of life which they give. That meaning, if one can put it into words, was as follows: Every man has come into this world by the will of God. And God has so made man that every man can destroy his soul or save it. The aim of man in life is to save his soul, and to save his soul he must live ‘ godly * and to live ‘ godly ’ he must renounce all the pleasures of life, must labour, humble himself, suffer and be merciful. That meaning the people obtain from the whole teaching of faith transmitted to them by their pastors and by the traditions that live among the people. This ; meaning was clear to me and near to my heart. But together with this meaning of the popular faith of our non-sectarian folk, among whom I live, much was inseparably bound up that 80 A CONFESSION revolted me and seemed to me inexplicable: sacraments, Church services, fasts, and the ado- ration of relics and icons. The people cannot separate the one from the other, nor could I. And strange as much of what entered into the faith of these people was to me, I accepted every- thing; and attended the services, knelt morning and evening in prayer, fasted, and prepared to receive the Eucharist: and at first my reason did not resist anything. The very things that had formerly seemed to me impossible did not now evoke in me any opposition.
My relations to faith before and after were quite different. Formerly life itself seemed to me full of meaning, and faith presented itself as the arbitrary assertion of propositions to me quite unnecessary, unreasonable, and discon- nected from life. I then asked myself what meaning those propositions had and, convinced that they had none, I rejected them. Now on the contrary I knew firmly that my life otherwise has, and can have, no meaning; and the articles of faith were far from presenting themselves to me as unnecessary — on the contrary I had been led by indubitable experience to the con- viction that only these propositions presented by faith give life a meaning. Formerly I looked on them as on some quite unnecessary gibberish, but now, if I did not understand them, I yet knew that they had a meaning, and I said to myself that I must learn to understand them.
I argued as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of faith flows, like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious source. That A CONFESSION 81 A CONFESSION 81 source is God, the origin both of the human body and the human reason. As my body has de- scended to me from God, so also has my reason and my understanding of life, and consequently the v¥nous~stages of the development of that under sfandmg of life cannot be false. All that pecrpl0ihceferyn5eEeYelhlmui0^me~;~it may be differently expressed but it cannot be a lie, and thereforeTf it presents itself to me a sa lie, that only means that I have not understood it. Furthermore I said to myself, the essence of every faith consists in its. giving life, a., meaning which death does not destroy. Naturally for a faith to be able to reply to" the questions of a king dying in luxury, of an old slave tormented by overwork, of an unreasonable child, of a wise old man, of a half-witted old woman, of a young and happy wife, of a youth tormented by passions, of all people in the most varied con- ditions of life and education — if there is one reply to the one eternal question of life: 4 Why do I live, and what will result from my life? J — the reply, though one in its essence, must be endlessly varied in its presenfaH^T^^tKemore ifts^one, the°^mofe 'true and profound it is, the Ttnore strange and deformed must it naturally appear in its attempted exp^ to the education and posicion of each person.
But this afgumentT^ Jusfifpng ^ In My ey es "the queerness of much on the ritual side of religion, did not suffice to allow me in the one great affair of life — religion — to do things which seemed to > me questionable. With all my soul I wished to be in a position to mingle with the people, 82 A CONFESSION fulfilling the ritual side of their religion; but I could not do it. I felt that I should lie to myr self, and mock at what was sacred to me, were I to do so. At this point, however, our new Russian theological writers came to my rescue.
According to the explanation these theolo- gians gave, the fundamental dogma of our faith is the infallibility of the^CThurch7“" From the admission of that dogma follows inevitably the ^ truth of all that is professed by the Church.
IThe Church as an assembly of true believers united by love, and therefore possessed of true knowledge, became the basis of my belief. I told myself that divine truth cannot be acces- sibleto a separate individual; it is revealed only to the whole assembl^^ people united by love.
To atfaih trud; and in order not to separate, one must love and must endure things one may not agree with. 7 Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the rites of the Church, you transgress against love; and by transgressing against love you deprive yourself of the possibility of recog- nizing the truth. I did not then see the sophis- try contained in this argument. I did not see that union in love may give the greatest love, but certainly cannot give us divine truth ex- pressed in the definite words of the Nicene Creed. I also did not perceive that love cannot make a certain expression of truth an obligatory con- dition of union. I did not then see these mis- takes in the argument and, thanks to it, was able to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding most A CONFESSION 83 ; of them. I then tried with all the strength of my soul to avoid all arguments and contra- dictions, and tried to explain as reasonably as possible the statements of the Church I en- countered.
When fulfilling the rites of the Church, I humbled my reason and submitted to the tradition possessed by all humanity. I united myself with my forefathers: the father, mother, and grandparents I loved. They and all my predecessors believed and lived, and they produced me. I united myself also with the millions of the common people, whom I re- spected. Moreover, those actions had nothing bad in themselves (‘ bad ’ I considered the indulgence of one’s desires). When rising early for Church services, I knew I was doing well, if only because I was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental pride, for the sake of union with my ancestors and contemporaries, and for the sake of finding the meaning of life. It was the same with my preparations to receive Communion, and with the daily reading of prayers with genuflections, and also with the observance of all the fasts. However insignificant these sacrifices might be, I made them for the sake of something good. I fasted, prepared for Communion, and observed the fixed hours of prayer at home and in church. During Church service I attended to every word, and gave them a meaning whenever I could. In the Mass the most important words for me were: ‘ Let us love one another in conformity! ’ The further words, ‘ In unity 84 A CONFESSION 84 A CONFESSION we believe, in the Father, the Son, and Holy l Ghost/ I passed by, because I could not under- | j stand them.
XIV < XIV < It was then so necessary for me to believe j in order to live that I unconsciously concealed from myself the contradictions and obscurities of theology. But this reading of meanings, into the rites had its limits. If the chief words J in the prayer for the Emperor became more and ( more clear to me, if I found some explanation for the words ‘ and remembering our Sovereign ( Most-Holy Mother of God and all the Saints, ] ourselves and one another, we give our whole 1 life to Christ our God/ if I explained to myself j the frequent repetition of prayers for the Tsar ( and his relations by the fact that they are ( more exposed to temptations than other people and therefore are more in need of being prayed for — the prayers about subduing our enemies J and evil under our feet (even if one tried to ( say that sin was the enemy prayed against),. these and other prayers, such as the 4 cherubic j song 5 and the whole sacrament of the oblation/' j or ‘ the chosen warriors/ etc. — quite two-thirds ( of all the services — either remained completely! incomprehensible or, when I forced an explana- [ ( tion into them, made me feel that I was lying, j j thereby quite destroying my relation to God 8 and depriving me of all possibility of belief.
I felt the same about the celebration of the A CONFESSION 85 chief holidays. To remember the Sabbath, that is to devote one day to God, was something I could understand. But the chief holiday was in commemoration of the Resurrection, the reality of which I could not picture to myself or understand. And that name of 4 Resur- rection y was also given to the weekly holiday.1 And on those days the Sacrament of the Eucharist was administered, which was quite unintelligible to me. The rest of the twelve great holidays, except Christmas, commemo- rated miracles — the things I tried not to think about in order not to deny: the Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, the Feast of the Inter- cession of the Holy Virgin, etc. At the cele- bration of these holidays, feeling that importance was being attributed to the very things that to me presented a negative importance, I either devised tranquillizing explanations, or shut my eyes in order not to see what tempted me.
Most of all this happened to me when taking part in the most usual Sacraments, which are considered the most important: baptism and i communion. There I encountered not incom- prehensible but fully comprehensible doings: doings which seemed to me to lead into tempta- tion, and I was in a dilemma — whether to lie, or to reject them.
Never shall I forget the painful feeling I experienced the day I received the Eucharist for the first time after many years. The service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and produced in me a glad conscious- 1 In Russia Sunday is called Resurrection-day.
A CONFESSION A CONFESSION ness that the meaning of life was being revealed j s to me. The Communion itself I explained as j ' an act performed in remembrance of Christ, 1 and indicating a purification from sin and the 1 full acceptance of Christ’s teaching. If that; ‘ explanation was artificial 1 did not notice its; artificiality: so happy was I at humbling and ‘ abasing' myself before the priest — a simple, I timid country clergyman — turning all the dirt 1 out of my soul and confessing my vices, so glad 1 was I to merge in thought with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the 1 office, so glad was I of union with all who have 1 believed and now believe, that I did not notice 1 the artificiality of my explanation. But when ] I approached the altar gates, and the priest f made me say that I believed that what I was 1 about to swallow wras truly flesh and blood,; 1 I felt a pain in my heart: it was not merely 1 a false note, it was a cruel demand made by! some one or other who evidently had never 1 known what faith is.
I now permit myself to say that it was a 1 cruel demand, but I did not then think so: ( only it was indescribably painful to me. I was ^ no longer in the position in which I had been I in youth, when I thought all in life was clear; 5 I had indeed come to faith because, apart from ( faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, I except destruction; therefore to throw away 1 that faith was impossible, and I submitted. ] And I found in my soul a feeling which helped me to endure it. This was the feeling of self- j ' abasement and humility. I humbled myself, ' A CONFESSION 87 swallowed that flesh and blood without any blasphemous feelings, and with a wish to believe. But the blow had been struck and, knowing what awaited me, I could not go a second time.
I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church : and still believed that the doctrine I was following contained the truth, when something happened to me which I now understand but which then seemed strange.
I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant, a pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation, when a knowledge of faith revealed itself to me. I drew near to the people, listening to their opinions on life and faith, and I understood the truth more and more. So also was it when I read the Lives of Holy Men, which became my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles, and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this reading revealed to me life’s meaning. There were the lives of Makarius the Great, the story of Buddha, there were the words of St. John Chrysostom, and there were the stories of the traveller in the well, the monk who found some gold, and of Peter the publican. There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does not exclude life; and there were the stories of ignorant, stupid men, who knew nothing of the teaching of the Church, but who yet were saved.
But as soon as I met learned believers, or {took up their books, doubt of myself, dis- satisfaction, and exasperated disputation w ere 88 A CONFESSION roused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the meaning of these men’s speech, the more I went astray from truth and ap- | proached an abyss.
XV How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of learning! Those state- ments in the creeds, which to me were evident absurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept them and could believe in the truth — in the truth I believed in. Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it in that! form.