So I lived for about three years. At first,, 1 when I was only slightly associated with truth ] as a catechumen, and was only scenting out £ what seemed to me clearest, these encounters I struck me less. When I did not understand i anything, I said, ‘It is my fault, I am sinful ’; s but the more I became imbued with the truths j £ I was learning, the more they became the ( basis of my life, the more oppressive and the I more painful became these encounters, and the P'i sharper became the line between what I do; I not understand because I am not able to t understand it, and what cannot be understood 1 except by lying to oneself. a In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still; i clung to the Orthodox Church. But questions a of life arose which had to be decided; and the 1 1 A CONFESSION 89 decision of these questions by the Church — contrary to the very bases of the belief by which I lived, — obliged me at last to renounce com- munion with Orthodoxy as impossible. These questions were: first the relation of the Ortho- dox Eastern Church to other Churches — to the Catholics and to the so-called sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my interest in religion, I came into touch with believers of various faiths: Catholics, Protestants, Old- Believers, Molokans,1 and others. And I met among them many men of lofty morals who were truly religious. I wished to be a brother to them. And what happened? That teaching which promised to unite all in one faith and love — that very teaching, in the person of its best representatives, told me that these men were all living a lie; that what gave them their power of life was a temptation of the devil; and what we alone possess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are con- sidered by the Orthodox to be heretics; just as the Catholics and others consider the Ortho- dox to be heretics. And I saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this is naturally so: first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers cannot 1 A sect that rejects sacraments and ritual 90 A CONFESSION help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a false belief. | And that hostility is increased in proportion to one’s greater knowledge of theology. And. to me, who considered that truth lay in union s by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to produce.
This temptation is so obvious to us edu- cated people who have lived in countries where j various religions are professed, and have seen the contempt, self-assurance, and invincible contradiction with which Catholics behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and the Protestants to the two others, and ( the similar attitude of Old-Believers, Pash- kovites (Russian Evangelicals), Shakers, and all religions — that the very obviousness of the: temptation at first perplexes us. One says ] to oneself: it is impossible that it is so simple j and that people do not see that if two assertions { are mutually contradictory, then neither of i them has the sole truth which faith should < possess. There is something else here, there j must be some explanation. I thought there j was, and sought that explanation, and read all ] I could on the subject, and consulted all whom ~ [ I could. And no one gave me any explanation, a except the one which causes the Sumsky Hus- i a sars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the best | ( regiment in the world, and the Yellow Uhlans ] to consider that the best regiment in the world a is the Yellow Uhlans. The ecclesiastics of all the j j different creeds, through their best representa- j 8 A CONFESSION 91 A CONFESSION 91 tives, told me nothing but that they believed themselves to have the truth, and the others to be in error, and that all they could do was to pray for them. I went to archimandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked them; but none of them made any attempt to explain the matter to me, except one man, who explained it all, and explained it so that I never asked any one any more about it. I said that for every unbeliever turning to belief (and all our young generation are in a position to do so) the question that presents itself first is, why is truth not in Lutheranism nor in Catholicism, but in Ortho- doxy? Educated in the high school, he cannot help knowing — what the peasants do not know —that the Protestants and Catholics equally affirm that their faith is the only true one.
I Historical evidence, twisted by each religion in its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not possible, said I, to understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from its height the differences should disappear, as they do for one who believes truly? Can we not go further along a path like the one we are following with the Old- Believers? They emphasize the fact that they have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias and a different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe in the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and so do we. Let us hold to that, and in other matters do as you please. We have united with them by ^placing the essentials of faith above the un- essentials. Now with the Catholics, can we not 92 A CONFESSION say: You believe in so and so and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as for the Filioque clause and the Pope — do as you please, j Can we not say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is most important?
My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such concessions would bring reproach on the spiritual authorities for desert- ing the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a schism; and the vocation of the spiritual authorities is to safeguard in all its purity the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith in- herited from our forefathers.
And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in the eyes of men cer- tain human obligations. And fulfilling these human affairs they fulfil them in a human way. However much they may talk of their pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers, for them to the throne of the Almighty— to carry out human purposes violence is necessary, I, and it has always been applied, and is and will be applied. If of two religions each considers, itself true, and the other false, then desiring, to attract others to the truth, men will preach, their own doctrine. And if a false teaching is* j preached to the inexperienced sons of their, Church — which has the truth— then that Church j, cannot but burn the books and remove the man | < who is misleading its sons. What is to be done with a sectarian — burning, in the opinion of the Orthodox, with the fire of false doctrine — ' who in the most important affair of life, in | A CONFESSION 93 * A CONFESSION 93 * faith, misleads the sons of the Church? What can be done with him, except to cut off his head, or to incarcerate him? Under the Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich, people were burned at the stake, that is to say, the severest method of punish- ment of the time was applied, and in our day also, the severest method of punishment is applied — detention in solitary confinement.1 And I turned my attention to what is done in the name of religion and was horrified, and I almost entirely abjured Orthodoxy.
The second relation of the Church to a question of life was with regard to war and executions.
At that time Russia was at war. And Rus- sians, in the name of Christian love, began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible not to think about this, and not to see that killing is an evil repugnant to the first principles of any faith. Yet prayers were said in the churches for the success of our arms, and the teachers of the Faith acknowledged killing to be an act resulting from the Faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw, during the disturbances which followed the war, Church dignitaries and teachers and monks of the lesser and stricter orders who approved the killing of helpless, erring youths. And I took note of all that is done by men who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.
1 At the time this was written, capital punishment was considered to be abolished in Russia.
94 A CONFESSION XVI And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true in the religion I had joined. Formerly I should have said that it was all false; but I could not say so now. The whole of the people had a certain knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they could not have lived. Moreover, that knowledge was accessible to me, for I had felt it and had lived by it. But I no longer doubted that there was also falsehood in it. And all that had previously repelled me now presented itself vividly before me. And though I saw that among the pea- sants there wTas a smaller admixture of the lies that repelled me than among the representa- tives of the Church, I still saw that in the people's belief also falsehood was mixed with the truth.
But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from? Both the falsehood and the truth were contained in the so-called holy tradition and in the Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the truth had been handed down by what is called the Church.
And whether I liked or not, I was brought to the study and investigation of these writings and traditions — which till now I had been so afraid to investigate.
And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I had once rejected with such contempt as unnecessary. Formerly it seemed to me a series of unnecessary absurdi- ties, when on all sides I was surrounded by A CONFESSION 95 manifestations of life which seemed to me clear and full of sense; now I should have been i glad to throw away what would not enter a healthy head, but I had nowhere to turn to.
I On this teaching religious doctrine rests, or at least with it the only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have found is inseparably connected. However wild it may seem to my firm old mind, it was the only hope of salvation. It had to be carefully, attentively examined in order to understand it, and not even to understand it as I understand the propositions of science: I do not seek that, nor can I seek it, knowing the peculiarity of the knowledge of faith. I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. QBut I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable, as being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my in- tellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable [ and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believ^ That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable; but it is also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I must find what is true %nd what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I am setting to work upon 96 A CONFESSION this task. What of falsehood I have found j in the teaching, and what I have found of truth, and to what conclusions I came, will form the j following parts of this work, which if it be worth it, and if any one wants it, will probably some i day be printed somewhere.
The foregoing was written by me some three j years ago, and will be printed.
Now, a few idays ago, when revising it and returning to the line of thought and to the feel- ings I had when I was living through it all, I had i a dream. This dream expressed in condensed ( form all that I had experienced and described, j and I think therefore that, for those who have I understood me, a description of this dream 1 will refresh and elucidate, and unify what has 1 been set forth at such length in the foregoing c pages. The dream was this: — - i I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither n comfortable nor uncomfortable: I was lying |k on my back. But I began to consider how, jo and on what, I was lying — a question which had o not till then occurred to me. And observing n my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string suspenders attached to its sides: my feet were ti resting on one such suspender, my calves |w on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. 4 I seemed to know that those suspenders were hi movable, and with a movement of my foot llo I pushed away the furthest of them at my |fr feet — it seemed to me that it would be jut more comfortable so. But I pushed it away 11 A CONFESSION 97 A CONFESSION 97 too far and wished to reach it again with my foot, and that movement caused the next suspender under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust my- self, fully convinced that I could do so at once; but the movement caused the other suspenders under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it be- come uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about some- thing that had not before occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I, and what am I lying on? and I began to look around, and first of all to look down in the direction in which my body was hanging, and whither I felt I must soon fall. I looked down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers I ir mountains, but at a height such as I could ; lever have imagined.
; I could not even make out whether I saw any- j;hing there below, in that bottomless abyss over 5 jvhich I was hanging and whither I was being Irawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced e aorror. To look thither was terrible. If I : looked thither, I felt that I should at once slip rom the last suspender and perish. And I did *iot look. But not to look was still worse, for I bought of what would happen to me directly E 98 A CONFESSION I fell from the last suspender. And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that '! my back was slowly slipping lower and lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot be real, j It is a dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself, and look * upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space.
I look into the immensity of sky and try to for- get about the immensity below, and I really do j forget it. The immensity belQw repels and < frightens me; the immensity above attracts ( and strengthens me. I am still supported above < c the abyss by the last suspenders that have not c yet slipped from under me; I know that I am j hanging; but I look only upwards and my fear j passes. As happens in dreams, a voice says: 4 Notice this, this is it! ’ And 1 look more and more into the infinite above me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how it all happened; how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear j by looking upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same?. And I do not so much look round as experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round, and see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one suspender, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of securest A CONFESSION 90 A CONFESSION 90 : balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural, intelligible, and sure- means, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I, in my dream, was even sur- prised that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was> undoubted, though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one’s body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. And lit seemed as if someone said to me: ‘ See that, you remember.’
And I awoke.
i?e *-iQqvrra oat j IUR. 3 Id a i EOIPHSTI’/IOO A .. flier 6VI M e'oery id •cT bliroi oi itel ■ iA * WHAT I BELIEVE T AgOH CONTENTS PAGE Introduction...103 -CHAPTER I. A Key to the Gospel Teaching 107 II. The Command oe Non-Resist- III. The Law oe God and the Law IV. Misunderstanding of Christ’s Teaching 147 V. Jesus and the Mosaic Law. 160 VI. The Five Commandments. 181 VII. Christ’s Teaching. False Doctrine. Man is a Son of VIII. The Path of Life...248 IX. Faith and Works...278 XI. The Dead Church...332 XII. What is Faith? 370 INTRODUCTION I lived in the world for fifty-five years, and after the first fourteen or fifteen of childhood I was for thirty-five years a nihilist in the real meaning of that word, that is to say not a Socialist or revolutionary as those words are generally understood, but a nihilist in the sense of an absence of any belief.
Five years ago I came to believe in Christ’s I teaching, and my life suddenly changed; I ceased to desire what I had previously desired, and began to desire what I formerly did not want. What had previously seemed to me good « seemed evil, and what had seemed evil seemed I good. It happened to me as it happens to a man i who goes out on some business and on the way (suddenly decides that the business is unnecessary and returns home. All that was on his right is now on his left, and all that was on his left is now on his right; his former wish to get as far as possible from home has changed into a wish to be as near as possible to it. The direction of my life and my desires became different, and good and evil changed places. This all occurred because I understood Christ’s teaching other- wise than as I had formerly understood it.
I am not seeking to interpret Christ’s teaching, but only to tell how I understood what is simple, WHAT I BELIEVE plain, clear, intelligible, indubitable, and ad- dressed to all men in it, and how what I under- j stood changed my soul and gave me tranquillity and happiness.
I do not wish to interpret Christ’s teaching, but should only wish to forbid artificial inter- pretations of it.
All the Christian Churches have always ad- ' mitted that all men — unequal in their know- ledge and minds, wise or foolish — are equals before God, and that God’s truth is accessible to them all. Christ even said that it was the will of God that to the foolish should be revealed what was hidden from the wise.
Not all can be initiated into the deepest mysteries of dogmatics, homiletics, patristics, liturgies, hermeneutics, apologetics, etc., but all may and should understand what Christ said to all the millions of simple, unlearned people who have lived and are living. And it is just this which Christ said to all these simple people who had as yet no possibility of turning for explanations of his teaching to Paul, Clement, John Chrysostom, and others — it is just this that I want to tell to all men. The thief on the cross believed Jesus and was saved. Would it really have been evil or have harmed anyone had the thief not died on the cross but come down from it and told men how he learned to believe in Christ?
I, like that thief on the cross, have believed Christ’s teaching and been saved. And this is no far-fetched comparison but the closest ex- pression of the condition of spiritual despair INTRODUCTION and horror at the problem of life and death in which I lived formerly, and of the condition of peace and happiness in which I am now.
I, like the thief, knew that I had lived and was living badly, and saw that the majority of people around me lived as I did. I, like the thief, knew that I was unhappy and suffering, and that around me people suffered and were unhappy, and I saw no way of escape from that position except by death. I, like the thief to the cross, was nailed by some force to that life of suffering and evil. And as, after the meaningless suffer- ings and evils of life, the thief awaited the ter- rible darkness of death, so did I await the same thing.
In all this I was exactly like the thief, but the difference was that the thief was already dying, while I was still living. The thief might believe that his salvation lay there beyond the grave, but I could not be satisfied with that, because beside a life beyond the grave life still awaited me here. But I did not understand that life. It seemed to me terrible. And suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them, and life and death ceased to seem to me evil, and instead of despair I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death.
Surely it can harm no one, if I tell how this befell me?
(Moscow, ■ j r - ■ j : ' WHAT I BELIEVE CHAPTER I A KEY TO THE GOSPEL TEACHING I have told why I formerly did not under- stand Christ’s teaching, and how and why I have now understood it, in two large works: A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and A New Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels, with Explanations. In those works I try methodically and step by step to examine all that hides the truth from men, and verse by verse retranslate, compare, and synthesize the four Gospels.
For six years this has been my work. Every year, every month, I discover fresh and fresh elucidations and confirmations of my funda- mental thought, correct errors that from haste or over-eagerness have crept into my work, and add to what has been done. My life, not much of which remains, will probably end before this work is completed.1 But I am convinced that ■the work is needed, and therefore while I still have life I do what I can.
Such is my prolonged external work at 1 This book was completed in January 1884, Tolstoy t jeontinued to live and work till November 1910.
WHAT I BELIEVE theology and the Gospels. But my internal } work, of which I wish to tell here, was different.
It was not a methodical investigation of theology and of the texts of the Gospels, but an instantaneous discarding of all that hid the real! c meaning of the teaching and an instantaneous | c illumination by the light of truth. It was an j I occurrence such as might befall a man who, by ~ the guidance of a wrong drawing, was vainly ‘ seeking to reconstruct something from a confused s heap of small bits of marble, if he suddenly 1 guessed from the largest piece that it was quite a j different statue from what he had supposed, and j having begun to reconstruct it, instead of the -J former incoherence of the pieces he saw a con- j firmation of his belief in every piece, which with *( all the curves of its fracture fitted into other j pieces and formed one whole. That was what " happened to me, and it is this that I wish n to relate.
I wish to relate how I found the key to the 1 understanding of Christ’s teaching, which re- j vealed to me the truth with a clearness and J assurance that excluded all doubt.
This discovery was made by me thus. Since * I first read the Gospels for myself when almost c a child, what touched and affected me most of 1 all was Christ’s teaching of love, meekness, c humility, self-sacrifice, and repayment of good s for evil. Such always was for me the essence of 1 Christianity — that in it which my heart loved, ( and for the sake of which, after passing through - despair and unbelief, I accepted as true the j meaning the labouring Christian folk attribute 1 KEY TO THE GOSPEL TEACHING 109 to life, and submitted myself to the faith pro- fessed by them, namely the faith of the Orthodox Church. But, having submitted to the Church, I soon noticed that I did not find in her teaching confirmation or explanation of those principles of Christianity which seemed to me most im- portant. I noticed that that aspect of Chris- tianity which was dear to me is not the chief thing in Church teaching. I saw that what seemed to me most important in Christ’s teach- ing is not so recognized by the Church; she treats something else as most important. At first I did not attach importance to this pecu- liarity of Church teaching. 4 Well, what of it? ’ thought I — 4 The Church, besides ideas of [love, humility, and self-sacrifice, admits also this dogmatic, external meaning. That is foreign to me and even repels me, but there is ( nothing harmful in it.’
But the longer I lived in submission to the , Ohurch, the more noticeable it became that . bhis characteristic of her teaching was not so j harmless as it at first seemed to me to be.
The Church repelled me by the strangeness of . her dogmas and her acceptance and approval I }f persecutions, executions, and wars. The j mutual denunciation by one another of various ; congregations also repelled me. But what j shattered my trust in the Church was just her j j ndifference to what seemed to me the essence s of Christ’s teaching, and her partiality for what 3 seemed to me unessential.
I, I felt that something was wrongly put, but vhat was wrong I could not at all make out.
WHAT I BELIEVE I could not make it out because the teaching of the Church not only did not deny what * ‘ seemed to me the chief thing in Christ’s teaching, but fully acknowledged it, acknowledging it somehow so that what was chief in Christ’s teaching no longer occupied the first place.
I could not reproach the Church for denying what was essential, but the Church acknow-- ledged the essential matter in a way that did not satisfy me; she did not give me what I expected of her.
I went over from nihilism to the Church only because I was conscious of the impossibility of life without faith, without a knowledge of what is good and what is evil, apart from my animal instincts. This knowledge I thought I should find in Christianity, but Christianity as it then appeared to me was only a certain frame of mind, very indefinite, from which clear and obligatory rules of conduct were not deducible, and for such rules I turned to the Church. But the Church gave me rules that did not bring me any nearer to the state of mind dear to me, but rather removed me further from it, and I could not follow her. What was necessary and dear to me was life based on the Christian truths; the Church, however, gave me rules of life which were quite foreign to the truths I prized. The rules given by the Church about faith in dogmas, observation of the Sacraments, fasts, and prayers were to me unnecessary; and rules based upon the Christian truths were absent. Nor was that all. The Church rules weakened KEY TO THE GOSPEL TEACHING 111