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A Confession, or My Confession, is a short work on the subject of melancholia,
philosophy and religion by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.
It was written in 1879 to 1880, when Tolstoy was in his early fifties.
Wikipedia
Originally published: 1882
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Text: A Confession at Wikisource
Language: Russian
Original title: Исповѣдь
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A Confession, or My Confession, is a short work on the subject of melancholia,
philosophy and religion by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.
It was written in 1879 to 1880, when Tolstoy was in his early fifties.
Wikipedia
Originally published: 1882
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Text: A Confession at Wikisource
Language: Russian
Original title: Исповѣдь
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| Confessions ... Tolstoy.pdf |
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Only 3 Chapters from the Book
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Only 3 Chapters from the Book
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Chapter IX
I ran into a contradiction from which there were only two ways out: either the thing that I had referred to as reason was not as rational as I had thought, or the thing that I took to be irrational was not as irrational as I had thought. And I began to examine the course of the arguments that had come of my rational knowledge.
As I looked more closely at this course, I found it to be entirely correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was unavoidable; but I detected a mistake. The mistake was that my thinking did not correspond to the question I had raised. The question was: Why should I live? Or: Is there anything real and imperishable that will come of my illusory and perishable life?
Or: What kind of meaning can my finite existence have in this infinite universe? In order to answer this question, I studied life.
It was obvious that the resolution of all the possible questions of life could not satisfy me because my question, no matter how simple it may seem at first glance, entails a demand to explain the finite by means of the infinite and the infinite by means of the finite.
I asked, "What is the meaning of my life beyond space, time, and causation?" And I answered, "What is the meaning of my life within space, time, and causation?" After a long time spent in the labor of thought, it followed that I could reply only that my life had no meaning at all.
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Throughout my reasoning I was constantly comparing the finite to the finite and the infinite to the infinite; indeed, I could not do otherwise. Thus I concluded and had to conclude that force is force, matter is matter, will is will, infinity is infinity, nothing is nothing; and I could not get beyond that.
It was something similar to what happens in mathematics when we are trying to figure out how to solve an equation and all we can get is an identity. The method for solving the equation is correct, but all we get for an answer is a = a, orx = x, or° = o. The same thing was happening with my reasoning in regard to the question concerning the significance of my life. The answers that all the sciences give to this question are only identities.
And in reality a strictly rational knowledge begins, in the manner of Descartes, with an absolute doubt of everything.* Strictly rational knowledge casts aside any knowledge based on faith and reconstructs everything anew according to the laws of reason and experiment; it can give no answer to the question of life other than the one I had received-an indefinite one.
It seemed to me only at first that knowledge gave a positive answer, the answer of Schopenhauer: life has no meaning, it is an evil. But as I looked into the matter I realized that this is not a positive answer and that only my emotions had taken it to be so. Strictly expressed, as it is expressed by the Brahminst by Solomon, and by Schopenhauer, the answer is only a vague one or an identity; ° = 0, life that presents itself to me as nothing is nothing. Thus philosophical knowledge denies nothing but merely replies that it
*Rene Descartes (1596-165°) is often referred to as the father of modern philoso phy. He begins one of his most famous works, the Meditations on First Philosophy, from a position of absolute doubt, a principle he also discusses in the Discourse on Method.
t Brahmins are Hindus of the highest caste, traditionally assigned to the priesthood.
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cannot decide this question and that from its point of view any resolution remains indefinite.
Having understood this, I realized that I could not search for an answer to my question in rational knowledge. The answer given by rational knowledge is merely an indication that an answer can be obtained only by formulating the question differently, that is, only when the relationship between the finite and the infinite is introduced into the question.
I also realized that no matter how irrational and unattractive the answers given by faith, they have the advantage of bringing to every reply a relationship between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no reply. How ever I may put the question of how I am to live, the answer is: according to the law of God. Is there anything real that will come of my life? Eternal torment or eternal happiness. What meaning is there which is not destroyed by death? Union with the infinite God, paradise.
Thus in addition to rational knowledge, which before had seemed to be the only knowledge, I was inevitably led to recognize a different type of knowledge, an irrational type, which all of humanity had: faith, which provides us with the possibility of living. As far as I was concerned, faith was as irrational as ever, but I could not fail to recognize that it alone provides humanity with an answer to the question of life, thus making it possible to live.
Rational knowledge led me to the conclusion that life is meaningless; my life came to a halt, and I wanted to do away with myself. As I looked around at people, I saw that they were living, and I was convinced that they knew the meaning of life. Then I turned and looked at myself; as long as I knew the meaning of life, I lived. As it was with others, so it was with me: faith provided me with the meaning of life and the possibility of living.
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Upon a further examination of the people in other countries, of my contemporaries, and of those who have passed away, I saw the same thing. Wherever there is life, there is faith; since the origin of mankind faith has made it possible for us to live, and the main characteristics of faith are everywhere and always the same.
No matter what answers a given faith might provide for us, every answer of faith gives infinite meaning to the finite existence of man, meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation, and death. Therefore, the meaning of life and the possibility of living may be found in faith alone.
I realized that the essential significance of faith lies not only in the "manifestation of things unseen" and so on, or in revelation (this is simply a description of one of the signs of faith); nor is it simply the relation between man and God (faith must first be determined and then God, not the other way around), or agreeing with what one has been told, even though this is what it is most often understood to be.
Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human life, whereby the individual does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a man lives, then he must have faith in something. If he did not believe that he had something he must live for, then he would not live. If he fails to see and understand the illusory nature of the finite, then he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, then he must believe in the infinite. Without faith it is impossible to live.
I looked back on the course of my internal life and I was horrified. It was now clear to me that in order for a man to live, he must either fail to see the infinite or he must have an explana tion of the meaning of life by which the finite and the infinite would be equated. I had such an explanation, but I did not need it as long as I believed in the finite, and I began to use reason to test it out. And in the light of reason every bit of my former explanation crumbled into dust.
But the time came when I no longer believed in the finite. And then, using the foundations of reason, I began to draw on what I knew to put together an explanation that would give life meaning; but nothing came of it. Along with the finest minds that mankind has produced, I came up with 0 = 0, and I was utterly amazed at coming to such a resolution and at discovering that there could be no other.
And what did I do when I searched for an answer in the experimental sciences? I wanted to find out why I lived, and to do that I studied everything that was outside of myself. To be sure, I was able to learn a great deal, but nothing of what I needed.
And what did I do when I searched for an answer in the area of philosophy? I studied the thoughts of those who found them selves in the same situation as I, and they had no answer to the question of why I live. I was not able to learn anything here that I did not already know-namely, that it is impossible to know anything.
What am I ? A part of the infinite. Indeed, in these words lies the whole problem. Is it possible that man has only now raised this question? And can it be that no one before me has put this question to himself, a question so simple that it rests on the tip of the tongue of every intelligent child?
No, this question has been asked ever since there have been people to ask it; since the beginning man has understood that to resolve the question by equating the finite with the finite is just as inadequate as equating the infinite with the infinite; since the beginning man has sought to articulate the relation between the finite and the infinite.
We subject to logical inquiry all the concepts that identify the finite with the infinite and through which we receive the meaning of life and the ideas of God, freedom, and good.
And these concepts do not stand up to the critiques born of reason.
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If it were not so terrible, it would be laughable to see the pride and complacency with which, like children, we take apart the watch, removing the spring and making a plaything of it, only to
be surprised when the watch stops running.
A resolution of the contradiction between the finite and the
infinite, an answer to the question of life that makes it possible to live, is necessary and dear to us. And the one resolution that we find everywhere, at all times and among all nations, is the resolution that has come down from a time in which all human life is lost to us. It is a resolution so difficult that we could come up with nothing like it, one that we thoughtlessly undo by again raising the question that'bccurs to everyone and for which we have no answer.
The concepts of an infinite God, moral good and evil, the immortality of the soul, and a relation between God and the affairs of man are ones that have been worked out historically through the life of a humanity that is hidden from our eyes. They are concepts without which there would be no life, without which I myself could not live, and yet, putting aside all the labor of human kind, I wanted to do it all over again by myself and in my own way.
I did not think so at the time, but even then the seeds of these thoughts had already been planted within me. I realized first of all that despite our wisdom, the position of Schopenhauer, Solo mon, and myself was absurd: we considered life evil, and yet we lived. This is clearly absurd because if life is meaningless and if I love reason so much, then I must destroy life so there will be no one around to deny it. Secondly, I realized that all our arguments went round and round in a vicious circle, like a cog whose gears are out of sync. No matter how refined our reasoning, we could not come up with an answer; it would always turn out that 0 = 0, and our method was therefore probably mistaken.
Finally, I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life.
Chapter X
I understood this, but it did not make things any easier for me. I was now prepared to accept any faith, as long as it did not demand of me a direct denial of reason, for such a denial would be a lie. So I studied the texts of Buddhism and Mohamedanism; and more than ever those of Christianity and the lives of Christians who lived around me.
Naturally, I turned first of all to believers from my own class -people of learning, Orthodox theologians, elder monks, progressive Orthodox theologians, and even the so-called New Christians, who professed salvation through faith in redemption. I seized upon these believers and questioned them about what they believed and how they viewed the meaning of life.
In spite of the fact that I made every possible concession and avoided all arguments, I could not accept the faith of these people. I saw that what they took to be faith did not explain the meaning of life but only obscured it, and that they themselves professed their faith not in response to the question of life that had drawn me to faith but for some purpose that was alien to me.
I remember the agonizing feeling of horror upon returning to my original despair, which followed the hope I had felt so many times in my relations with these people. The more they laid their teachings before me in ever-increasing detail, the more clearly I could see their error, until I lost all hope of discovering in their
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faith any explanation of the meaning of life.
I was not alienated so much by the fact that in presenting
their beliefs they would mix the Christian truths that had always been so dear to me with much that was superfluous and irrational. Rather, it was that their lives were so much like my own, but with this one difference: they did not live according to the principles they professed. I felt very strongly that they were deceiving them selves and that, like myself, they had no sense of life's meaning other than to live while they lived and to lay their hands on everything they could.
This was clear to me because if they har bored any meaning that might destroy all fear of privation, suffer ing, and death, they would not be frightened of these things. But these believers from our class lived a life of plenty, just as I did; they endeavored to increase and preserve their wealth and were afraid of privation, suffering, death. Like myself and all the rest of us unbelievers, they lived only to satisfy their lusts, lived just as badly as, if not worse than, those who did not believe.
No rationalization could convince me of the truth of their faith, though one thing might have: actions proving that these people held the key to a meaning of life that would eliminate in them the fear of poverty, sickness, and death that haunted me. But I saw no trace of such actions among the various believers in our class. On the contrary, I saw such actions among people in our class who were not believers but never among the so-called believers.
Thus I realized that the faith of these people was not the faith I sought, that their faith was not faith at all but only one of the epicurean gratifications in life. I realized that while this faith may not console, it might serve to dispel the remorse of a Solomon on his deathbed; but it is of no use to the overwhelming majority of humankind, those who are called not to amuse themselves at the
expense of the labors of others but to create life. In order for all humankind to live, to sustain life and instill it with meaning, these millions must all have a different, more genuine concept of faith.
Indeed, it was not that Solomon, Schopenhauer, and I did not kill ourselves that convinced me of the existence of faith but that these millions have lived and continue to live, carrying the Solo mons and me on the waves of their lives.
And I began to grow closer to the believers from among the poor, the simple, the uneducated folk, from among the pilgrims, the monks, the Raskolniks,* the peasants. The beliefs of those from among the people, like those of the pretentious believers from our class, were Christian. Here too there was much superstition mixed in with the truths of Christianity, but with this difference: the superstitions of the believers from our class were utterly unnecessary to them, played no role in their lives, and were only a kind of epicurean diversion, while the superstitions of the believers from the laboring people were intertwined with their lives to such a degree that their lives could not be conceived without them: their superstitions were a necessary condition for their lives.
The whole life of the believers from our class was in opposition to their faith, while the whole life of the believers from the working people was a confirmation of that meaning of life which was the substance of their faith.
So I began to examine the life and the teachings of these people, and the closer I looked, the more I was convinced that theirs was the true faith, that their faith was indispensable to them and that this faith alone provided them with the meaning and possibility of life.
Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class, where life was possible without *Raskolniks were "dissenters" from the Russian Orthodox Church and members of any one of several groups, including the Doukhobors and the Khlysty, which arose as a result of the schism of the seventeenth century in protest against liturgical reforms; they are sometimes referred to as Old Believers.
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faith and scarcely one in a thousand was a believer, among these people there was scarcely one in a thousand who was not a believer. Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class, where a lifetime is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction with life, these people spent their lives at hard labor and were less dissatisfied with life than the wealthy.
Contrary to the people of our class who resist and are unhappy with the hardship and suffering of the)r lot, these people endure sickness and tribulation without question or resistance-peacefully, and in the firm conviction that this is as it should be, cannot be otherwise, and is good.
Contrary to the fact that the greater our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life and the more we see some kind of evil joke in our suffering and death, these people live, suffer, and draw near to death peacefully and, more often than not, joyfully.
Contrary to peaceful death-death without horror and despair, which is the rarest exception in our class-it is the tormenting, unyielding, and sorrowful death that is the rarest exception among the people. And these people, who are deprived of everything that for Solomon and me constituted the only good in life, yet who nonetheless enjoy the greatest happiness, form the overwhelming majority of mankind. I looked further still around myself.
I examined the lives of the great masses of people who have lived in the past and live today. Among those who have understood the mean ing of life, who know how to live and die, I saw not two or three or ten but hundreds, thousands, millions. And all of them, infinitely varied in their customs, intellects, educations, and positions and in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, labored in peace, endured suffering and hardship, lived and died, and saw in this not vanity but good.
I grew to love these people. The more I learned about the lives of those living and dead about whom I had read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier it became for me to live. I lived
this way for about two years, and a profound transformation came over me, one that had been brewing in me for a long time and whose elements had always been a part of me.
The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child. I realized that meaning was not to be sought here. The actions of the laboring people, of those who create life, began to appear to me as the one true way. I realized that the meaning provided by this life was truth, and I embraced it.
Chapter XI
When I remembered how these very beliefs had repelled m e and seemed meaningless in the mouths of people who led lives in contradiction to them, and when I recalled how the same beliefs attracted me and seemed sensible as I saw people who lived by them, I realized why I had once turned away from them and had found them meaningless, while now I was drawn to them and found them full of meaning. I realized that I had lost my way and how I had lost my way.
My straying had resulted not so much from wrong thinking as from bad living. I realized that the truth had been hidden from me not so much because my thoughts were in error as because my life itself had been squandered in the satisfaction of lusts, spent under the exceptional conditions of epicurean ism.
I realized that in asking, "What is my life?" and then answering, "An evil," I was entirely correct. The error lay in the fact that I had taken an answer that applied only to myself and applied it to life in general; I had asked myself what my life was and received the reply: evil and meaningless. And so it was: my life, wasted in the indulgence of lusts, was meaningless and evil, and the assertion
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that life is meaningless and evil thus applied only to my life and not to life in general. I understood the truth that I later found in the Gospel, the truth that people clung to darkness and shunned the light because their deeds were evil. For he who does evil hates the light and will not venture into the light, lest his deeds be revealed.
I realized that in order to understand the meaning of life, it is necessary first of all that life not be evil and meaningless, and then one must have the power of reason to understand it. I realized why I had been wandering around such an obvious truth for so long and that in order to think and speak about the life of humankind, one must speak and think about the life of human kind and not about the life of a few parasites.
This truth has always been the truth, like 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not acknowledged it, for in acknowledging that 2 X 2 = 4, I would have had to admit that I was not a good man. And it was more important and more pressing for me to feel that I was a good man than to admit that 2 X 2 = 4. But I came to love good people and to hate myself, and I acknowledged the truth. Now it all became clear to me.
Consider an executioner who has spent his life in torture and chopping off heads or a hopeless drunk or a madman who has wasted away in a dark room, who has despised this room and yet imagines that he would perish if he should leave it-what if these men should ask themselves, "What is life?"
Clearly, they would be able to come up with only one answer, that life is the greatest of evils; and the madman's answer would be quite correct but only for him. What if I were such a madman? What if all of us who are wealthy and learned are such madmen?
And I realized that we were in fact such madmen. I, at any rate, was such a madman. To be sure, it is the nature is a bird to fly, gather food, build a nest; and when I see a bird 40ing this I rejoice in its joy. It is the nature of the goat, the hare, the wolf to feed, multiply, and nourish their young; and when they do this
I am firmly convinced that they are happy and that their lives are reasonable. What then should man do? He should earn his life in exactly the same way the animals do but with this one difference: that he will perish if he does it alone-he must live his life not for himself but for all. And when he does this, I am firmly con vinced that he is happy and his life is reasonable. What, indeed, had I done in all my thirty years of conscious life?
Not only had I failed to live my life for the sake of all, but I had not even lived it for myself. I had lived as a parasite, and once I had asked myself why I lived, the answer I received was: for nothing. If the meaning of human life lies in the way it is lived, then how could I, who had spent thirty years not living life but ruining it for myself and others, receive any reply other than this, that my life was meaning less and evil? It was indeed meaningless and evil.
The life of the world unfolds according to someone's will; the life of the world and our own lives are entrusted to someone's care. If we are to have any hope of understanding this will, then we must first of all fulfill it; we must do what is asked of us. And if I will not do what is asked of me, then I will never understand what is asked of me, much less what is asked of all of us and of the whole world.
If a naked, hungry beggar should be taken from the crossroads and led into an enclosed area in a magnificent establishment to be given food and drink, and if he should then be made to move some kind of lever up and down, it is obvious that before determining why he was brought there to move the lever and whether the structure of the establishment was reasonable, the beggar must first work the lever.
If he will work it, then he will see that it operates a pump, that the pump draws up water, and that the water flows into a garden. Then he will be taken from the enclosed area and set to another task, and then he will gather fruits and enter into the joy of his lord. As he rises from lower to higher
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concerns, understanding more and more about the structure of the establishment and becoming part of it, he will never think to ask why he is there, and there is no way he will ever come to reproach his master.
Thus the simple, uneducated working people, whom we look upon as animals, do the will of their master without ever reproach ing him. But we, the wise, consume everything the master provides without doing what he asks of us; instead, we sit in a circle and speculate on why we should do something so stupid as moving this lever up and down.
And we have hit upon an answer. We have figured it out that either the master is stupid or he does not exist, while we alone are wise; only we feel that we are good for nothing and that we must somehow get rid of ourselves.
I ran into a contradiction from which there were only two ways out: either the thing that I had referred to as reason was not as rational as I had thought, or the thing that I took to be irrational was not as irrational as I had thought. And I began to examine the course of the arguments that had come of my rational knowledge.
As I looked more closely at this course, I found it to be entirely correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was unavoidable; but I detected a mistake. The mistake was that my thinking did not correspond to the question I had raised. The question was: Why should I live? Or: Is there anything real and imperishable that will come of my illusory and perishable life?
Or: What kind of meaning can my finite existence have in this infinite universe? In order to answer this question, I studied life.
It was obvious that the resolution of all the possible questions of life could not satisfy me because my question, no matter how simple it may seem at first glance, entails a demand to explain the finite by means of the infinite and the infinite by means of the finite.
I asked, "What is the meaning of my life beyond space, time, and causation?" And I answered, "What is the meaning of my life within space, time, and causation?" After a long time spent in the labor of thought, it followed that I could reply only that my life had no meaning at all.
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Throughout my reasoning I was constantly comparing the finite to the finite and the infinite to the infinite; indeed, I could not do otherwise. Thus I concluded and had to conclude that force is force, matter is matter, will is will, infinity is infinity, nothing is nothing; and I could not get beyond that.
It was something similar to what happens in mathematics when we are trying to figure out how to solve an equation and all we can get is an identity. The method for solving the equation is correct, but all we get for an answer is a = a, orx = x, or° = o. The same thing was happening with my reasoning in regard to the question concerning the significance of my life. The answers that all the sciences give to this question are only identities.
And in reality a strictly rational knowledge begins, in the manner of Descartes, with an absolute doubt of everything.* Strictly rational knowledge casts aside any knowledge based on faith and reconstructs everything anew according to the laws of reason and experiment; it can give no answer to the question of life other than the one I had received-an indefinite one.
It seemed to me only at first that knowledge gave a positive answer, the answer of Schopenhauer: life has no meaning, it is an evil. But as I looked into the matter I realized that this is not a positive answer and that only my emotions had taken it to be so. Strictly expressed, as it is expressed by the Brahminst by Solomon, and by Schopenhauer, the answer is only a vague one or an identity; ° = 0, life that presents itself to me as nothing is nothing. Thus philosophical knowledge denies nothing but merely replies that it
*Rene Descartes (1596-165°) is often referred to as the father of modern philoso phy. He begins one of his most famous works, the Meditations on First Philosophy, from a position of absolute doubt, a principle he also discusses in the Discourse on Method.
t Brahmins are Hindus of the highest caste, traditionally assigned to the priesthood.
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cannot decide this question and that from its point of view any resolution remains indefinite.
Having understood this, I realized that I could not search for an answer to my question in rational knowledge. The answer given by rational knowledge is merely an indication that an answer can be obtained only by formulating the question differently, that is, only when the relationship between the finite and the infinite is introduced into the question.
I also realized that no matter how irrational and unattractive the answers given by faith, they have the advantage of bringing to every reply a relationship between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no reply. How ever I may put the question of how I am to live, the answer is: according to the law of God. Is there anything real that will come of my life? Eternal torment or eternal happiness. What meaning is there which is not destroyed by death? Union with the infinite God, paradise.
Thus in addition to rational knowledge, which before had seemed to be the only knowledge, I was inevitably led to recognize a different type of knowledge, an irrational type, which all of humanity had: faith, which provides us with the possibility of living. As far as I was concerned, faith was as irrational as ever, but I could not fail to recognize that it alone provides humanity with an answer to the question of life, thus making it possible to live.
Rational knowledge led me to the conclusion that life is meaningless; my life came to a halt, and I wanted to do away with myself. As I looked around at people, I saw that they were living, and I was convinced that they knew the meaning of life. Then I turned and looked at myself; as long as I knew the meaning of life, I lived. As it was with others, so it was with me: faith provided me with the meaning of life and the possibility of living.
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Upon a further examination of the people in other countries, of my contemporaries, and of those who have passed away, I saw the same thing. Wherever there is life, there is faith; since the origin of mankind faith has made it possible for us to live, and the main characteristics of faith are everywhere and always the same.
No matter what answers a given faith might provide for us, every answer of faith gives infinite meaning to the finite existence of man, meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation, and death. Therefore, the meaning of life and the possibility of living may be found in faith alone.
I realized that the essential significance of faith lies not only in the "manifestation of things unseen" and so on, or in revelation (this is simply a description of one of the signs of faith); nor is it simply the relation between man and God (faith must first be determined and then God, not the other way around), or agreeing with what one has been told, even though this is what it is most often understood to be.
Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human life, whereby the individual does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a man lives, then he must have faith in something. If he did not believe that he had something he must live for, then he would not live. If he fails to see and understand the illusory nature of the finite, then he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, then he must believe in the infinite. Without faith it is impossible to live.
I looked back on the course of my internal life and I was horrified. It was now clear to me that in order for a man to live, he must either fail to see the infinite or he must have an explana tion of the meaning of life by which the finite and the infinite would be equated. I had such an explanation, but I did not need it as long as I believed in the finite, and I began to use reason to test it out. And in the light of reason every bit of my former explanation crumbled into dust.
But the time came when I no longer believed in the finite. And then, using the foundations of reason, I began to draw on what I knew to put together an explanation that would give life meaning; but nothing came of it. Along with the finest minds that mankind has produced, I came up with 0 = 0, and I was utterly amazed at coming to such a resolution and at discovering that there could be no other.
And what did I do when I searched for an answer in the experimental sciences? I wanted to find out why I lived, and to do that I studied everything that was outside of myself. To be sure, I was able to learn a great deal, but nothing of what I needed.
And what did I do when I searched for an answer in the area of philosophy? I studied the thoughts of those who found them selves in the same situation as I, and they had no answer to the question of why I live. I was not able to learn anything here that I did not already know-namely, that it is impossible to know anything.
What am I ? A part of the infinite. Indeed, in these words lies the whole problem. Is it possible that man has only now raised this question? And can it be that no one before me has put this question to himself, a question so simple that it rests on the tip of the tongue of every intelligent child?
No, this question has been asked ever since there have been people to ask it; since the beginning man has understood that to resolve the question by equating the finite with the finite is just as inadequate as equating the infinite with the infinite; since the beginning man has sought to articulate the relation between the finite and the infinite.
We subject to logical inquiry all the concepts that identify the finite with the infinite and through which we receive the meaning of life and the ideas of God, freedom, and good.
And these concepts do not stand up to the critiques born of reason.
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If it were not so terrible, it would be laughable to see the pride and complacency with which, like children, we take apart the watch, removing the spring and making a plaything of it, only to
be surprised when the watch stops running.
A resolution of the contradiction between the finite and the
infinite, an answer to the question of life that makes it possible to live, is necessary and dear to us. And the one resolution that we find everywhere, at all times and among all nations, is the resolution that has come down from a time in which all human life is lost to us. It is a resolution so difficult that we could come up with nothing like it, one that we thoughtlessly undo by again raising the question that'bccurs to everyone and for which we have no answer.
The concepts of an infinite God, moral good and evil, the immortality of the soul, and a relation between God and the affairs of man are ones that have been worked out historically through the life of a humanity that is hidden from our eyes. They are concepts without which there would be no life, without which I myself could not live, and yet, putting aside all the labor of human kind, I wanted to do it all over again by myself and in my own way.
I did not think so at the time, but even then the seeds of these thoughts had already been planted within me. I realized first of all that despite our wisdom, the position of Schopenhauer, Solo mon, and myself was absurd: we considered life evil, and yet we lived. This is clearly absurd because if life is meaningless and if I love reason so much, then I must destroy life so there will be no one around to deny it. Secondly, I realized that all our arguments went round and round in a vicious circle, like a cog whose gears are out of sync. No matter how refined our reasoning, we could not come up with an answer; it would always turn out that 0 = 0, and our method was therefore probably mistaken.
Finally, I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life.
Chapter X
I understood this, but it did not make things any easier for me. I was now prepared to accept any faith, as long as it did not demand of me a direct denial of reason, for such a denial would be a lie. So I studied the texts of Buddhism and Mohamedanism; and more than ever those of Christianity and the lives of Christians who lived around me.
Naturally, I turned first of all to believers from my own class -people of learning, Orthodox theologians, elder monks, progressive Orthodox theologians, and even the so-called New Christians, who professed salvation through faith in redemption. I seized upon these believers and questioned them about what they believed and how they viewed the meaning of life.
In spite of the fact that I made every possible concession and avoided all arguments, I could not accept the faith of these people. I saw that what they took to be faith did not explain the meaning of life but only obscured it, and that they themselves professed their faith not in response to the question of life that had drawn me to faith but for some purpose that was alien to me.
I remember the agonizing feeling of horror upon returning to my original despair, which followed the hope I had felt so many times in my relations with these people. The more they laid their teachings before me in ever-increasing detail, the more clearly I could see their error, until I lost all hope of discovering in their
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faith any explanation of the meaning of life.
I was not alienated so much by the fact that in presenting
their beliefs they would mix the Christian truths that had always been so dear to me with much that was superfluous and irrational. Rather, it was that their lives were so much like my own, but with this one difference: they did not live according to the principles they professed. I felt very strongly that they were deceiving them selves and that, like myself, they had no sense of life's meaning other than to live while they lived and to lay their hands on everything they could.
This was clear to me because if they har bored any meaning that might destroy all fear of privation, suffer ing, and death, they would not be frightened of these things. But these believers from our class lived a life of plenty, just as I did; they endeavored to increase and preserve their wealth and were afraid of privation, suffering, death. Like myself and all the rest of us unbelievers, they lived only to satisfy their lusts, lived just as badly as, if not worse than, those who did not believe.
No rationalization could convince me of the truth of their faith, though one thing might have: actions proving that these people held the key to a meaning of life that would eliminate in them the fear of poverty, sickness, and death that haunted me. But I saw no trace of such actions among the various believers in our class. On the contrary, I saw such actions among people in our class who were not believers but never among the so-called believers.
Thus I realized that the faith of these people was not the faith I sought, that their faith was not faith at all but only one of the epicurean gratifications in life. I realized that while this faith may not console, it might serve to dispel the remorse of a Solomon on his deathbed; but it is of no use to the overwhelming majority of humankind, those who are called not to amuse themselves at the
expense of the labors of others but to create life. In order for all humankind to live, to sustain life and instill it with meaning, these millions must all have a different, more genuine concept of faith.
Indeed, it was not that Solomon, Schopenhauer, and I did not kill ourselves that convinced me of the existence of faith but that these millions have lived and continue to live, carrying the Solo mons and me on the waves of their lives.
And I began to grow closer to the believers from among the poor, the simple, the uneducated folk, from among the pilgrims, the monks, the Raskolniks,* the peasants. The beliefs of those from among the people, like those of the pretentious believers from our class, were Christian. Here too there was much superstition mixed in with the truths of Christianity, but with this difference: the superstitions of the believers from our class were utterly unnecessary to them, played no role in their lives, and were only a kind of epicurean diversion, while the superstitions of the believers from the laboring people were intertwined with their lives to such a degree that their lives could not be conceived without them: their superstitions were a necessary condition for their lives.
The whole life of the believers from our class was in opposition to their faith, while the whole life of the believers from the working people was a confirmation of that meaning of life which was the substance of their faith.
So I began to examine the life and the teachings of these people, and the closer I looked, the more I was convinced that theirs was the true faith, that their faith was indispensable to them and that this faith alone provided them with the meaning and possibility of life.
Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class, where life was possible without *Raskolniks were "dissenters" from the Russian Orthodox Church and members of any one of several groups, including the Doukhobors and the Khlysty, which arose as a result of the schism of the seventeenth century in protest against liturgical reforms; they are sometimes referred to as Old Believers.
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faith and scarcely one in a thousand was a believer, among these people there was scarcely one in a thousand who was not a believer. Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class, where a lifetime is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction with life, these people spent their lives at hard labor and were less dissatisfied with life than the wealthy.
Contrary to the people of our class who resist and are unhappy with the hardship and suffering of the)r lot, these people endure sickness and tribulation without question or resistance-peacefully, and in the firm conviction that this is as it should be, cannot be otherwise, and is good.
Contrary to the fact that the greater our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life and the more we see some kind of evil joke in our suffering and death, these people live, suffer, and draw near to death peacefully and, more often than not, joyfully.
Contrary to peaceful death-death without horror and despair, which is the rarest exception in our class-it is the tormenting, unyielding, and sorrowful death that is the rarest exception among the people. And these people, who are deprived of everything that for Solomon and me constituted the only good in life, yet who nonetheless enjoy the greatest happiness, form the overwhelming majority of mankind. I looked further still around myself.
I examined the lives of the great masses of people who have lived in the past and live today. Among those who have understood the mean ing of life, who know how to live and die, I saw not two or three or ten but hundreds, thousands, millions. And all of them, infinitely varied in their customs, intellects, educations, and positions and in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, labored in peace, endured suffering and hardship, lived and died, and saw in this not vanity but good.
I grew to love these people. The more I learned about the lives of those living and dead about whom I had read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier it became for me to live. I lived
this way for about two years, and a profound transformation came over me, one that had been brewing in me for a long time and whose elements had always been a part of me.
The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child. I realized that meaning was not to be sought here. The actions of the laboring people, of those who create life, began to appear to me as the one true way. I realized that the meaning provided by this life was truth, and I embraced it.
Chapter XI
When I remembered how these very beliefs had repelled m e and seemed meaningless in the mouths of people who led lives in contradiction to them, and when I recalled how the same beliefs attracted me and seemed sensible as I saw people who lived by them, I realized why I had once turned away from them and had found them meaningless, while now I was drawn to them and found them full of meaning. I realized that I had lost my way and how I had lost my way.
My straying had resulted not so much from wrong thinking as from bad living. I realized that the truth had been hidden from me not so much because my thoughts were in error as because my life itself had been squandered in the satisfaction of lusts, spent under the exceptional conditions of epicurean ism.
I realized that in asking, "What is my life?" and then answering, "An evil," I was entirely correct. The error lay in the fact that I had taken an answer that applied only to myself and applied it to life in general; I had asked myself what my life was and received the reply: evil and meaningless. And so it was: my life, wasted in the indulgence of lusts, was meaningless and evil, and the assertion
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LEO TOLSTOY
that life is meaningless and evil thus applied only to my life and not to life in general. I understood the truth that I later found in the Gospel, the truth that people clung to darkness and shunned the light because their deeds were evil. For he who does evil hates the light and will not venture into the light, lest his deeds be revealed.
I realized that in order to understand the meaning of life, it is necessary first of all that life not be evil and meaningless, and then one must have the power of reason to understand it. I realized why I had been wandering around such an obvious truth for so long and that in order to think and speak about the life of humankind, one must speak and think about the life of human kind and not about the life of a few parasites.
This truth has always been the truth, like 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not acknowledged it, for in acknowledging that 2 X 2 = 4, I would have had to admit that I was not a good man. And it was more important and more pressing for me to feel that I was a good man than to admit that 2 X 2 = 4. But I came to love good people and to hate myself, and I acknowledged the truth. Now it all became clear to me.
Consider an executioner who has spent his life in torture and chopping off heads or a hopeless drunk or a madman who has wasted away in a dark room, who has despised this room and yet imagines that he would perish if he should leave it-what if these men should ask themselves, "What is life?"
Clearly, they would be able to come up with only one answer, that life is the greatest of evils; and the madman's answer would be quite correct but only for him. What if I were such a madman? What if all of us who are wealthy and learned are such madmen?
And I realized that we were in fact such madmen. I, at any rate, was such a madman. To be sure, it is the nature is a bird to fly, gather food, build a nest; and when I see a bird 40ing this I rejoice in its joy. It is the nature of the goat, the hare, the wolf to feed, multiply, and nourish their young; and when they do this
I am firmly convinced that they are happy and that their lives are reasonable. What then should man do? He should earn his life in exactly the same way the animals do but with this one difference: that he will perish if he does it alone-he must live his life not for himself but for all. And when he does this, I am firmly con vinced that he is happy and his life is reasonable. What, indeed, had I done in all my thirty years of conscious life?
Not only had I failed to live my life for the sake of all, but I had not even lived it for myself. I had lived as a parasite, and once I had asked myself why I lived, the answer I received was: for nothing. If the meaning of human life lies in the way it is lived, then how could I, who had spent thirty years not living life but ruining it for myself and others, receive any reply other than this, that my life was meaning less and evil? It was indeed meaningless and evil.
The life of the world unfolds according to someone's will; the life of the world and our own lives are entrusted to someone's care. If we are to have any hope of understanding this will, then we must first of all fulfill it; we must do what is asked of us. And if I will not do what is asked of me, then I will never understand what is asked of me, much less what is asked of all of us and of the whole world.
If a naked, hungry beggar should be taken from the crossroads and led into an enclosed area in a magnificent establishment to be given food and drink, and if he should then be made to move some kind of lever up and down, it is obvious that before determining why he was brought there to move the lever and whether the structure of the establishment was reasonable, the beggar must first work the lever.
If he will work it, then he will see that it operates a pump, that the pump draws up water, and that the water flows into a garden. Then he will be taken from the enclosed area and set to another task, and then he will gather fruits and enter into the joy of his lord. As he rises from lower to higher
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LEO TOLSTOY
concerns, understanding more and more about the structure of the establishment and becoming part of it, he will never think to ask why he is there, and there is no way he will ever come to reproach his master.
Thus the simple, uneducated working people, whom we look upon as animals, do the will of their master without ever reproach ing him. But we, the wise, consume everything the master provides without doing what he asks of us; instead, we sit in a circle and speculate on why we should do something so stupid as moving this lever up and down.
And we have hit upon an answer. We have figured it out that either the master is stupid or he does not exist, while we alone are wise; only we feel that we are good for nothing and that we must somehow get rid of ourselves.
🌸
🌸
Confession
LEO TOLSTOY
Translation and Introduction by
DAVID PATTERSON
W W NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
Copyright @) 1983 by David Patterson. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
The text of this book is composed in photocomposition Avanta, with display type set
in Centaur. Composition by The Haddon Craftsmen, Inc. Manufacturing by The
Murray Printing Company. Book design by Marjorie]. Flock.
This is a translation of Ispoved' as it appears in Tolstoy'S Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii, volume 23 (Moscow, 1957), to which acknowledgment is made.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910.
Confession
Translation of: Ispoved'
Bibliography: p.
Christian life. 2. Faith. 3. Tolstoy, Leo,
graf, 1828-1910. I. Patterson, David. II. Title.
BV450l.T64 1983 201 83-2414
ISBN 0-393-30192-3
w. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.¥. 10110
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London, WCIA IPU
INTRODUCTION
I
N THE FALL of 1879 the fifty-one-year-old author of War
and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) came to believe
that he had accomplished nothing in life and that his life was
meaningless. Either of these works would have assured him a
permanent place in the annals of world literature; both testified
to the depth of his genius and creativity. If artistic achievement
of this magnitude cannot instill life with meaning, then where is
meaning to be found? Such is the "question of life" that Tolstoy
addresses in his Confession, a question as timeless as the spirit.
Ernest J. Simmons has described the Confession as "one of
the noblest and most courageous utterances of man, theoutpourings of a soul perplexed in the extreme by life's great problemthe relation of man to the infinite-yet executed with complete
sincerity and high art."* It is a tale of midlife spiritual crisis, the
ingredients of which had been fermenting in the man since his
youth. As such, the Confession marks a turning point in Tolstoy's
concern as an author, and after 1880 his attention was concentrated quite explicitly and almost exclusively on the religious life
that he believed to be idealized in the peasant.
Although there are parallels between the torments of Levin
in Anna Karenina and Tolstoy's own conflicts in the Canfession,
*Ernest 1. Simmons, Leo Tolstoy (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1946), p. 326.
5
INTRODUCTION
the latter was written two years after the publication of the former
and represents a more developed reflection on the question of life's
meaning and the problems surrounding faith; indeed, these are
precisely the difficulties that confront many of the characters in
his later fiction, including the title characters in The Death of Ivan
Il'ich (1886) and Father Sergius (1896), as well as Brekhunov in
Master and Man (1895) and Nekhlyudov in Resurrection (1900).
After completing Anna Karenina Tolstoy attempted to do a few
idyllic sketches of peasant life, but his preoccupation with faith,
death, and the meaning of life made it difficult for him to write
at all.
By the end of 1877 Tolstoy was deeply entrenched in the
conflict between faith and reason. During the winter of 1877-78,
for example, he did some work on two pieces entitled A Debate
on Faith in the Kremlin and The Interlocutors in which he set
forth discussions of faith between believers and nonbelievers. He
then put these projects aside to begin research for a sequel to War
and Peace called The Decembrists, but his work on the new novel
was interrupted for over a month in the summer of 1878 when he
went on a religious retreat to Samara in southern Russia. Shortly
after he returned home on 3 August he reconciled a feud with
Turgenev that had lasted for seventeen years. In February of 1879,
however, he ceased work on The Decembrists altogether and without explanation.
Tolstoy believed that one of the eternal questions for every
person is the extent to which he serves God or mammon. It was
with this question in mind that he began preparations for still
another novel, this one entitled One Hundred Years. The new
work was to be about Peter the Great, but by the summer of 1879
Tolstoy felt he did not have the strength to continue the project.
On 14 June he went on still another religious retreat, this time to
6
INTRODUCTION
the Cave Monastery in Kiev, where he found simple monks living
their lives in keeping with the "ancient Christian ways." The trip
to Kiev revitalized his spirit so much that he now had the strength
to break completely with the Orthodox Church, whereupon he set
out to show that the teachings of the Church were not at all
consistent with the Gospel. To be �ure, the Confession was originally subtitled An Introduction to an Unpublished Work, that
work being An Investigation of Dogmatic Theology, in which
Tolstoy undertook one of his several attacks on the Church.
After completing a rough draft of the Confession at the end
of 1879, Tolstoy revised it by drawing on material from his incomplete autobiographical essay, "What Am I?" The Confession was
supposed to have appeared in 1882 in an issue of Russkaya mysl',
but due to difficulties with the censor it did not appear until 1884,
when it was published in Geneva. It should be noted that the piece
did not bear the title Confession until it came out in the Geneva
edition.
In order to show what the censor found so objectionable
about the Confession, it may be helpful to reproduce here the first
page from the Geneva edition, which was supposed to have served
as an introduction to the aborted Russian edition:
"In this work by Count L. N. Tolstoy, which we are publishing here, there unfolds before the reader the internal drama of a
mighty soul in all its depth and profundity, with all its terrible and
tragic turmoil. This is a soul gifted with a wealth of creative power,
striving since his earliest years toward self-perfection; but he is also
a soul educated in surroundings where everyone lives according to
his basic origins, which not only have nothing to do with the
teachings of doctrine but for the most part are in opposition to
them-'wherever the teachings of doctrine exist: formally �nd
coldly taught, 'supported by force, those teachings are not part of
7
INTRODUCTION
the life of the people and the relations among them.'
"Here unfolds the drama of a soul who has sought from his
earliest years the path to truth, or as the author refers to it, 'the
meaning of life.' This is a soul striving with all the strength of his
inner energy toward the light which shapes him and his edification; he strives no less by means of a scientifically cold, rational,
abstract investigation that ultimately leads to God and divine
truth. It is truly a magnificent drama for anyone whose living soul
has the power to understand and perceive its inner meaning; it is
written by the hand of one who himself lived through all its
internal collisions, torments and agonies, by the hand of our ingenious writer. Under such circumstances whatever one might say
about this work would seem superfluous. Nevertheless, we wish to
warn the reader not to make the mistake which is so easily made
by anyone who picks up a new publication, whether it deals with
heartless nature or with the spirit, which is the realm of literature.
The mistake stems from the manner in which the reader treats the
work, the way he approaches it and the things he demands from
it. Nothing of that sort should distort the author's thoughts; nothing should pervert or obscure the true meaning of his ,work, such
as our preconceptions according to which we may view the work
whenever we enter it with arbitrary questions which the author
does not wish to answer and with which he did not think to
concern himself."*
Finally, it may be asked whether Tolstoy ever actually found
the meaning of life or the truth he sought. Whatever is said in
this regard, it is clear that he continued his search until his death
in 1910: his was a life characterized as much by seeking as by
finding. Indeed, the meaning he was striving for reveals itself more
*Translated from N. N. Gusev, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1963),
P·593·
8
INTRODUCTION
in the search than in the discovery, and asking the question of life
is more vital than answering it. For it is by raising the question
that the spirit engages in its struggle for voice, a struggle that finds
its expression in works such as the Confession.
I
J
w AS BAPTIZED and educated in the Orthodox Christian
faith. Even as a child and throughout my adolescence and
youth I was schooled in the Orthodox beliefs. But when at
the age of eighteen I left my second year of studies at the university, * I had lost all belief in what I had been taught.
Judging from what I can remember, I never really had a
serious belief. I simply trusted in what I had been taught and in
the things my elders adhered to. But even this trust was very shaky.
I remember that when I was eleven years old a high-school
boy named Volodin'ka M., now long since dead, visited us one
Sunday with an announcement of the latest discovery made at
schoQI. The discovery was that there is no God and that the things
they were teaching us were nothing but fairy tales (this was in
1838). t I remember how this news captured the interest of my
older brothers; they even let me in on their discussions. I remember that we were all very excited and that we took this news to
be both quite engaging and entirely possible.
I also remember the time when my older brother Dmitri, who
was then at the university, suddenly gave hi�self over to faith with
*On 12. April 1847 Tolstoy asked permission to withdraw from the University of
Kazan for health reasons. Shortly afterward he returned to the Tolstoy estate at
Yasnaya Polyana 130 miles from Moscow.
tOn 2.5 May of this year Tolstoy's grandmother died. Her passing filled him with
horror and left him preoccupied with death for months afterward.
1 3
CONFESSION
all the passion that is peculiar to his nature; he began to attend
all the church services, to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life.
All of us, including those who were older, continually subjected
him to ridicule, and for some reason we gave him the nickname
of Noah. I remember that when Musin-Pushkin, then a trustee of
the University of Kazan, invited us to a ball, my brother declined
the invitation; Musin-Pushkin, with a certain mockery, tried to
persuade him to come by saying that even David danced before
the ark. At that time I sympathized with these jokes from my
elders, and they led me to the conclusion that I had to learn my
catechism and go to church but that it was not necessary to take
it all too seriously. I also remember reading Voltaire* when I was
very young; not only was I not disgusted with his mockery, but I
actually found it quite amusing.
My break with faith occurred in me as it did and still does
among people of our social and cultural type. As I see it, in most
cases it happens like this: people live as everyone lives, but they
all live according to principles that not only have nothing to do
with the teachings of faith but for the most part are contrary to
them. The teachings of faith have no place in life and never come
into play in the relations among people; they simply play no role
in living life itself. The teachings of faith are left to some other
realm, separated from life and independent of it. If one should
encounter them, then it is only as some superficial phenomenon
that has no connection with life.
Today, as in days past, there is no way to tell from a person's
life, from his deeds, whether or not he is a believer. If there is
*Fran�ois Marie Arouet de Voltaire ( 1694-1778) was a French philosopher, dramatist, essayist, poet, historian, and satirist. A center of controversy throughout his
life, he became the spokesman for the anticlerical and rationalist ideas of the Age
of'Enlightenment.
LEO TOLSTOY
indeed no difference between those who are clearly adherents of
the Orthodox faith and those who deny it, then it is not to the
benefit of the former. Then, as now, the open avowal and confession of the Orthodox faith occurred largely among narrowminded, cruel, and immoral people wrapped up in their own
self-importance. On the other hand, intellect, honor, straightforwardness, good naturedness, and morality were for the most part
to be found among people claiming to be disbelievers.
They teach catechism in the schools and send pupils to
church; functionaries must carry certificates showing they have
taken holy communion. But now, and even more so in the past,
a person of our class who is no longer in school and has not gone
into public service can live dozens of years without once being
reminded that he lives among Christians, while he himself is
regarded as a follower of the Orthodox Christian faith.
Thus to,day, as in days past, the teachings of faith, accepted
on trust and sustained by external pressure, gradually fade under
the influence of the knowledge and experiences of life, which
stand in opposition to those teachings. Quite often a man goes on
for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been
imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time
there is not a trace of it left in him.
A certain intelligent and honest man named S. once told me
the story of how he ceased to be a believer. At the age of twentysix, while'taking shelter for the night during a hunting trip, he
knelt to pray in the evening, as had been his custom since childhood. His older brother, who had accompanied him on the trip,
was lying down on some straw and watching him. When S. had
finished and was getting ready to lie down, his brother said to him,
"So you still do that." And they said nothing more to each other.
From that day S. gave up praying and going to church. And for
15
CONFESSION
thirty years he has not prayed, he has not taken holy communion,
and he has not gone to church. Not because he shared his brother's
convictions and went along with them; nor was it because he had
decided on something or other in his own soul. It was simply-that
the remark his brother had made was like the nudge of a finger
against a wall that was about to fall over from its own weight. His
brother's remark showed him that the place where he thought
faith to be had long since been empty; subsequently the words he
spoke, the signs of the cross he made, and the bowing of his head
in prayer were in essence completely meaningless actions. Once
having admitted the meaninglessness of these gestures, he could
no longer continue them.
Thus it has happened and continues to happen, I believe,
with the great majority of people. I am referring to people of our
social and cultural type, people who are honest with themselves,
and not those who use faith as a means of obtaining some temporal
goal or other. (These people are the most radical disbelievers, for
if faith, in their view, is a means of obtaining some worldly end,
then it is indeed no faith at all.) People of our type are in a position
where the light of knowledge and of life has broken down the
artificial structure, and they have either taken note of this and
have left it behind them or they have remained unconscious of it.
The teachings of faith instilled in me since childhood left me,
just as they have left others; the only difference is that since I
began reading and thinking a great deal at an early age, I became
aware of my renunciation of the teachings of faith very early in
life. From the age of sixteen I gave up praying and on my own
accord quit going to church and fasting. I ceased to believe in what
had been instilled in me since childhood, yet I did believe in
something, though I could not say what. I even believed in God
-or rather I did not deny God-but what kind of God I could
not say; nor did I deny Christ and his teachings, but I could not
LEO TOLSTOY
have said what those teachings consisted of.
As I now look back at that time I clearly see that apart from
animal instincts, the faith that affected my life, the only real faith
I had, was faith in perfection. But I could not have said what
perfection consisted of or what its purpose might be. I tried to
achieve intellectual perfection; I studied everything I could, everything that life gave me a chance to study. I tried to perfect my
will and set up rules for myself that I endeavored to follow. I strove
for physical perfection by doing all the exercises that develop
strength and agility and by undergoing all the hardships that
discipline the self in endurance and perseverance. I took all this
to be perfection. The starting point of it all was, of course, moral
perfection, but this was soon replaced by a belief in overall perfection, that is, a desire to be better not in my own eyes or in the
eyes of God, but rather a desire to be better in the eyes of other
people. And tqis effort to be better in the eyes of other people was
very quickly displaced by a longing to be stronger than other
people, that is, more renowned, more important, wealthier than
others.
II
Someday I shall relate the story of my life, including both the
pathetic and the instructive aspects of those ten years of my youth.
I think that many, very many, have had the same experiences.
With all my soul I longed to be good; but I was young, I had
passions, and I was alone, utterly alone, whenever I sought what
was good. Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires
to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon
as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed. As I gave myself over to
CONFESSION
these passions I became like my elders, and I felt that they were
pleased with me. A kindhearted aunt of mine with whom I lived,
one of the finest of women, was forever telling me that her fondest
desire was for me to have an affair with a married woman: "Rien
ne forme un ;eune homme comme une liaison avec une femme
comme il faut. ,,* Another happiness she wished for me was that
I become an adjutant, preferably to the emperor. And the greatest
happiness of all would be for me to marry a very wealthy young
lady who could bring me as many serfs as possible.
I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heartrending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with
the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the
fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a
fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind,
drunkenness, violence, murder-there was not a crime I did not
commit; yet in spite of it all I was praised, and my colleagues
considered me and still do consider me a relatively moral man.
Thus I lived for ten years.
During this time I began to write out of vanity, self-interest,
and pride. I did the same thing in my writing that I did in my life.
In order to acquire the fame and the money I was writing for, it
was necessary to conceal what was good and to flaunt what was
bad. And that is what I did. Time after time I would scheme in
my writings to conceal under the mask of indifference and even
pleasantry those yearnings for something good which gave meaning to my life. And I succeeded in this and was praised.
At the age of twenty-six, when the war had ended, t I came
to St. Petersburg and got to know the writers there. They accepted
me as one of their own, heaped flattery upon me. Before I could
·"Nothing shapes a young man like a liaison with a decent woman."
tThis was the Crimean War ( 1853-56), in which England, France, Turkey, and
Sardinia combined forces to defeat Russia.
L EO TOL S TOY
tum around, the views on life peculiar to the writers with whom
I associated became my own, and before long all my previous
efforts to become better were completely at an end. Having no
discipline myself, I let these views justify my life.
The theory adopted by these people, my fellow writers, was
that life proceeds according to a general development and that we,
the thinkers, play the primary role in that development; moreover,
we, the artists and the poets, have the greatest influence on the
thinkers. Our mission is to educate people. In order to avoid the
obvi
9
US question-"What do I know and what can I teach?"
the theory explained that it is not necessary to know anything and
that the artist and the poet teach unconsciously. Since I was
considered a remarkable artist and poet, it was quite natural for
me to embrace this theory. As an artist and poet I wrote and
taught without myself knowing what I was teaching. I received
money for doing this; I enjoyed excellent food, lodgings, women,
society; I was famous. Therefore whatever I was teaching must
have been very good.
This faith in knowledge, poetry, and the evolution of life was
indeed a faith, and I was one of its priests. Being one of its priests
was very profitable and quite pleasant. I lived a rather long time
in this faith without ever doubting its truth. But in the second and
especially in the third year of such a way of life I began to doubt
the infallibility of this faith and started to examine it more closely.
The first thing that led me to doubt was that I began to notice
that the priests of this faith did not agree among themselves. Some
would say, "We are the best and the most useful of teachers, for
we teach what is needful while others who teach are in error."
Others would say, "No, we are the true teachers; it is you who are
in error." They argued and quarreled among themselves and
abused, deceived, and cheated one another. Moreover, there were
many among us who were not even concerned about who was right
C ONFES S ION
and who was wrong; they simply pursued their own selfish ends
and had the support of our activity. All this forced me to doubt
the truth of our faith.
Furthermore, once I had come to doubt the faith of the
writers, I began to observe its priests more closely and became
convinced that nearly all the priests of this faith were immoral
men, in most cases of a base and worthless character. Many of
them were lower than those whom I had met earlier during my
wanton military life, but they were complacent and self-satisfied
to a degree that can only be found either among people who are
complete saints or among those who do not know what holiness
is. People became repugnant to me, and I became repugnant to
myself. And I realized that this faith was a delusion.
But the strange thing is that even though I was quick to see
the utter lie of this faith and renounced it, I did not renounce the
rank bestowed upon me by these people, the rank of artist, poet,
and teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet and an artist, that
I could teach all men without myself knowing what I was teaching.
And so I went on.
As a result of my association with these people, I took up a
new vice: I developed a pathological pride and the insane conviction that it was my mission to teach people without knowing what
I was teaching them.
As I now look back at that period and recall my state of mind
and the state of mind of those people (a state that, by the way,
persists among thousands), it all seems pitiful, horrible, and ridiculous to me; it excites the same feelings one might experience in
a madhouse.
At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,
and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that
this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us
20
LEO TOLSTOY
published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while
disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the
fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to
the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what
is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another.
At times we would indulge and praise each other on the condition
that we be indulged and praised in return; at other times we would
irritate and shout at each other exactly as in a madhouse.
Thousands of workers toiled day and night, to the limit of
their strength, gathering and printing millions of words to be
distributed by mail throughout all Russia. We continued to teach,
teach, and teach some more, and there was no way we could ever
teach it all; and then we would get angry because people paid us
little heed.
Very strange indeed, but now I understand it. The real reason
behind what we were doing was that we wanted to obtain as much
money and praise as possible. Writing books and newspapers was
the only thing we knew how to do in order to attain this end. And
so that.-i� what we did. But in order for us to engage in something
so useless and at the same time maintain the conviction that we
were very important people, we needed a rationale that would
justify what we were doing. And so we came up with the following:
everything that exists is rational. Further, everythin� that exists is
evolving. And it is evolving by means of an enlightenment. The
enlightenment in turn undergoes change through the distribution
of books and periodicals. We are paid and respected for writing
books and periodicals, and therefore we are the most useful and
the best of people. This reasoning would have worked very well,
had we all been in agreement; but since for every opinion expressed by one person there was always someone else whose opinion was diametrically opposed to it, we should have been led to
21
C ON FES S ION
reconsider. But we never noticed this. We received money, and
people of our circle praised us; thus every one of us believed
himself to be right.
It is now clear to me that there was no difference between
ourselves and people living in a madhouse; at the time I only
vaguely suspected this, and, like all madmen, I thought everyone
except myself was mad.
III
Thus I lived, giving myself over to this insanity for another six
years, until my marriage. * During this time I went abroad. Life
in Europe and my acquaintance with eminent and learned Europeans confirmed me all the more in my belief in general perfectibility, for I found the very same belief among them. My belief
assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated
people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning.
Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how
to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one
must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person
being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without
really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere."
I did not notice this at the time. Only now and then would
my feelings, and not my reason, revolt against this commonly held
superstition of the age, by means of which people hide from
themselves their own ignorance of life. Thus during my stay in
*On 23 September 1862, at the age of thirty-four, Tolstoy married eighteen-yearold Sof'ya Andreevna Bers.
22
L EO TOL S TOY
Paris the sight of an execution revealed to me the feebleness of
my superstitious belief in progress. * When I saw how the head was
severed from the body and heard the thud of each part as it fell
into the box, I understood, not with my intellect but with my
whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of
progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the
people in the world from the day of creation found this to be
necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not
necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must
be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people
say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according
to my own heart. The death of my brother was another instance
in which I realized the inadequacy of the superstition of progress
in regard to life. t A good, intelligent, serious man, he was still
young when he fell ill. He suffered for over a year and died an
agonizing death without ever understanding why he lived and
understanding even less why he was dying. No theories could
provide any answers to these questions, either for him or for me,
during his slow and painful death.
But these were only rare instances of doubt; on the whole I
continued to live, embracing only a faith in progress. "Everything
is developing, and I am developing; the reason why I am developing in this way will come to light, along with everything else."
Thus I was led to formulate my faith at the time.
When I returned from abroad I settled in the country and
*On 25 March 1857 Franr;ois Riche was executed for murder. On 6 April Tolstoy
mentioned the execution in his diary: "He kissed the Gospel and then--<leath.
What insanity'"
tTolstoy's favorite brother, Nikolai, died of consumption on 20 September 1860
at the age of thirty-seven. On 21 January 1856 his brother Dmitri died of the same
disease at the age of twenty-eight. Although Dmitri served as a model for Levin's
brother in Anna Karenina ( 1877), here Tolstoy is probably referring to the death
of Nikolai.
C ONFES S ION
occupied myself with the peasant schools. This occupation was
especially dear to my heart because it involved none of the lies that
had become so apparent to me, the lies that had irritated me when
I was a literary teacher. Here too I was acting in the name of
progress, but I assumed a critical attitude toward that progress. I
told myself that in many of its forms progress did not proceed as
it should and that here it was necessary to leave a primitive people;
the peasant children, completely free to choose the path of progress they wanted.
In essence I was still faced with the same insoluble problem
of how to teach without knowing what I was teaching. In the
higher spheres of literature it was clear to me that I could not
teach without knowing what I was teaching; for I saw that everyone taught differently and that in the arguments they had they
scarcely hid their ignorance from each other. But here, with the
peasant children, I thought I could get around this difficulty by
allowing the children to learn whatever they liked. I t now seems
ludicrous to me when I recall how I tried this and that in order
to carry out this whim of mine to teach, all the while knowing full
well in the depths of my soul that there was no way I could teach
what was needful because I did not know what was needful. After
a year of being occupied with school I went abroad once again in
order to find out how this could be done without myself knowing
how to teach.
I believed that I had found a solution abroad, and, armed with
all this wisdom, I returned to Russia in the year of the emancipation of the serfs. * I took up the office of arbitrator and began
teaching the uneducated people in the schools and the educated
people through the periodical that I had started publishing.
Things seemed to be going well, but I felt that my mental health
·On 18 February 1861 Tsar Alexander II published his imperial manifesto abolishing serfdom.
LEO TOLS TOY
was not what it should be and that this could not go on for long.
Perhaps even then I would have fallen into the despair that came
over me at the age of fifty were it not for one more aspect of life
which I had not yet experienced and which held the promise of
salvation: family life.
For a year I was occupied with arbitration, with the schools,
and with the magazine. But I was soon exhausted from being
entangled in the whole thing. The struggle with arbitration became burdensome to me; my activity in the schools was a lot of
trouble; and my shuffling around with the magazine became repugnant to me, since it was forever centered on the same thing
-the desire to teach everyone while hiding the fact that I did not
know what I was teaching. It finally reached a point where I fell
ill, more spiritually than physically; I gave it all up and went to the
steppes of the Bashkirs to breathe fresh air, drink koumiss, and live
an animal life.
After I returned I got married. The new circumstances of a
happy family life completely diverted me from any search for the
overall meaning of life. At that time my whole life was focused on
my family, my wife, my children, and thus on a concern for
improving our way of life. My striving for personal perfection,
which had already been replaced by a striving for perfection in
general, a striving for progress, now became a striving for what was
best for my family and me.
Thus another fifteen years went by.
In spite of the fact that during these fifteen years I regarded
writing as a trivial endeavor, I continued to write. * I had already
tasted the temptations of authorship, the temptations of enormous monetary rewards and applause for worthless work, and I
gave myself up to it as a means of improving my material situation
*It was duriJ;lg this period, when he "regarded writing as a trivial endeavor," that
Tolstoy produced War and Peace (1869).
C ONFES S ION
and as a way of stifling any questions in my soul concerning the
meaning of my life and of life in general.
As I wrote I taught what to me was the only truth: that we
must live for whatever is best for ourselves and our family.
And so I lived. But five years ago something very strange began
to happen to me. At first I began having moments of bewilderment,
when my life would come to a halt, as if I did not know how to live or
what to do; I would lose my presence of mind and fall into a state of
depression. But this passed, and I continued to live as before. Then
the moments of bewilderment recurred more frequently, and they
always took the same form. Whenever my life came to a halt, the
questions would arise: Why? And what next?
At first I thought these were pointless and irrelevent questions. I thought that the answers to them were well known and
that if I should ever want to resolve them, it would not be too hard
for me; it was just that I could not be bothered with it now, but
if I should take it upon myself, then I would find the answers. But
the questions began to come up more and more frequently, and
their demands to be answered became more and more urgent. And
like points concentrated into one spot, these questions without
answers came together to form a single black stain.
It happened with me as it happens with everyone who contracts a fatal internal disease. At first there were the insignificant
symptoms of an ailment, which the patient ignores; then these
symptoms recur more and more frequently, until they merge into
one continuous duration of suffering. The suffering increases, and
before he can turn around the patient discovers what he already
knew: the thing he had taken for a mere indisposition is in fact
the most important thing on earth to him, is in fact death.
This is exactly what happened to me. I realized that this was
not an incidental ailment but something very serious, and that if
the same questions should continue to recur, I would have to
26
LEO TOL STOY
answer them. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed
to be such foolish, simple, childish questions. But as soon as I laid
my hands on them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately
convinced, first of all, that they were not childish and foolish
questions but the most vital and profound questions in life, and,
secondly, that no matter how much I pondered them'there was
no way I could resolve them. Before I could be occupied with my
Samara estate, with the education of my son, or with the writing
of books, I had to know why I was doing these things. As long as
I do not know the reason why, I cannot do anything. In the middle
of my concern with the household, which at the time kept me
quite busy, a question would suddenly come into my head: "Very
well, you will have 6,000 desyatins* in the Samara province, as well
as 300 horses; what then?" And I was completely taken aback and
did not know what else to think. As soon as I started to think about
the education of my children, I would ask myself, "Why?" Or I
would reflect on how the people might attain prosperity, and I
would suddenly ask myself, "What concern is it of mine?" Or in
the middle of thinking about the fame that my works were bringing me I would say to myself, "Very well, you will be more famous
than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, more famous than all
the writers in the world-so what?
And I could find absolutely no reply.
IV
My life came to a stop. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep;
indeed, I could not help but breathe, eat, drink, and sleep. But
there was no life in me because I had no desires whose satisfaction
*One desyatin is equal to 2.7 acres, giving Tolstoy 16,200 acres in the Samsara
province.
C ONFES S ION
I would have found reasonable. If I wanted something, I knew
beforehand that it did not matter whether or not I got it.
If a fairy had come and offered to fulfill my every wish, I
would not have known what to wish for. If in moments of intoxication I should have not desires but the habits of old desires, in
moments of sobriety I knew that it was all a delusion, that I really
desired nothing. I did not even want to discover truth anymore
because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is
meaningless.
I t was as though I had lived a little, wandered a little, until
I came to the precipice, and I clearly saw that there was nothing
ahead except ruin. And there was no stopping, no turning back,
no closing my eyes so I would not see that there was nothing ahead
except the deception of life and of happiness and the reality of
suffering and death, of complete annihilation.
I grew sick of life; some irresistible force was leading me to
somehow get rid of it. It was not that I wanted to kill myself. The
force that was leading me away from life was more powerful, more
absolute, more all-encompassing than any desire. With all my
strength I struggled to get away from life. The thought of suicide
came to me as naturally then as the thought of improving life had
come to me before. This thought was such a temptation that I had
to use cunning against myself in order not to go through with it
too hastily. I did not want to be in a hurry only because I wanted
to use all my strength to untangle my thoughts. If I could not get
them untangled, I told myself, I could always go ahead with it.
And there I was, a fortunate man, carrying a rope from my room,
where I was alone every night as I undressed, so that I would not
hang myself from the beam between the closets. And I quit going
hunting with a gun, so that I would not be too easily tempted to
rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted. I was afraid
28
LEO TOLS TOY
of life, I struggled to get rid of it, and yet I hoped for something
from it.
And this was happening to me at a time when, from all
indications, I should have been considered a completely happy
man; this was when I was not yet fifty years old. I had a good,
loving, and beloved wife, fine children, and a large estate that was
growing and expanding without any effort on my part. More than
ever before I was respected by friends and acquaintances, praised
by strangers, and I could claim a certain renown without really
deluding myself. Moreover, I was not physically and mentally
unhealthy; on the contrary, I enjoyed a physical and mental vigor
such as I had rarely encountered among others my age. Physically,
I could keep up with the peasants working in the fields; mentally,
I could work eight and ten hours at a stretch without suffering any
aftereffects from the strain. And in such a state of affairs I came
to a point where I could not live; and even though I feared death,
I had to employ ruses against myself to keep from committing
suicide.
I described my spiritual condition to myself in this way: my
life is some kind of stupid and evil practical joke that someone is
playing on me. In spite of the fact that I did not acknowledge the
existence of any "Someone" who might have created me, the
notion that someone brought me into the world as a stupid and
evil joke seemed to be the most natural way to describe my condition.
I could not help imagining that somewhere there was someone who was now amusing himself, laughing at me and at the way
I had lived for thirty or forty years, studying, developing, growing
in body and soul; laughing at how I had now completely matured
intellectually and had reached that summit from which life reveals
itself only to stand there like an utter fool, clearly seeing that there
29
CON FES S ION
is nothing in life, that there never was and never will be. "And
it makes him laugh
But whether or not there actually was someone laughing at
me did not make it any easier for me. I could not attach a rational
meaning to a single act in my entire life. The only thing that
amazed me was how I had failed to realize this in the very beginning. All this had been common knowledge for so long. If not
today, then tomorrow sickness and death will come (indeed, they
were already approaching) to everyone, to me, and nothing will
remain except the stench and the worms. My deeds, whatever
they may be, will be forgotten sooner or later, and I myself will
be no more. Why, then, do anything? How can anyone fail to see
this and live? That's what is amazing! It is possible to live only as
long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing
that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion! Nor is there anything
funny or witty about it; it is only cruel and stupid.
There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who was taken
by surprise in the steppes by a raging wild beast. Trying to save
himself from the beast, the traveler jumps into a dried-up well; but
at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open wide,
waiting to devour him. The unhappy man does not dare climb out
for fear of being killed by the wild beast, and he does not dare
jump to the bottom of the well for fear of being devoured by the
dragon. So he grabs hold of a branch of a wild bush growing in
the crevices of the well and clings to it. His arms grow weak, and
he feels that soon he must fall prey to the death that awaits him
on either side. Yet he still holds on, and while he is clinging to
the branch he looks up to see two mice, one black and one white,
evenly working their way around the branch of the bush he is
hanging from, gnawing on it. Soon the bush will give way and
break off, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler
LEO TOL S TOY
sees this and knows that he will surely die. But while he is still
hanging there he looks around and sees some drops of honey on
the leaves of the bush, and he stretches out his tongue and licks
them. Thus I cling to the branch of life, knowing that inevitably
the dragon of death is waiting, ready to tear me to pieces; and I
cannot understand why this torment has befallen me. I try to suck
the honey that once consoled me, but the honey is no longer
sweet. Day and night the black mouse and the white mouse gnaw
at the branch to which I cling. I clearly see the dragon, and the
honey has lost all its sweetness. I see only the inescapable dragon
and the mice, and I cannot turn my eyes from them. This is no
fairy tale but truth, irrefutable and understood by all.
The former delusion of the happiness of life that had concealed from me the horror of the dragon no longer deceives me.
No matter how much I tell myself that I cannot understand the
meaning of life, that I should live without thinking about it, I
cannot do this because I have done it for too long already. Now
I cannot help seeing the days and nights rushing toward me and
leading me to death. I see only this, and this alone is truth.
Everything else is a lie.
The two drops of honey which more than anything else had
diverted my eyes from the cruel truth were my love for my family
and my writing, which I referred to as art; yet this honey had lost
its sweetness for me.
"My family ," I said to myself. But my family, my wife
and children, are people too. They are subject to the same conditions as I: they must either live in the lie or face the terrible truth.
Why should they live? Why should I love them? Why care for
them, bring them up, and watch over them? So that they can sink
into the despair that eats away at me, or to turn them over to
stupidity? If I love them, then I cannot hide the truth from them.
3 1
C ON FES S ION
Every step they take in knowledge leads them to this truth. And
the truth is death.
"Art, literature Under the influence of success and
praise from others I had persuaded myself for a long time that this
was something that may be done in spite of the approaching death
that will annihilate everything-myself, my works, and the memory of them. But I soon saw that this, too, was a delusion. It
became clear to me that art is an ornamentation of life, something
that lures us into life. But life had lost its charm for me, so how
was I to charm others? As long as I was not living my own life but
the life of another that was carrying me along on its crest, as long
as I believed that life had a meaning, even though I could not
express it, the reflection of every kind of life through literature and
the arts gave me pleasure; I enjoyed looking at life in the mirror
of art. But when I began to search for the meaning of life, when
I began to feel the need to live, this mirror became either tormenting or unnecessary, superfluous and ludicrous. It was no longer
possible for me to be consoled by what I saw in the mirror, for I
could see that my situation was stupid and despairing. It was good
for me to rejoice when in the depths of my soul I believed that
my life had meaning. Then this play of lights and shades, the play
of the comical, the tragic, the moving, the beautiful, and the
terrible elements in life had comforted me. But when I saw that
life was meaningless and terrible the play in the mirror could no
longer amuse me. No matter how sweet the honey, it could not
be sweet to me, for I saw the dragon and the mice gnawing away
at my support.
But it did not stop here. Had I simply understood that life has
no meaning, I might have been able to calmly accept it; I might
have recognized that such was my lot. But I could not rest content
at this. Had I been like a man who lives in a forest from which
32
LEO TOLS TOY
he knows there is no way out, I might have been able to go on
living; but I was like a man lost in the forest who was terrified by
the fact that he was lost, like a man who was rushing about,
longing to find his way and knowing that every step was leading
him into deeper confusion, and yet who could not help rushing
about.
This was the horror. And in order to be delivered from this
horror, I wanted to kill myself. I felt a horror of what awaited me;
I knew that this horror was more terrible than my present situation, but I could not keep it away and I did not have the patience
to wait for the end. No matter how convincing the argument was
that a blood vessel in the heart would burst anyway or that something else would rupture and it would be all over, I could not
patiently await the end. The horror of the darkness was too great,
and I wanted to be)free of it as quickly as possible by means of
a rope or a bullet. It was this feeling, more powerful than any
other, that was leading me toward suicide.
v
Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked
something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to
everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every
area bf knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on
my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere
curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying
man seeking salvation. I found nothing.
I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to
find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored
33
C ONFES S ION
knowledge as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had
they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same
thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge
attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
I searched everywhere. And thanks to a life spent in study and
to my connections with the learned world, I had access to the most
learned from all the various fields of knowledge. These scholars did
not refuse to reveal to me the sum of their knowledge, not only
through their books but in conversations with them; I knew everything that knowledge had to answer to the question of life.
For a long time I could not bring myself to believe that
knowledge had no reply to the question of life other than the one
it had come up with. For a long time I thought I might have
misunderstood something, as I closely observed the gravity and
seriousness in the tone of science, convinced in its position, while
having nothing to do with the question of human life. For a long
time I was timid around knowledge, and I thought that the absurdity of the answers given to my questions was not the fault of
knowledge but was due to my own ignorance; but the thing was
that this to me was no joke, no game, but a matter of life and
death; and I finally came to the conclusion that my questions were
the only legitimate questions serving as a basis for all knowledge
and that it was not I but science that was guilty before my questions if it should pretend to answer these questions.
My question, the question that had brought me to the edge
of suicide when I was fifty years old, was the simplest question
lying in the soul of every human being, from a silly child to the
wisest of the elders, the question without which life is impossible;
such was the way I felt about the matter. The question is this:
What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will
come of my entire life?
34
LEO TOL S TOY
Expressed differently, the question may be: Why should I
live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Or to put
it still differently: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be
destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?
Throughout human knowledge I sought an answer to this
question, which is one and the same question in the various expressions of it. And I found that in regard to this question the sum
of human knowledge is divided as if into two hemispheres lying
opposite each other, into two opposite extremes occupying two
poles, one positive and one negative. But there were no answers
to the question of life at either pole.
One field of knowledge does not even acknowledge the question, even though it clearly and precisely answers the questions
that it has posed independently. This is the field of experimental
science, and at its ell!treme end is mathematics. The other field of
knowledge acknowledges the questions but does not answer it.
This is the field of speculative philosophy, and at its extreme end
is metaphysics.
From my early youth I had studied speculative philosophy,
but later both mathematics and the natural sciences attracted me.
And until I had clearly put my question to myself, until the
question itself grew within me and urgently demanded a resolution, I was satisfied with the counterfeit answers that knowledge
had to offer.
In regard to the realm of experience, I said to myself, "Everything is developing and being differentiated, becoming more complex and moving toward perfection, and there are laws governing
this process. You are part of the whole. If you learn as much as
possible about the whole and if you learn the law of its development, you will come to know your place in the whole and to know
yourself. " As much as I am ashamed to admit it, there was a time
35
C ON FES S ION
when I seemed to be satisfied with this. It was at this time that
I myself was developing and becoming more complex. My muscles
were growing and getting stronger, my memory was being enriched, my ability to think and to comprehend was becoming
greater; I was growing and developing. Feeling growth within me,
it was natural for me to believe that perfectibility was indeed the
law of the entire universe and that in this idea.I would find the
answers to the questions of my life. But the time came when I
stopped growing; I felt that I was not growing but drying up. My
muscles were growing weaker, my teeth were falling out, and I saw
not only that this law explained nothing to me but that there never
had been and never could be any law of this kind; I had merely
mistaken something for a law which I happened to have found in
myself at a particular time in my life. As I examined the nature
of this law more closely, it became clear to me that there could
be no such law of eternal development. It became clear to me that
to say everything is developing, becoming more perfect, growing
more complex and being differentiated in endless space and time
amounted to saying nothing at all. None of these words has any
meaning, for in the infinite there is nothing either simple or
complex, nothing before or after, nothing better or worse.
The main thing was that my personal question, the question
of what I am with all my desires, remained totally unanswered. I
realized that these areas of knowledge may be very interesting and
quite attractive, but their clarity and precision are inversely proportionate to their applicability to the questions of life. The less
they have to do with the questions of life, the clearer and more
precise they are; the more they attempt to provide answers to the
questions of life, the more vague and unattractive they become.
If we turn to those fields of knowledge that try to provide answers
to the questions, to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology,
LEO TOL S TOY
then we encounter a striking poverty of thought and the greatest
obscurity; we find in them a completely unjustified pretension to
decide questions lying outside their scope, as well as incessant
contradiction between one thinker and another and even thinkers
contradicting themselves. If we turn to those fields of knowledge
that are not concerned with answering the questions of life but
only with answering their own special, scientific questions, then
we may be carried away by the power of the human intellect, but
we know beforehand that we shall find no answers to the question
of life. These areas of knowledge completely ignore the question
of life. They say, "We cannot tell you what you are and why you
live; we do not have the answers to these questioris, and we are
not concerned with them. If you need to know about the laws of
light, however, or about chemical compounds or the laws governing the developm91t of organisms; if you need to know about the
laws governing physical bodies, their forms and the relation between their size and number; if you need to know about the laws
of your own mind, then for all this we have clear, precise, indubitable answers."
Generally the:relation between the experimental sciences and
the question of life may be expressed in this way: Question-Why
do I live? Answer-In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely
small particles undergo modifications of infinite complexity, and
when you understand the laws that govern these modifications,
then you will understand why you live.
Then along more speculative lines I would say to myself, "All
of mankind lives and develops according to the spiritual principles,
according to the ideals that guide it. These ideals find expression
in the religions, the sciences, the arts, and the forms of government. As these ideals rises higher and higher mankind proceeds
on to its greater happiness. I am a part of mankind, and my
37
C ON FES S I O N
mission, therefore, lies in helping mankind through the consciousness and realization of these ideals." During my feeble-mindedness I was satisfied with this. But as soon as the question of life
began to clearly emerge within me, this entire theory immediately
collapsed. In addition to the careless inaccuracy with which this
type of knowledge draws its conclusions and makes general claims
about humanity after having studied only a small portion of it; in
addition to the mutual contradiction among the various advocates
of this view with respect to what the ideals of mankind are, the
strangeness, if not the stupidity, of this view is that in order to
answer the question that occurs to every man-"What am I?" or
"Why do I live?" or "What am I to do?" -another question must
first be settled: "What is the life of the humanity that is unknown
to us, the life of which we can know only a small portion over a
short period of time?" In order to know what he is, a man must
first know what the sum of this mysterious humanity is, a humanity made up of people who, like himself, do not understand what
they are.
I must confess that there was a time when I believed this. It
was during the time when I had my own pet ideals to justify my
whims, when I tried to devise one theory or another so that I could
look upon my whims as laws that govern mankind. But as soon as
the question of life began to emerge in my soul in all its clarity,
this reply immediately crumbled into dust. And I realized that
within the experimental sciences there are those that are genuinely scientific and those that are only half scientific, trying to give
answers to questions that lie completely out of their realm; thus
I realized that there is a whole series of the most widely diversified
fields of knowledge that try to answer questions beyond their
scope. Those that are only half scientific include the judicial,
social, and historical sciences; in its own way each of these sciences
LEO TOL STOY
attempts to decide the questions concerning the individual by
seemingly deciding the question of life that concerns all of mankind.
But, as in the domain of the experimental sciences, a person
who sincerely asks how he is to live cannot be satisfied with an
answer that tells him to study the infinite complexities and
changes that an infinite number of particles may go through in
infinite space and time; in the same way, a sincere person cannot
be satisfied with an answer that tells him to study the whole of
humanity, whose beginning and end we cannot know and whose
parts lie beyond our reach. It is the same with the semi-sciences
as it is with the semi-experimental sciences: the more imbedded
they are in obscurity, inaccuracy, stupidity, and contradiction, the
further they deviate from their proper task. The task of experimental science is ty determine the causal sequence of material
phenomena. If experimental science should run into a question
concerning an ultimate cause, it stumbles over nonsense. The task
of speculative science is to discover the essence of life that lies
beyond cause and effect. If its investigations should run into causal
phenomena, such as social and historical phenomena, speculative
science also stumbles over nonsense.
Experimental science, then, is concerned only with positive
knowledge and reveals the greatness of the human intellect whenever its investigations do not enter into ultimate causes. And, on
the other hand, speculative science reveals the greatness of the
human intellect only when it completely removes all questions
concerning the sequence of causal phenomena and examines man
only in relation to an ultimate cause. Metaphysics or speculative
philosophy occupies the extreme end of the spectrum of speculative sciences. This science clearly raises the question of what I am
and what the universe is, the question of why I live and why the
39
C ONFES S ION
universe exists. And since its very beginning it has always answered
in the same way. Whether the philosopher calls the essence of life
that is within me and all living creatures an idea, a substance, a
spirit, or a will, he is still saying that this essence exists and that
I am this essence; but why it is there he does not know, and if he
is a precise thinker, he does not answer. I ask, "Why does this
essence exist, and what comes of the fact that it is and will be?"
And not only does philosophy fail to answer, but all it can do itself
is ask the same question. And if it is a true philosophy, then the
sum of its labor lies in putting this question clearly. And if it holds
firmly to its task, then it can have only one answer to the question
of what I am and what the universe is: all and nothing. And to
the question of why the universe exists and why I exist it can only
reply: I do not know.
Thus no matter how I twist and tum the speculative answers
of philosophy, I can obtain nothing resembling an answer; not
because, as in the case of the clear, experimental sciences, the
answer does not relate to my question, but because even though
the sum of the intellectual labor is here directed toward my question, there is no answer. And instead of an answer, all one can
obtain is the very same question put in a complicated form.
VI
In my search for answers to the question of life I felt exactly as
a man who is lost in a forest.
I came to a clearing, climbed a tree, and had a clear view of
the endless space around me. But I could see that there was no
house and that there could be no house; I went into the thick of
the forest, into the darkness, but again I could see no house-only
darkness.
LEO TOLSTOY
Thus I wandered about in the forest of human knowledge. On
one side of me were the clearings of mathematical and experimental sciences, revealing to me sharp horizons; but in no direction
could I see a house. On the other side of me was the darkness of
the speculative sciences, where every step I took plunged me
deeper into darkness, and I was finally convinced that there could
be no way out.
When I gave myself over to the bright light of knowledge, I
was only diverting my eyes from the question. However clear and
tempting the horizons that opened up to me might have been,
however -tempting it was to sink into the infinity of this knowledge, I soon realized that the clearer this knowledge was, the less
I needed it, the less it answered my question.
"Well," I sjilid to myself, "I know everything that science
wants so much to know, but this path will not lead me to an answer
to the question of the meaning of my life. " In the realm of
speculative science I saw that in spite of -or rather precisely
because of-the fact that this knowledge was designed to answer
my question, there could be no answer other than the one I had
given myself: What is the meaning of my life? It has none. Or:
What will come of my life? Nothing. Or: Why does everything
that is exist, and why do I exist? Because it exists.
From one branch of human knowledge I received an endless
number of precise answers to questions I had not asked, answers
concerning the chemical composition of the stars, the movement
of the sun toward the constellation Hercules, the origin of the
species and of man, the forms of infinitely small atoms, and the
vibration of infinitely small and imponderable particles of ether.
But the answer given by this branch of knowledge to my question
about the meaning of my life was only this: you are what you call
your life; you are a temporary, random conglomeration of particles.
The thing that you have been led to refer to as your life is simply
C ONFES S ION
the mutual interaction and alteration of these particles. This conglomeration will continue for a certain period of time; then the
interaction of these particles will come to a halt, and the thing you
call your life will come to an end and with it all your questions.
You are a little lump of something randomly stuck together. The
lump decomposes. The decomposition of this lump is known as
your life. The lump falls apart, and thus the decomposition ends,
as do all your questions. Thus the clear side of knowledge replies,
and if it strictly follows its own principles, there is no more to be
said.
It turns out, however, that such an answer does not constitute
a reply to the question. I must know the meaning of my life, but
to say that it is a particle of infinity not only fails to give it any
meaning but destroys all possible meaning.
The experimental, exact side of knowledge may strike some
vague agreement with the speculative side, saying that the meaning of life lies in development and in the contributions made to
this development. But given the innaccuracy and obscurity of such
a remark, it cannot be regarded as an answer.
Whenever it holds strictly to its own principles in answering
the question, the speculative side of knowledge has always come
up with the same reply down through the centuries: the universe
is something that is infinite and incomprehensible. Human life is
an inscrutable part of this inscrutable "whole." Again I put aside
all the agreements made between speculative and experimental
knowledge that constitute the whole ballast of the semi-scien,ces,
the so-called judicial, political, and historical sciences. In these
sciences we are once again led to a false concept of development
and perfection, with the only difference being that in one area we
have the development of everything and in the other the development of people. The falsehood is the same in both cases: develop-
L EO TOLS TOY
ment and perfection can have no purpose in infinity, no direction,
and therefore can give no answer to my question.
Wherever speculative knowledge is exact and may be called
true philosophy, and not what Schopenhauer refers to as professorial philosophy, which serves only to divide all existing
phenomena into new philosophical columns with new names;
wherever philosophy does not turn away from the essential question, the answer is always the same as the one given by Socrates,
Schopenhauer, Solomon, and the Buddha.
"We move closer to the truth only to the extent that we move
further from life," says Socrates, as he prepares for death. What
do we who love truth strive for in life? To be free of the body and
of all the evils that result from the life of the body. If this is so,
then how can we fail to rejoice when death approaches?
"The wise man seeks death all his life, and for this reason
death is not terrifying to him. "*
"If we accepUhe inner essence of the universe as will," says
Schopenhauer, "and if we accept the objectivity of this will in all
phenomena, from the unconscious surges of the dark forces of
nature to the fully conscious activity of man, we cannot avoid the
conclusion that all these phenomena disappear in the free denial
and self-annihilation of will; the constant striving, the aimless and
restless inclination toward all the levels of objectivity that make
up the universe will disappear, and the variety of successive forms
will come to an end; and when form disappears, so do all the
phenomena of form, including space and time, until the ultimate
foundation of form finally disappears, that of subject and object.
Where there is no will, no appearance of phenomena, there is no
universe. The only thing that remains before us is, of course,
*Socrates (470-399 B.C. ) discusses this in Sections 62.-69 of Plato's Phaedo, when
his friends have come to see him one last time before his appointed execution.
43
C ON FES S ION
nothingness. But the thing that opposes this passage into nothingness is our nature, our own will to live (Wille zum Leben), by
which we are constituted, as is our universe. The fact that we are
so frightened of nothingness, or that we long so to live only
signifies that we ourselves are merely this desire to live, and that
we know nothing except this desire. Therefore, upon the complete
annihilation of the will, all that remains for us, we who are fulfilled
by that will, is, of course, nothingness; but on the other hand, for
those in whom the will has been transformed and renounced, this
universe of ours which is so real, with all its suns and galaxies, is
itself nothingness. ,,*
"Vanity of vanities," says Solomon, "vanity of vanities, all is
vanity! What profit does a man derive from all the labors by which
he toils under the sun? One generation comes, while another
generation passes away; but the earth abides forever. What has
been will be; what has been done will be done; and there is nothing
new under the sun. Is there anything ,of which it may be said,
behold, this is new? No, it has been already in the centuries that
have come before us. There is no remembrance of former things;
and there will be no remembrance of the things to come on the
part of those who come afterward. I, the Preacher, was King over
Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave up my heart to search and seek out
through wisdom all the things that are under the sun; this hard
pursuit God has given to the sons of men, so that they may be
exercised in it. I have seen all things that are done under the sun,
and behold, all is vanity and a languishing of the spirit. I spoke
in my heart, saying, see how I have been exalted and have attained
more wisdom than all who have ruled over Jerusalem before me.
*Arthur Schopenhauer ( 1788-1860) had a profound influenc� on Tolstoy's thinking, especially during the time when he was writing War and Peace. The concepts
presented here are found in Schopenhauer's Parerga and Paralipomena.
44
LEO T O L S TOY
And my heart held much wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my
heart over to knowing wisdom and to knowing madness and folly;
I discovered that this too is a languishing of the spirit. For in much
wisdom is much grief, and he who increases wisdom increases
sorrow.
"I spoke in my heart, saying, I will try you with mirth, and you
will enjoy the pleasures of good things; but this too is vanity. Of
laughter I said: it is foolishness; and of mirth: what does it do? I
thought in my heart to delight my body with wine, and though my
heart was guided by wisdom, I thought to adhere to foolishness
until I could see what was good for the sons of men and discover
what they should do under heaven during the few days of their lives.
I undertook great deeds: I erected buildings and planted vineyards
for myself. I set up gardens and orchards and planted every kind of
fruit-bearing tree; I made reservoirs to water the orchards, so that
the trees might spring up. I acquired servants and maidservants,
and there were servants born in my house; I also had cattle, great
and small, more than any who had been in Jerusalem before me; I
obtained silver and gold and treasures from kings and from other
regions; I gathered unto myself singers and women who sing and
the delights of the sons of men and various musical instruments.
And I became greater and wealthier than all who had ruled Jerusalem before me; and my wisdom abided with me. Whatever my eyes
desired I kept not from them, nor did I forbid my heart any delight.
And I looked around at all the deeds my hands had performed and
at the labors by which I had toiled; and behold, all was vanity and a
languishing of the spirit, and there was no profit from them under
the sun. And I turned about to look upon wisdom and madness and
foolishness. But I found that one lot fell to them all. And in my
heart I said: the same lot will fall to me as to the fool-why, then,
had I become so wise? And I said to my heart: this too is vanity. For
45
C ON FES S ION
there will be no eternal memory of the wise man or of the fool; in
the days to come all will be forgotten, and alas, the wise man dies
the same death as the fool! And I came to hate life, because all the
works that are done under the sun had become repulsive to me; for
all is vanity and a languishing of the spirit. And I came to hate the
labor by which I had toiled under the sun, because it must be left to
the man who will come after me. For what will a man have from all
his labor and the anxieties of his heart by which he toils under the
sun? For all his days are sorrow and his labors grief; even at night his
heart does not know peace. And this too is vanity. There is nothing
better for a man than to eat and drink and let his soul find delight in
his labor.
"All things come alike to all; one lot falls to the righteous and
to the wicked, to the good and to the evil, to the clean and to the
unclean, to the one who sacrifices and to the one who does not
sacrifice; as to the virtuous, so to the sinner; as to the one who
swears, so to the one who fears an oath. This is an evil among all
things that are done under the sun, that one lot falls to all, and
that the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, that there is
madness in their heart and in their life; and after this they go to
join the dead. Whoever is among the living still has hope, since
it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion. The living know
that they will die, but the dead know nothing, neither have they
any reward, for even the memory of them has been lost to forgetfulness; their love, their hate, and their jealousy have already
vanished, and there will be no more honor done to them in all the
things that are done under the sun."*
Thus speaks Solomon, or the one who has written these
words.
*The passages here cited by Tolstoy are from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which was
not actually written by Solomon, who died around 930 B.C., but rather dates from
the third century B.C.
LEO TOLS TOY
And this is what an Indian sage has to say:
Sakia-Muni, a young and happy prince from whom sickness,
old age, and death had been hidden, went out for a ride one day
and saw a dreadful, toothless, driveling old man. The prince, frqm
whom until now old age had been hidden, was taken aback and
asked the driver what this meant and why this man had come to
such a pitiful, disgusting, hideous state. And when he found out
that this is the common lot of all people, that he, the young prince,
would also come to this, he could not go on with the drive and
ordered t}le driver to return home so that he could reflect on this.
And he shut himself up alone and pondered it. He probably
thought of something or other to console him, for once again,
happy and cheerful, he'went out for a drive. But this time he met
a sick man. He saw an emaciated, feeble, trembling man with dim
eyes. The prince, from whom sickness had been hidden, stopped
and asked what thiS:,could mean. And when he found out that this
was sickness, which befalls all people, and that even he, the
healthy and happy prince, may get sick tomorrow, once again the
spirit of merriment left him; he ordered the driver to return home,
where he again sought peace of mind. And he probably found it,
for a third time he went out for a drive. But the third time he saw
yet another new sight; he saw some people carrying something.
"What is it?" A dead man. "What does dead mean?" asked the
prince. And he was told that to become a dead man means to
become what this man had become. The prince went down to the
dead man, uncovered him and looked at him. "And what now will
become of him?" asked the prince. And he was told that the
man would be buried in the earth. "Why?" Because he will never
again be alive, and only stench and worms will come of him.
"And this is the fate of all people? And it will happen to me as
well? They will bury me, and a stench will rise from me,
and worms will consume me?" Yes. "Go back! I don't want
47
C ON FES S I O N
to go for a drive, I shall never go for a drive again."
Sakia-Muni could find no comfort in life. He decided that life
is a great evil, and he drew on all the strength of his soul to free
himself and others from life, to free them in such a way that after
death life would never be renewed and the root of life would be
completely destroyed. Thus speak all the Indian sages.
Thus we have the direct answers that human wisdom has to
give when it answers the question of life.
"The life of the body is an evil and a lie. And so the destruction of the life of the body is a blessing, and we should long for
it," says Socrates.
"Life is what it should not be, an evil; and a passage into
nothingness is the only blessing that life has to offer," says Schopenhauer.
"Everything in the world-both folly and wisdom, wealth and
poverty, joy and sorrow-all is vanity and emptiness. A man dies
and nothing remains. And this is absurd," says Solomon.
"It is not possible to live, knowing that suffering, decrepitness, old age, and death are inevitable; we must free ourselves from
life and from all possibility of life," says the Buddha.
And the very thing that has been uttered by these powerful
minds has been said, thought, and felt by millions of people like
them. I too have thought and felt the same way.
Thus my wanderings among the fields of knowledge not only
failed to lead me out of my despair but rather increased it. One
area of knowledge did not answer the question of life; the other
branch of knowledge did indeed answer, all the more confirming
my despair and showing me that the thing that had befallen me
was not due to an error on my part or to a sick state of mind. On
the contrary, this area of knowledge confirmed for me the fact that
I had been thinking correctly and had been in agreement with
LEO TOLSTOY
the most powerful minds known to humanity.
I could not be deceived. All is vanity. Happy is he who has
never been born; death is better than life; we must rid ourselves
of life.
VII
Having failed to find an explanation in knowledge, I began to look
for it in life, hoping to find it in the people around me. And so
I began to observe people like myself to see how they lived and
to determine what sort of relation they had with the question that
had led me to'l:iespair.
And this is what I found among people whose circumstances
were precisely the same as mine with respect to education and way
of life.
I found that "for the people of my class there were four means
of escaping the terrible situation in which we all find ourselves.
The first means of escape is that of ignorance. It cOl'lsists of
failing to realize and to understand that life is evil and meaningless. For the most part, people in this category are women, or they
are very young or very stupid men; they still have not understood
the problem of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, and the Buddha. They see neither the dragon that awaits
them nor the mice gnawing away at the branch they cling to; they
simply lick the drops of honey. But they lick these drops of honey
only for the time being; something will turn their attention toward
the dragon and the mice, and there will be an end to their licking.
There was nothing for me to learn from them, since we cannot
cease to know what we know.
The second escape is that of epicureanism. Fully aware of the
hopelessness of life, it consists of enjoying for the present the
49
C ON FES S ION
blessings that we do have without looking at the dragon or the
mice; it lies in licking the honey as best we can, especially in those
places where there is the most honey on the bush. Solomon describes this escape in the following manner:
"And I commended mirth, for there is nothing better for man
under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry; this will be his
mainstay in his toil through the days of his life that God has given
him under the sun.
"So go and eat your bread with joy and drink your wine in the
gladness of your heart. Enjoy life with a woman you love
through all the days of your life of vanity, through all your vain
days; for this is your fate in life and in the labors by which you
toil under the sun. Do whatever you can do by the strength
of your hand, for there is no work in the grave where you are going,
no reflection, no knowledge, no wisdom."
Most people of our class pursue this second means of escape.
The situation in which they find themselves is such that it affords
them more of the good things in life than the bad; their moral
stupidity enables them to forget that all the advantages of their
position are accidental, that not everyone can have a thousand
women and palaces, as Solomon did; they forget that for every
man with a thousand wives there are a thousand men without
wives, that for every palace there are a thousand men who built
it by the sweat of their brows, and that the same chance that has
made them a Solomon today might well make them Solomon's
slave tomorrow. The dullness of the imagination of these people
enables them to forget what left the Buddha with no peace: the
inevitability of sickness, old age, and death, which if not today
then tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures. The fact that some
of these people maintain that their dullness of thought and imagination is positive philosophy does not, in my opinion, distinguish
L EO TOL S TOY
them from those who lick the honey without seeing the problem.
I could not imitate these people, since I did not lack imagination
and could not pretend that I did. Like every man who truly lives,
I could not turn my eyes away from the mice and the dragon once
I had seen them.
The third means of escape is through strength and energy. It
consists of destroying life once one has realized that life is evil and
meaningless. Only unusually strong and logically consistent people
act in this manner. Having realized all the stupidity of the joke
that is bei!:lg played on us and seeing that the blessings of the dead
are greater than those of the living and that it is better not to exist,
they act and put an end to this stupid joke; and they use any means
of doing it: a rope around the neck, water, a knife in the heart,
a train. There are more and more people of our class who are
acting in this way. For the most part, the people who perform
these acts are in the very prime of life, when the strength of the
soul is at its peak and when the habits that undermine human
reason have not yet taken over. I saw that this was the most worthy
means of escape, and I wanted to take it.
The fourth means of escape is that of weakness. It consists of
continuing to drag out a life that is evil and meaningless, knowing
beforehand that nothing can come of it. The people in this category know that death is better than life, but they do not have the
strength to act rationally and quickly put an end to the delusion
by killing themselves; instead they seem to be waiting for something to happen. This is the escape of weakness, for if I know what
is better and have it within my reach, then why not surrender
myself to it? I myself belonged in this category.
Thus the people of my class save themselves from a terrible
contradiction in these four ways. No matter how much I strained
my intellectual faculties, I could see no escape other than these
C ON FES S ION
four. One escape lies in failing to realize that life is meaningless,
vain, and evil, and that it is better not to live. It was impossible
for me not to know this, and once I had discovered the truth I
could not close my eyes to it. Another escape lies in making use
of whatever life has to offer without thinking about the future.
And this I could not do. Like Sakia-Muni, I could find no pleasure
in life once I had come to know what old age, suffering, and death
are. My imagination was too active. Moreover, I could not enjoy
the transient pleasures that just happened to come my way for a
moment. The third escape lies in knowing that life is evil and
absurd and putting an end to it by killing yourself. I understood
this, but for some reason I did not kill myself. The fourth means
of escape lies in knowing that life is as Solomon and Schopenhauer
have described it, knowing that it is a stupid joke being played on
us, and yet continuing to live, to wash, dress, dine, talk, and even
write books. Such a position was disgusting and painful to me, but
I remained in it all the same.
Now I see that if I did not kill myself, it was because I had
some vague notion that my ideas were all wrong. However convincing and unquestionable the train of my thoughts and of the
thoughts of the wise seemed to me, the ideas that had led us to
affirm the meaninglessness of life, I still had some obscure doubt
about the point of departure of my reflections.
My doubt was expressed in this way: I, that is, my reason
declared that life is irrational. If there is nothing higher than
reason (and there is no way to prove that there is anything higher
than it), then reason is the creator of life for me. If there were no
reason, then for me there would be no life. So how can this reason
deny life when it is itself the creator of life? Or to put it differently:
if there were no life, my reason would not exist either. Therefore,
reason is the offspring of life. Life is all. Reason is the fruit of life,
5 2
L E O TOL S TOY
and yet this reason denies that very life. I felt that something was
wrong here.
"Life is an absurd evil; there is no doubting this," I said to
myself. "But I have lived, and I am still living; and all of humanity
has lived and continues to live. How can this be? Why do men
live when they are able to die? Can it be that Schopenhauer and
I are the only ones brilliant enough to have realized that life is
meaningless and evil?"
Understanding the vanity of life is not so difficult, and even
the simplest of people have understood it for a long time; yet they
have lived and continue to live. How is it that they all go on living
and never think to doubt the rationality of life?
My acquired knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the
wisest of men, revealed to me that everything in the w,?rld,
both organic and inorganic, was arranged with extraordinary
intelligence; my position alone was absurd. But these fools,
the huge masses of simple people, know nothing about the
organic and inorganic arrangement of the world, and yet they
live, all the while believing that life is arranged in a very rational manner!
It occurred to me that there still might be something that
I did not know. After all, ignorance acts precisely in this manner. Ignorance always says exactly what I was saying. Whenever
it does not know something, it says that whatever it does not
know is stupid. It really comes down to this: all of mankind has
lived and continues to live as if it knew the meaning of life,
for without knowing the meaning of life it could not live; but I
am saying that all this life is meaningless and that I cannot
live.
No one prevents us from denying life, as Schopenhauer has
done. So kill yourself, and you won't have to worry about it. If you
53
C ON FES S ION
don't like life, kill yourself. If you live and cannot understand the
meaning of life, put an end to it; but don't turn around and start
talking and writing about how you don't understand life. You are
in cheerful company, for whom everything is going well, and they
all know what they are doing; if you are bored and find it offensive,
leave.
After all, if we are convinced of the necessity of suicide and
do not go through with it, then what are we, if not the weakest,
most inconsistent, and, to speak quite frankly, the most stupid of
all people, fussing like foolish children over a new toy?
After all, our wisdom, however accurate it may be, has not
provided us with an understanding of the meaning of life. Yet the
millions who make up the sum of humanity take part in life
without ever doubting the meaning of life.
Indeed, since ancient times, when the life of which I do know
something began, people who knew the arguments concerning the
vanity of life, the arguments that revealed to me its meaninglessness, lived nonetheless, bringing to life a meaning of their own.
Since the time when people somehow began to live, this meaning
of life has been with them, and they have led this life up to my
own time. Everything that is in me and around me is the fruit of
their knowledge of life. The very tools of thought by which I judge
life and condemn it were created not by me but by them. I myself
was born, educated and have grown up thanks to them. They dug
out the iron, taught us how to cut the timber, tamed the cattle
and the horses, showed us how to sow crops and live together; they
brought order to our lives. They taught me how to think and to
speak. I am their offspring, nursed by them, reared by them,
taught by them; I think according to their thoughts, their words,
and now I have proved to them that it is all meaningless! "Something is wrong here," I said to myself. "I must have made a
54
L EO TOL S TOY
mistake somewhere." But I looked and looked and could not find
where the mistake could be.
VIII
All these doubts, which I am now in a position to express more
or less dearly, I was then unable to express. I simply felt that no
matter how logically inescapable my conclusions about the vanity
of life might have been, there was something wrong with them,
even thougb they had been confirmed by the greatest of thinkers.
Whether it was my thinking or my formulation of the question,
I did not know. I only felt that as convinced as my reason might
have been, this was not enough. All of these arguments could not
persuade me to ·follow my thinking to its logical end, that is, to
kill myself. I would not be speaking the truth if I were to say that
it was through reason that I had arrived at this point without
killing myself. ·Reason was at work, but there was something else
at work too, something I can only call a consciousness of life.
There was also a force at work that had led me to focus my
attention on one thing instead of another; it was this force that
brought me out of my despairing situation, and it took a direction
that is completely foreign to reason. This force led me to focus my
attention on the fact that like hundreds of other people of my class
I was not the whole of humanity, and that I still did not know what
the life of humanity was.
As I looked about the narrow circle of my peers I saw only
people who did not understand the problem, people who understood it but drowned it their intoxication with life, people who
understood it and put an end to life, and people who understood
it but out of weakness continued to live a life of despair. That was
55
C ON FES S IO N
all I could see. I thought that this narrow circle of learned,
wealthy, and idle people to which I belonged comprised the sum
of mankind and that the millions who had lived and continued to
live outside of this circle were animals, not people.
How strange and utterly incredible it seems to me now that
in my reasoning I could have overlooked the life of humanity all
around me, that I could have fallen into such a ridiculous state of
error as to think that my life and the life of a Solomon or a
Schopenhauer was the true, normal life, while the lives of millions
of others were not worthy of consideration; but however strange
it may seem to me now, such was the case at that time. Led astray
by intellectual pride, I thought there could be no doubt that along
with Solomon and Schopenhauer, I had posed the question so
precisely, so truthfully, that there were no two ways about it; I
thought there could be no doubt that all these millions were
among those who had never penetrated the depths of the question. As I searched for the meaning of my life it never once
occurred to me to ask, "What sort of meaning do the millions
in the world who have lived and who now live ascribe to their
lives?"
For a long time I lived in this state of madness which, if not in
word then in deed, is especially pronounced among the most liberal
and most learned of men. I do not know whether it was due to the
strange sort of instinctive love I had for the working people that I
was compelled to understand them and to see that they are not as
stupid as we think; or whether it was my sincere conviction that I
knew nothing better to do than to hang myself that led me to realize
this: if I wanted to live and to understand the meaning of life, I had
to seek this meaning not among those who have lost it and want to
destroy themselves but among the millions of people, living and
dead, who created life and took upon themselves the burden of
LEO TOL STOY
their lives as well as our own. So I looked around at the huge masses
of simple people, living and dead, who were neither learned nor
wealthy, and I saw something quite different. I saw that all of these
millions of people who have lived and still live did not fall into my
category, with only a few rare exceptions. I could not regard them as
people who did not understand the question because they themselves put the question with unusual clarity and answered it. Nor
could I regard them as Epicureans, since their lives are marked
more by deprivation and suffering than by pleasure. And even less
could I regard them as people who carried on a meaningless life in
an irrationa1 manner, since they could explain every act of their
lives, even death itself. And they lo�ked upon killing oneself as the
greatest of evils. I t turned out that all of humanity had some kind of
knowledge of the meaning of life which I had overlooked and held
in contempt.)t followed that rational knowledge does not give
meaning to life, that it excludes life; the meaning that millions of
people give to life is based on some kind of knowledge that is despised and considered false.
As presented by the learned and the wise, rational knowledge
denies the meaning of life, but the huge masses of people acknowledge meaning through an irrational knowledge. And this irrational
knowledge is faith, the one thing that I could not accept. This
involves the God who is both one and three, the creation in six
days, devils, angels and everything else that I could not accept
without taking leave of my senses.
My position was terrible. I knew that I could find nothing in
the way of rational knowledge except a denial of life; and in faith
I could find nothing except a denial of reason, and this was even
more impossible than a denial of life. According to rational knowledge, it followed that life is evil, and people know it. They do not
have to live, yet they have lived and they do live, just as I myself
57
C ONFES S ION
had lived, even though I had known for a long time that life is
meaningless and evil. According to faith, it followed that in order
to understand the meaning of life I would have to turn away from
reason, the very thing for which meaning was necessary.
IX
I ran into a contradiction from which there were only two ways
out: either the thing that I had referred to as reason was not as
rational as I had thought, or the thing that I took to be irrational
was not as irrational as I had thought. And I began to examine the
course of the arguments that had come of my rational knowledge.
As I looked more closely at this course, I found it to be entirely
correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was unavoidable; but
I detected a mistake. The mistake was that my thinking did not
correspond to the question I had raised. The question was: Why
should I live? Or: Is there anything real and imperishable that will
come of my illusory and perishable life? Or: What kind of meaning can my finite existence have in this infinite universe? In order
to answer this question, I studied life.
It was obvious that the resolution of all the possible questions
of life could not satisfy me because my question, no matter how
simple it may seem at first glance, entails a demand to explain the
finite by means of the infinite and the infinite by means of the
finite.
I asked, "What is the meaning of my life beyond space, time,
and causation?" And I answered, "What is the meaning of my life
within space, time, and causation?" After a long time spent in the
labor of thought, it followed that I could reply only that my life
had no meaning at all.
5 8
LEO TOL STOY
Throughout my reasoning I was constantly comparing the
finite to the finite and the infinite to the infinite; indeed, I could
not do otherwise. Thus I concluded and had to conclude that force
is force, matter is matter, will is will, infinity is infinity, nothing
is nothing; and I could not get beyond that.
It was something similar to what happens in mathematics
when we are trying to figure out how to solve an equation and all
we can get is an identity. The method for solving the equation is
correct, but all we get for an answer is a = a, or x = x, or ° = o.
The same thing was happening with my reasoning in regard to the
question concerning the significance of my life. The answers that
all the sciences give to this question are only identities.
And in reality a strictly rational knowledge begins, in the
manner of Descartes, with an absolute doubt of everything. *
Strictly rational knowledge casts aside any knowledge based on
faith and reconstructs everything anew according to the laws of
reason and experiment; it can give no answer to the question of
life other than the one I had received-an indefinite one. It
seemed to me only at first that knowledge gave a positive answer,
the answer of Schopenhauer: life has no meaning, it is an evil. But
as I looked into the matter I realized that this is not a positive
answer and that only my emotions had taken it to be so. Strictly
expressed, as it is expressed by the Brahmins, t by Solomon, and
by Schopenhauer, the answer is only a vague one or an identity;
° = 0, life that presents itself to me as nothing is nothing. Thus
philosophical knowledge denies nothing but merely replies that it
*Rene Descartes (1596-165°) is often referred to as the father of modern philosophy. He begins one of his most famous works, the Meditations on First Philosophy,
from a position of absolute doubt, a principle he also discusses in the Discourse
on Method.
t Brahmins are Hindus of the highest caste, traditionally assigned to the priesthood.
59
C ON FES S ION
cannot decide this question and that from its point of view any
resolution remains indefinite.
Having understood this, I realized that I could not search for
an answer to my question in rational knowledge. The answer given
by rational knowledge is merely an indication that an answer can
be obtained only by formulating the question differently, that is,
only when the relationship between the finite and the infinite is
introduced into the question. I also realized that no matter how
irrational and unattractive the answers given by faith, they have
the advantage of bringing to every reply a relationship between the
finite and the infinite, without which there can be no reply. However I may put the question of how I am to live, the answer is:
according to the law of God. Is there anything real that will come
of my life? Eternal torment or eternal happiness. What meaning
is there which is not destroyed by death? Union with the infinite
God, paradise.
Thus in addition to rational knowledge, which before had
seemed to be the only knowledge, I was inevitably led to recognize
a different type of knowledge, an irrational type, which all of
humanity had: faith, which provides us with the possibility of
living. As far as I was concerned, faith was as irrational as ever,
but I could not fail to recognize that it alone provides humanity
with an answer to the question of life, thus making it possible to
live.
Rational knowledge led me to the conclusion that life is
meaningless; my life came to a halt, and I wanted to do away with
myself. As I looked around at people, I saw that they were living,
and I was convinced that they knew the meaning of life. Then I
turned and looked at myself; as long as I knew the meaning of life,
I lived. As it was with others, so it was with me: faith provided
me with the meaning of life and the possibility of living.
60
L EO TOL S TOY
Upon a further examination of the people in other countries,
of my contemporaries, and of those who have passed away, I saw
the same thing. Wherever there is life, there is faith; since the
origin of mankind faith has made it possible for us to live, and the
main characteristics of faith are everywhere and always the same.
No matter what answers a given faith might provide for us,
every answer of faith gives infinite meaning to the finite existence
of man, meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation,
and death. Therefore, the meaning of life and the possibility of
living may be found in faith alone. I realized that the essential
significance of faith lies not only in the "manifestation of things
unseen" and so on, or in revelation (this is simply a description of
one of the signs of faith); nor is it simply the relation between man
and God (faith must first be determined and then God, not the
other way around), or agreeing with what one has been told, even
though this is what it is most often understood to be. Faith is the
knowledge of the meaning of human life, whereby the individual
does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a
man lives, then he must have faith in something. If he did not
believe that he had something he must live for, then he would not
live. If he fails to see and understand the illusory nature of the
finite, then he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory
nature of the finite, then he must believe in the infinite. Without
faith it is impossible to live.
I looked back on the course of my internal life and I was
horrified. It was now clear to me that in order for a man to live,
he must either fail to see the infinite or he must have an explanation of the meaning of life by which the finite and the infinite
would be equated. I had such an explanation, but I did not need
it as long as I believed in the finite, and I began to use reason to
test it out. And in the light of reason every bit of my former
C ON FES S ION
explanation crumbled into dust. But the time came when I no
longer believed in the finite. And then, using the foundations of
reason, I began to draw on what I knew to put together an
explanation that would give life meaning; but nothing came of it.
Along with the finest minds that mankind has produced, I came
up with 0 = 0, and I was utterly amazed at coming to such a
resolution and at discovering that there could be no other.
And what did I do when I searched for an answer in the
experimental sciences? I wanted to find out why I lived, and to do
that I studied everything that was outside of myself. To be sure,
I was able to learn a great deal, but nothing of what I needed.
And what did I do when I searched for an answer in the area
of philosophy? I studied the thoughts of those who found themselves in the same situation as I, and they had no answer to the
question of why I live. I was not able to learn anything here that
I did not already know-namely, that it is impossible to know
anything.
What am I? A part of the infinite. Indeed, in these words lies
the whole problem. Is it possible that man has only now raised this
question? And can it be that no one before me has put this
question to himself, a question so simple that it rests on the tip
of the tongue of every intelligent child?
No, this question has been asked ever since there have been
people to ask it; since the beginning man has understood that to
resolve the question by equating the finite with the finite is just
as inadequate as equating the infinite with the infinite; since the
beginning man has sought to articulate the relation between the
finite and the infinite.
We subject to logical inquiry all the concepts that identify the
finite with the infinite and through which we receive the meaning
of life and the ideas of God, freedom, and good. And these con62
L E O TOL S TOY
cepts do not stand up to the critiques born of reason.
If it were not so terrible, it would be laughable to see the pride
and complacency with which, like children, we take apart the
watch, removing the spring and making a plaything of it, only to
be surprised when the watch stops running.
A resolution of the contradiction between the finite and the
infinite, an answer to the question of life that makes it possible to
live, is necessary and dear to us. And the one resolution that we
find everywhere, at all times and among all nations, is the resolution that has come down from a time in which all human life is
lost to us. It is a resolution so difficult that we could come up with
nothing like it, one that we thoughtlessly undo by again raising the
question that'bccurs to everyone and for which we have no answer.
The concepts of an infinite God, moral good and evil, the
immortality of the soul, and a relation betwe�n God and the affairs
of man are ones that have been worked out historically through
the life of a humanity that is hidden from our eyes. They are
concepts without which there would be no life, �ithout which I
myself could not live, and yet, putting aside all the labor of humankind, I wanted to do it all over again by myself and in my own way.
I did not think so at the time, but even then the seeds of these
thoughts had already been planted within me. I realized first of
all that despite our wisdom, the position of Schopenhauer, Solomon, and myself was absurd: we considered life evil, and yet we
lived. This is clearly absurd because if life is meaningless and if I
love reason so much, then I must destroy life so there will be no
one around to deny it. Secondly, I realized that all our arguments
went round and round in a vicious circle, like a cog whose gears
are out of sync. No matter how refined our reasoning, we could
not come up with an answer; it would always turn out that
0= 0, and our method was therefore probably mistaken. Finally,
CONF ESSION
I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was
rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the
right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized
that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life.
x
I understood this, but it did not make things any easier for me.
I was now prepared to accept any faith, as long as it did not
demand of me a direct denial of reason, for such a denial would
be a lie. So I studied the texts of Buddhism and Muhammadanism;
and more than ever those of Christianity and the lives of Christians who lived around me.
Naturally, I turned first of all to believers from my own class
-people of learning, Orthodox theologians, elder monks, progressive Orthodox theologians, and even the so-called New Christians,
who professed salvation through faith in redemption. I seized
upon these believers and questioned them about what they believed and how they viewed the meaning of life.
In spite of the fact that I made every possible concession and
avoided all arguments, I could not accept the faith of these people.
I saw that what they took to be faith did not explain the meaning
of life but only obscured it, and that they themselves professed
their faith not in response to the question of life that had drawn
me to faith but for some purpose that was alien to me.
I remember the agonizing feeling of horror upon returning to
my original despair, which followed the hope I had felt so many
times in my relations with these people. The more they laid their
teachings before me in ever-increasing detail, the more clearly I
could see their error, until I lost all hope of discovering in their
LEO TOLSTOY
faith any explanation of the meaning of life.
I was not alienated so much by the fact that in presenting
their beliefs they would mix the Christian truths that had always
been so dear to me with much that was superfluous and irrational.
Rather, it was that their lives were so much like my own, but with
this one difference: they did not live according to the principles
they professed. I felt very strongly that they were deceiving themselves and that, like myself, they had no sense of life's meaning
other than to live while they lived and to lay their hands on
everything they could. This was clear to me because if they harbored any meaning that might destroy all fear of privation, suffering, and death, the� would not be frightened of these things. But
these believers from our class lived a life of plenty, just as I did;
they endeavored to increase and preserve their wealth and were
afraid of privation, suffering, death. Like myself and all the rest
of us unbelievers, they lived only to satisfy their lusts, lived just as
badly as, if not worse than, those who did not believe.
No rationalization could convince me of the truth of their
faith, though one thing might have: actions proving that these
people held the key to a meaning of life that would eliminate in
them the fear of poverty, sickness, and death that haunted me. But
I saw no trace of such actions among the various believers in our
class. On the contrary, I saw such actions among people in our
class who were not believers but never among the so-called
believers.
Thus I realized that the faith of these people was not the faith
I sought, that their faith was not faith at all but only one of the
epicurean gratifications in life. I realized that while this faith may
not console, it might serve to dispel the remorse of a Solomon on
his deathbed; but it is of no use to the overwhelming majority of
humankind, those who are called not to amuse themselves at the
C ON FES S ION
expense of the labors of others but to create life. In order for all
humankind to live, to sustain life and instill it with meaning, these
millions must all have a different, more genuine concept of faith.
Indeed, it was not that Solomon, Schopenhauer, and I did not kill
ourselves that convinced me of the existence of faith but that
these millions have lived and continue to live, carrying the Solomons and me on the waves of their lives.
And I began to grow closer to the believers from among the
poor, the simple, the uneducated folk, from among the pilgrims,
the monks, the Raskolniks, * the peasants. The beliefs of those
from among the people, like those of the pretentious believers
from our class, were Christian. Here too there was much superstition mixed in with the truths of Christianity, but with this difference: the superstitions of the believers from our class were utterly
unnecessary to them, played no role in their lives, and were only
a kind of epicurean diversion, while the superstitions of the believers from the laboring people were intertwined with their lives to
such a degree that their lives could not be conceived without
them: their superstitions were a necessary condition for their lives.
The whole life of the believers from our class was in opposition
to their faith, while the whole life of the believers from the
working people was a confirmation of that meaning of life which
was the substance of their faith. So I began to examine the life
and the teachings of these people, and the closer I looked, the
more I was convinced that theirs was the true faith, that their faith
was indispensable to them and that this faith alone provided them
with the meaning and possibility of life. Contrary to what I saw
among the people of our class, where life was possible without
*Raskolniks were "dissenters" from the Russian Orthodox Church and members
of any one of several groups, including the Doukhobors and the Khlysty, which
arose as a result of the schism of the seventeenth century in protest against
liturgical reforms; they are sometimes referred to as Old Believers.
66
LEO TOL S TOY
faith and scarcely one in a thousand was a believer, among these
people there was scarcely one in a thousand who was not a believer. Contrary to what I saw among the people of our class,
where a lifetime is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction with life, these people spent their lives at hard labor and were
less dissatisfied with life than the wealthy. Contrary to the people
of our class who resist and are unhappy with the hardship and
suffering of the)r lot, these people endure sickness and tribulation
without question or resistance-peacefully, and in the firm conviction that this is as it should be, cannot be otherwise, and is good.
Contrary to the fact that the greater our intellect, the less we
understand th� meaning of life and the more we see some kind
of evil joke in our suffering and death, these people live, suffer, and
draw near to death peacefully and, more often than not, joyfully.
Contrary to peaceful death-death without horror and despair,
which is the rarest exception in our class-it is the tormenting,
unyielding, and sorrowful death that is the rarest exception among
the people. And these people, who are deprived of everything that
for Solomon and me constituted the only good in life, yet who
nonetheless enjoy the greatest happiness, form the overwhelming
majority of mankind. I looked further still around myself. I examined the lives of the great masses of people who have lived in the
past and live today. Among those who have understood the meaning of life, who know how to live and die, I saw not two or three
or ten but hundreds, thousands, millions. And all of them, infinitely varied in their customs, intellects, educations, and positions
and in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of
life and death, labored in peace, endured suffering and hardship,
lived and died, and saw in this not vanity but good.
I grew to love these people. The more I learned about the lives
of those living and dead about whom I had read and heard, the
more I loved them and the easier it became for me to live. I lived
C ON FES S ION
this way for about two years, and a profound transformation came
over me, one that had been brewing in me for a long time and
whose elements had always been a part of me. The life of our class,
of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but
had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our
science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a
spoiled child. I realized that meaning was not to be sought here.
The actions of the laboring people, of those who create life, began
to appear to me as the one true way. I realized that the meaning
provided by this life was truth, and I embraced it.
XI
When I remembered how these very beliefs had repelled me and
seemed meaningless in the mouths of people who led lives in
contradiction to them, and when I recalled how the same beliefs
attracted me and seemed sensible as I saw people who lived by
them, I realized why I had once turned away from them and had
found them meaningless, while now I was drawn to them and
found them full of meaning. I realized that I had lost my way and
how I had lost my way. My straying had resulted not so much from
wrong thinking as from bad living. I realized that the truth had
been hidden from me not so much because my thoughts were in
error as because my life itself had been squandered in the satisfaction of lusts, spent under the exceptional conditions of epicureanism. I realized that in asking, "What is my life?" and then answering, "An evil," I was entirely correct. The error lay in the fact that
I had taken an answer that applied only to myself and applied it
to life in general; I had asked myself what my life was and received
the reply: evil and meaningless. And so it was: my life, wasted in
the indulgence of lusts, was meaningless and evil, and the assertion
68
L EO TOL STOY
that life is meaningless and evil thus applied only to my life and
not to life in general. I understood the truth that I later found in
the Gospel, the truth that people clung to darkness and shunned
the light because their deeds were evil. For he who does evil hates
the light and will not venture into the light, lest his deeds be
revealed. I realized that in order to understand the meaning of life,
it is necessary first of all that life not be evil and meaningless, and
then one must have the power of reason to understand it. I
realized why I had been wandering around such an obvious truth
for so long and that in order to think and speak about the life of
humankind, one must speak and think about the life of humankind and not about the life of a few parasites. This truth has always
been the truth, like 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not acknowledged it, for
in acknowledging that 2 X 2 = 4, I would have had to admit that
I was not a good man. And it was more important and more
pressing for me to feel that I was a good man than to admit that
2 X 2 = 4. But I came to love good people and to hate myself, and
I acknowledged the truth. Now it all became clear to me.
Consider an executioner who has spent his life in torture and
chopping off heads or a hopeless drunk or a madman who has
wasted away in a dark room, who has despised this room and yet
imagines that he would perish if he should leave it-what if these
men should ask themselves, "What is life?" Clearly, they would
be able to come up with only one answer, that life is the greatest
of evils; and the madman's answer would be quite correct but only
for him. What if I were such a madman? What if all of us who
are wealthy and learned are such madmen?
And I realized that we were in fact such madmen. I, at any
rate, was such a madman. To be sure, it is the nature � a bird to
fly, gather food, build a nest; and when I see a bird 0ing this I
rejoice in its joy. It is the nature of the goat, the hare, the wolf
to feed, multiply, and nourish their young; and when they do this
C ON FES S ION
I am firmly convinced that they are happy and that their lives are
reasonable. What then should man do? He should earn his life in
exactly the same way the animals do but with this one difference:
that he will perish if he does it alone-he must live his life not
for himself but for all. And when he does this, I am firmly convinced that he is happy and his life is reasonable. What, indeed,
had I done in all my thirty years of conscious life? Not only had
I failed to live my life for the sake of all, but I had not even lived
it for myself. I had lived as a parasite, and once I had asked myself
why I lived, the answer I received was: for nothing. If the meaning
of human life lies in the way it is lived, then how could I, who had
spent thirty years not living life but ruining it for myself and
others, receive any reply other than this, that my life was meaningless and evil? I t was indeed meaningless and evil.
The life of the world unfolds according to someone's will; the
life of the world and our own lives are entrusted to someone's care.
If we are to have any hope of understanding this will, then we
must first of all fulfill it; we must do what is asked of us. And if
I will not do what is asked of me, then I will never understand
what is asked of me, much less what is asked of all of us and of
the whole world.
If a naked, hungry beggar should be taken from the crossroads
and led into an enclosed area in a magnificent establishment to
be given food and drink, and if he should then be made to move
some kind of lever up and down, it is obvious that before determining why he was brougHt there to move the lever and whether the
structure of the establishment was reasonable, the beggar must
first work the lever. If he will work it, then he will see that it
operates a pump, that the pump draws up water, and that the
water flows into a garden. Then he will be taken from the enclosed
area and set to another task, and then he will gather fruits and
enter into the joy of his lord. As he rises from lower to higher
LEO TOL S TOY
concerns, understanding more and more about the structure of the
establishment and becoming part of it, he will never think to ask
why he is there, and there is no way he will ever come to reproach
his master.
Thus the simple, uneducated working people, whom we look
upon as animals, do the will of their master without ever reproaching him. But we, the wise, consume everything the master provides wi�hout doing what he asks of us; instead, we sit in a circle
and speculate on why we should do something so stupid as moving
this lever up and down. And we have hit upon an answer. We have
figured it out that either the master is stupid or he does not exist,
while we alone are wise; only we feel that we are good for nothing
and that we must somehow get rid of ourselves.
XII
Recognizing the errors of rational knowledge helped me to free
myself from the temptations of idle reflection. The conviction
that a knowledge of the truth can be found only in life led me to
doubt that my own life was as it should be; and the one thing that
saved me was that I was able to tear myself from my isolation, look
at the true life of the simple working people, and realize that this
alone is the true life. I realized that if I wanted to understand life
and its meaning, I would have to live not the life of a parasite but
the genuine life; and once I have accepted the meaning that is
given to life by the real humanity that makes up life, I would have
to test it out.
This is what happened to me at the time: in the course of a
whole year, when almost every minute I was asking myself whether
I should end it all with a rope or a bullet, when I was occupied
with the thoughts and observations I have described, my heart was
C ON FES S ION
tormented with an agonizing feeling. This feeling I can only
describe as a search for God.
I say that this search for God was born not of reason but of
an emotion because it was a search that arose not from my thought
process-indeed, it was in direct opposition to my thinking-but
from my heart. I t was a feeling of dread, of loneliness, of forlornness in the midst of all that was alien to me; and it was a feeling
of hope for someone's help.
In spite of the fact that I was convinced of the impossibility
of proving the existence of God (Kant* had shown me, and I had
fully understood him, that there can be no such proof), I nonetheless searched for God in the hope that I might find him, and
according to an old habit of prayer, I addressed the one for whom
I searched and could not find. In my mind I would go over the
conclusions of Kant and Schopenhauer regarding the impossibility
of proving the existence of God, and I would try to refute them.
Causation, I would say to myself, is not in the same category of
thought as space and time. If I exist, then there is something that
causes me to exist, the cause of all causes. And this cause of all
that exists is called God; and I dwelled on this thought and tried
with all my being to recognize the presence of this cause. As soon
as I was conscious of the existence of such a power over me, I felt
the possibility of life. But I asked myself; "What is this cause, this
power? How am I to think about it? What is my relation to this
thing I call God?" And only the answer that was familiar to me
came into my head: "He is the creator, the provider of all things."
I was not satisfied with this answer, and I felt that the thing I
needed in order to live was still missing. I was overcome with
*Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher whose critiques of reason raised questions concerning the possibility of knowledge and the foundations
for the judgments we make about the world.
72
LEO TOLSTOY
horror, and I began to pray to the one whom I sought, that he
might help me. And the more I prayed, the more clear it became
to me that he did not hear me and that there was absolutely no
one I could turn to. My heart full of despair over the fact that
there is no God, I cried, "Lord, have mercy on me, save me! 0
Lord, my God, show me the way! " But no one had mercy on me,
and I felt that my life had come to a stop.
But again and again and from various directions I kept coming
back to the conviction that I could not have come into the world
without any motive, cause, or meaning, that I could not be the
fledgling fallen from a nest that I felt myself to be. If I lie on my
back in the tall grass and cry out like a fallen fledgling, it is because
my mother brought me into the world, kept me warm, fed me, and
loved me. But where is my mother now? If I have been cast out,
then who has cast me out? I cannot help but feel that someone who
loved me gave birth to me. Who is this someone? Again, God.
"He sees and knows of my search, my despair, my struggle,"
I would say to myself. "He exists." And as soon as I acknowledged
this for an instant, life immediately rose up within me, and I could
sense the possibility and even the joy of being. But again I would
shift from the acknowledgment of the existence of God to a
consideration of my relation to him, and again there arose before
me the God who is our creator, the God of the Trinity, who sent
his son, our Redeemer. And again, isolated from me and from the
world, God would melt away before my eyes like a piece of ice;
again nothing remained, again the source of life withered away.
I was overcome with despair and felt that there was nothing for
me to do but kill myself. And, worst of all, I felt that I could not
bring myself to go through with it.
I slipped into these situations not two or three times but tens
and hundreds of times-now joy and vitality, now despair and a
73
C ON FES S ION
consciousness of the impossibility of life.
I remember one day in early spring when I was alone in the
forest listening to the sounds of the woods. I listened and thought
about the one thing that had constantly occupied me for the last
three years. Again I was searching for God.
"Very well," I said to myself. "So there is no God like the one
I have imagined; the only reality is my life. There is no such God.
And nothing, no miracle of any kind, can prove there is, because
miracles exist only in my irrational imagination."
"But where does my notion of God, of the one whom I seek,
come from?" I asked myself. And again with this thought there
arose in me joyous waves of life. Everything around me came to
life, full of meaning. But my joy did not last long. My mind
continued its work. "The concept of God," I told myself, "is not
God. A concept is something that occurs within me; the concept
of God is something I can conjure up inside myself at will. This
is not what I seek. I am seeking that without which there could
be no life." Once again everything within me and around me
began to die; again I felt the longing to kill myself.
But at that point I took a closer look at myself and at what
had been happening within me; and I remembered the hundreds
of times I had gone through these deaths and revivals. I remembered that I had lived only when I believed in God. Then, as now,
I said to myself, "As long as I know God, I live; when I forget,
when I do not believe in him, I die." What are these deaths and
revivals? It is clear that I do not live whenever I lose my faith in
the existence of God, and I would have killed myself long ago if
I did not have some vague hope of finding God. I truly live only
whenever I am conscious of him and seek him. "What, then, do
I seek?" a voice cried out within me. "He is there, the one without
whom there could be no life." To know God and to liVe come to
one and the same thing. God is life.
•
74
L EO TOL STOY
"Live, seeking Cod, for there can be no life without Cod."
And more powerfully than ever a light shone within me and all
around me, and this light has not abandoned me since.
Thus I was saved from suicide. When and how this transformation within me was accomplished, I could not say. Just as the
life force within me was gradually and imperceptibly destroyed,
and I encountered the impossibility of life, the halting of life, and
the need1to murder myself, so too did this life force return to me
gradually and imperceptibly. And the strange thing is that the life
force which returned to me was not new but very old; it was the
same force that had guided me during the early periods of my life.
In essenee I returned to the first things, to the things of childhood
and youth. I returned to a faith in that will which gave birth to
me and which asked something of me; I returned to the conviction
that the single most important purpose in my life waS to be better,
to live according to this will. I returned to the conviction that I
could find the expression of this will in something long hidden
from me, something that all of humanity had worked out for its
own guidance; in short, I returned to a belief in Cod, in moral
perfection, and in a tradition that instills life with meaning. The
only difference was that I had once accepted all this on an unconscious level, while now I knew that I could not live without it.
What happened to me was something like the following.
Unable to recall how I got there, I found myself in a boat that had
been launched from some unknown shore; the way to the other
shore was pointed out to me, the oars were placed in my inexperienced hands, and I was left alone. I worked the oars as best
I knew how and rowed on. But the further I paddled toward the
center, the faster became the current that took me off-course, and
I encountered more and more people who, like myself, were being
carried away by the current. There were a few who continued to
row; some had thrown away their oars. There were large boats,
75
C ON F E S S ION
enormous ships, filled with people; some struggled against the
current, others gave themselves up to it. And, looking downstream
at everyone being carried along by the current, the further I
rowed, the more I forgot the way that had been pointed out to
me. At the very center of the current, in the throng of boats and
ships being carried downstream, I lost my way altogether and
threw down my oars. All around me, in joy and triumph, people
rushed downstream under sail and oar, assuring me and each other
that there could be no other direction. And I believed them and
moved along with them. And I was carried off a long way, so far
that I heard the roar of the rapids in which I was bound to perish
and saw boats being destroyed in them. Then I came to my senses.
For a long time I could not understand what had happened to me.
I saw before me the singular ruin toward which I was rushing
headlong and which I feared, I could not see salvation anywhere,
and I did not know what to do. But, looking back, I saw countless
boats that were relentlessly struggling against the current, and I
remembered the oars and the way to the shore and began to pull
against the current and head back upstream toward it.
The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars
were the free will given to me to make it to the shore where I
would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed
within me, and I began to live once again.
XIII
I renounced the life of our class and recognized that this is not
life but only the semblance of life, that the conditions of luxury
under which we live make it impossible for us to understand life,
and that in order to understand life I must understand not the life
L E O TOL S TOY
of those of us who are parasites but the life of the simple working
people, those who create life and give it meaning. The simple
working people all around me were the Russian people, and I
turI!ed to them and to the meaning they gave life. This meaning,
if it is possible to express it, was the following. Every human being
has been brought into the world according to the will of God. And
God created us in such a way that every human being can either
save his'own soul or destroy it. Man's task in life is to save his soul.
In order to save our souls, we must live according to the ways of
God, and in order to live according to the ways of God, we must
renounce the sensual pleasures of life; we must labor, suffer, and
be kino and humble. This is the meaning that the people have
derived from all the religious teachings handed down and conferred upon them by their pastors, and from the tradition that lives
in them, expressed through their legends, sayings, and stories. This
meaning was clear to me and dear to my heart. But along with the
meaning rooted in the faith of the people there was much that
repelled me and seemed inexplicable to me, much that was inextricably bound to the non-Raskolnik people among whom I lived: the
sacraments, church services, fasts, bowing before relics and icons.
The people could not separate one thing from another, and nor
could I. Despite the fact that much of what came out of the faith
of the people was strange to me, I accepted all of it, attended
services, participated in the morning and evening prayers, fasted
and prepared for communion; and for the first time there was
nothing in opposition to my reason. The very thing that had
initially seemed impossible to me now excited no opposition
within me.
My relation to faith at that time was quite different from what
it was now. At first life itself seemed to be full of meaning, and
I regarded faith as an arbitrary confirmation of a certain position
77
C ONFES S ION
that was quite unnecessary to me, irrational, and unconnected to
life. At that time I asked myself what meaning such a position
could have, and once I was convinced it had no meaning I cast
it aside. Now, however, I was certain that my life did not have and
could not have any meaning, and not only did the principles of
faith no longer seem unnecessary to me, but experience had
unquestionably led me to the conviction that only the principles
of faith gave life meaning. At first I looked upon them as useless
gibberish, but now I knew that even though I might not understand them, there was meaning in them, and I told myself that
I must learn to understand them.
My reasoning proceeded in the following manner. "Like man
and his power of reason," I said to myself, "the knowledge of faith
arises from a mysterious origin. This origin is God, the source of the
human mind and body. Just as God has bestowed my body upon me
a bit at a time, so has he imparted to me my reason and understanding of life; thus the stages in the development of this understanding
cannot be false. Everything that people truly believe must be true;
it may be expressed in differing ways, but it cannot be a lie.
Therefore, if I take it to be a lie, this merely indicates that I have
failed to understand it." And then I said to myself, "The essence of
any faith lies in giving life a meaning that cannot be destroyed by
death. Naturally, if faith is to answer the questions of a tsar dying in
the midst of luxury, an old slave tormented in his labor, an ignorant
child, an aged sage, a half-witted old lady, a happy young woman,
and a youth consumed by passions; if it is to answer the questions
asked by people living under radically different circumstances of
life and education; if there is but a single response to the one eternal
question in life of why I live and what will become of my life, then
this answer, though essentially everywhere the same, will be manifested in an infinite variety of ways. And the more unique, true, and
profound this answer is, then, of course, the more strange and
LEO TOL S TOY
outrageous will seem the attempts to express it, depending on the
upbringing and position of each individual." But even though I
thought these ruminations justified the peculiarities of the ritualistic .aspect of faith, they were not sufficient for me to perform acts
that seemed dubious to me, especially when it came to the faith
that hag become the single concern of my life. With all my soul I
longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the
rites of1heir faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying
to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through
with it. But here our new Russian theological works came to my aid.
According to the explanation provided by these theologians,
the fundamental dogma of faith is rooted in the infallibility of the
Church. The truth of everything the Church stands for follows
from this dogma as a necessary conclusion. As an assembly of
believers who are united in love and who therefore possess true
knowledge, the Church became the basis for my faith. I told
myself that it is not for any one man to attain divine truth; it is
revealed only through a union of all people joined together by love.
If the truth is to be found, there must be no division; and if there
is to be no division, we must love and be reconciled with those who
do not agree with us. Truth is a revelation of love, and therefore
if you do not submit to the rituals of the Church, you destroy love;
and if you destroy love, you lose all possibility of knowing truth.
At the time I did not recognize the sophistry that lay in this line
of reasoning. I failed to see that a union in love may result in the
greatest love but cannot reveal divine truth as expressed in the
definitive words of the Nicene Creed; I failed to see that love
cannot make a given expression of truth binding on a union of
believers. At the time I did not realize the error in this line of
thought, and thanks to it I found it possible to accept and perform
all the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding a
large part of them. I struggled with all my soul to avoid all discus79
CONFESSION
sions, all contradictions, and tried to explain as reasonably as
possible the doctrines of the Church with which I was in conflict.
In carrying out the rituals of the Church I restrained my
reason and submitted myself to the tradition adopted by all of
humanity. I joined with my ancestors and loved ones, with my
father, mother, and grandparents. They and all before them believed and lived and brought me into the world. I joined with all
the millions who made up the people whom I respected. Nor was
there anything wrong with these acts in themselves (the indulgence of lusts was what I considered wrong). When I rose early
in the morning to go to the church service I knew I was doing
something good, if only because I was sacrificing my physical
comfort to humble the pride of my intellect, to be closer to my
ancestors and contemporaries, to seek the meaning of life. It was
the same with the preparation for communion, the daily reading
of prayers and the gestures that go with it, and even the observance of all the fasts. No matter how insignificant these sacrifices
were, they were made in the name of something good. I prepared
for communion, fasted, and observed the hours of prayer both at
home and in church. When listening to the church services I tried
to grasp every word and give it meaning whenever I could. At mass
the most important words for me were "Let us love one another
in unity." But I disregarded the words that followed-"We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost"-because I
could not understand them.
XIV
At the time I found it so necessary to believe in order to live that
I unconsciously hid from myself the contradictions and the obscurities in the religious teachings. There was, however, a limit to
80
LEO TOLSTOY
this interpretation of the rituals. Although the most important
words in the liturgy became more and more clear to me; although
I somehow explained to myself the words "Remembering our
Sovereign Lady, Holy Mother of God, and all the saints, let us one
and all devote the whole of our lives to Christ, God"; although I
explained the frequent repetition of prayers for the tsar and his
family by the fact that they were more subject to temptation than
others and were therefore in greater need of the prayers; although
I explained the prayers for the vanquishing of our enemies by
saying that the enemy was evil, these prayers and other things,
such as the hymn of the cherubim, the mystery of the bread and
wine, the adoration of the Virgin and so on, nearly two-thirds of
the service either had no meaning at all or made me feel like I was
lying when I tried to explain them, which would mean I was
destroying my relation to God and would lose all possibility of
faith.
I felt the same way when celebrating the main holidays. I
could understand the observance of the sabbath-that is, the
consecration of one day in the week for communion with God.
But the most important holiday was in remembrance of the Resurrection, the reality of ' which I could neither imagine nor comprehend. And the weekly holiday, Sunday, was named for this Resurrection. * On this day the mystery of the Eucharist was observed,
which was utterly incomprehensible to me. With the exception of
Christmas, the other twelve holidays were in remembrance of
miracles, which I tried not to think about in order to avoid denying
them: the Ascension, the Pentecost, the Epiphany, the Intercession of the Virgin, and so on. As I celebrated these holidays,
feeling that the greatest importance was being attached to what
I considered least important, f either invented ;m explanation that
*The Russi,an word for "Sunday,." voskresen 'e, is taken from the word for "resurrection," vo�kresenie.
C ON F E S S ION
appeased me or I closed my eyes so I would not see the thing
seducing me.
All this struck me most powerfully when I took part in the
most common and what are regarded as the most important of the
sacraments: baptism and communion. Here I was in conflict with
nothing incomprehensible but with matters that were quite easy
to understand; it seemed to me that these acts were deceptive in
nature, and I was caught in a dilemma-I had either to reject
them or lie about them.
I shall never forget the agonizing feeling that went through
me when I took communion for the first time in many years. The
service, the confession, the collects-all of it was understandable
to me and excited in me the joyous realization that the meaning
of life was being revealed to me. I explained the communion to
myself as an act performed in remembrance of Christ, signifying
the cleansing of sin and the complete acceptance of Christ's
teachings. If this explanation was rather artificial, I took no notice
of its being so. As I humbled and surrendered myself to the
confessor, a simple and timid priest, it was such a joy for me to
lay bare all the filth in my soul, repenting of my sins; it was such
a joy to be united in thought with the strivings of the fathers who
had composed the prayers of the collects; it was such a joy to be
joined with the faithful and the believers that I had no sense of
the artificial nature of my explanation. But when I neared the
gates of the kingdom, and the priest asked me to repeat what I
believed and that what I was about to swallow was actually flesh
and blood, it cut me to the heart; this was a small but false note,
a cruel demand placed on someone who obviously had never had
any idea of wh!1t faith was.
Although now I allow myself to deem it a cruel demand, at
the time I had no notion that it was; it simply caused me unspeaka-
tEO TOLSTOY
ble pain. I no longer took up the position I had adopted in my
youth, supposing that everything in life was clear. Indeed, I had
come to faith because apart from it I could find nothing but ruin,
and therefore I could not cast faith away; so I submitted. In my
soul I discovered a feeling that helped me to endure this. I t was
a feeling of self-abasement and humility. I humbled myself and
swal
lowed the flesh and the blood without any blasphemous emotions, and with a longing to believe, but the blow had already left
its mark. Knowing beforehand what awaited me, I could not go
through with it a second time.
Nevertheless I continued to perform the church rituals, and
I still believed that there was truth in the doctrine I adhered to;
and then something happened that is clear to me now but at the
time seemed odd.
I was listening to an illiterate peasant, a pilgrim, talking about
God, faith, life, and salvation, and a knowledge of faith was
opened up to me. I grew closer to the people as I listened to their
reflections on life and faith, and I began to understand the truth
more and more. The same thing happened to me when I read the
Martyrology and the Prologues;* they became my favorite reading. Taking exception to the miracles and viewing them as fables
that expressed an idea, these readings revealed to me the meaning
of life. Among them were the lives of Macarius the Greatt and
Prince loasaph (the story of the Buddha), the writings of John
Chrysostom,t the story of the traveler in the well, of the monk
who discovered gold and of Peter the Publican; they included the
*The Martyrology and the Prologues contain tales and legends of the saints and
their sufferings.
t Better
·
known as Macarius the Egyptian, Macarius the Great was a fourth-century
saint and hermit renowned for his miracles and his wisdom.
Hohn Chrysostom (1594-1646) was a Franciscan spiritual leader and writer from
France.
C ONFESS I ON
histories of the martyrs, all of whom proclaimed that life does not
end with death. These were tales of illiterate, stupid men who
found salvation though they knew nothing of the teachings of the
Church.
But as soon as I mixed with learned believers or picked up
their books, a certain doubt, dissatisfaction, and bitterness over
their arguments rose up within me, and I felt that the more I
grasped their discourses, the further I strayed from the truth and
the closer I came to the abyss.
xv
Many times I have envied the peasants for their illiteracy and their
lack of education. They could see nothing false in those tenets of
faith which to me seemed to have arisen from patent nonsense;
they could accept them and believe in the truth, the same truth
I believed in. But unhappily for me, it was clear that the truth was
tied to a lie with the finest of threads and that I could not accept
it in such a form.
Thus I lived for about three years, and when, like one possessed, I started to inch my way toward the truth, led only by
instinct toward the place where the light seemed to shine, seeming
untruths did not bother me so much. When I failed to understand
something, I would say to myself, "I am guilty, I am wrong." But
the more I came to be filled with the truths I studied, the more
they became the foundation of life, until untruths became increasingly difficult and disturbing. The line separating the things I did
not know how to understand from those I could understand only
by lying to myself became more distinct.
In spite of doubts and torments, I was still clinging to the
LEO TOL STOY
Orthodox Church. But questions of life that had to be resolved
kept coming up, and the Church's resolution of these questions
was in direct opposition to the faith by which I lived; this is what
finally led me to renounce the possibility of a relationship with the
Orthodox Church. These questions, first 9f all, pertained to the
relation between the Orthodox Church and other churches, its
relation to Catholicism and the so-called Raskolniks. As a result
of my interest in faith at the time, I became acquainted with
believers of various creeds: Catholics, Protestants, Old Believers,
MQJokans, * and others. And I met many people among them of
the
'
highest moral character who were truly believers. I wanted to
be a brother to these people. But what happened? The doctrine
that had promised me a union with all through love and a single
faith was the very doctrine that, in the mouths of its finest adherents, told me that all these people were living in a lie, that the
thing that gave them the strength to live was a temptation of the
devil, and that we alone are in possession of the only truth possible.
And I saw that the members of the Orthodox Church regarded
as heretics everyone who did not profess the same beliefs as they,
just as the Catholics and others viewed the members of the Orthodox Church as heretics; I saw that although she tried to hide it,
the Orthodox Church regarded as enemies everyone who did not
adopt the same outward symbols and expressions of faith as she.
And it had to be this way because, first of all, the assertion that
you live in a lie while I live in the truth is the most cruel thing
one person can say to another, and, secondly, because a man who
loves his children and his brothers cannot but regard as enemies
those who want to convert his children and his brothers to a false
*The Molokans, or "milk drinkers," made up a sect that did not believe in fasting,
scorned the ceremonial aspects of religion, and used the Bible as the sole foundation for their practices and beliefs.
CONFESS I ON
faith. And this enmity grows in proportion to one's knowledge of
the teachings of doctrine. Even I, who had supposed that the truth
lay in a union of love, was forced to recognize that the teachings
of doctrine destroy the very thing they set out to produce.
The temptation is obvious to educated people like ourselves
who live in countries where a variety of creeds are professed and
who see the contemptuous, self-righteous, unflinching disdain the
Catholic has for the Orthodox and the Protestant, the Orthodox
for the Catholic and the Protestant, and the Protestant for both;
this also applies to the Old Believers, the Revivalists, the Shakers, *
and all the rest. It is so evident that at first glance it is quite
puzzling. You say to yourself, "It cannot be as simple as all that.
Is it possible for people to fail to see that even though two positions are in conflict with each other, neither one may harbor the
single truth that should constitute the basis for faith? There must
be some kind of explanation here." I too thought there was some
kind of explanation, and I looked for it and read everything I could
on the subject and consulted everyone I knew. But the only explanation I could find was the one according to which the Sumsky
hussars regard themselves as the finest regiment in the world,
while the yellow Uhlans considered themselves to be the best in
the world. Clergymen of all denominations, the finest representatives of their creeds, all told me the same thing-namely, that
theirs was the true belief and all the others were erroneous, and
that the only thing they could do for the others was to pray for
them. I visited archimandrites, bishops, elder monks, and ascetic
monks, none of whom made any attempt to explain this pitfall to
me. Only one interpreted the matter for me, but his explanation
was such that I asked no more questions of anyone.
*The Shakers, members of a millenarian sect originating in England in 1 747,
practiced celibacy and an ascetic communal life.
86
L EO TOL S TOY
I have said that for any unbelievers returning to faith (and
here I have in mind our entire younger generation), the first
question to be posed is: why does the truth lie not in the Lutheran
or in the Catholic Church but in the Orthodox Church? One is
taught in high school and cannot help but know what the peasant
does not know-namely, that the Protestants and the Catholics
make exactly the same claim to the one and only truth that our
own faith does. Historical proofs perverted by each creed to suit
its own purpose are insufficient. Is it not possible, as I have suggested, that in attaining a higher level of understanding the differenres would disappear, just as they do for those who are genuine
believers? Is it not possible to go further down the path along
which we have set out with the Old Believers? They have claimed
that there is an alternative to the way in which we make the sign
of the cross, shouting hallelujahs and moving about the altar. It
has been said, "You believe in the Nicene Creed and in the seven
sacraments, and so do we. Let us keep to that; as for the rest of
it, you may do as you please. Thus we may be united by placing
the essential elements of faith higher than the nonessential." Is
it not possible to say to the Catholics, "You believe in this and
that, in what is important; as far as the filioque* and the Pope are
concerned, do as you please?" Is it not possible to say the same
thing to the Protestants and join together in the one thing needful? I said this to one person who agreed with my thinking, but
he told me that such concessions would arouse the censure of the
clergy, who would object that this marks a departure from the
faith of our forefathers and brings about dissent, and that it is
*Filioque, meaning "and from the Son," is a word that was added to the NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed in the Latin Church. It followed the phrase "the Holy
Spirit who proceeds from the Father," suggesting that the Holy Spirit arises
both from the Father and from the Son.
C ON FES S ION
incumbent upon the clergy to preserve in all things the purity of
the Greco-Russian Orthodox faith handed down to the Church by
our ancestors.
Then I understood it all. I am searching for faith, for the force
of life, but they seek the best means for fulfilling what people
consider to be certain human obligations. And in meeting these
human duties they perform them in an all-too-human fashion. No
matter what they may say about their compassion for their brothers who have gone astray or about their prayers for those who will
come before the judgment seat of the Most High, human duties
can only be carried out by force; and force has always been implemented, is now being implemented, and always will be implemented. If each of two religions believes that it alone abides in the
truth while the other lives in a lie, then since they want to lead
their brothers to the truth, they will go on preaching their own
doctrine. And if a false doctrine is preached to the inexperienced
children of the Church that dwells in the truth, then that Church
cannot help but burn books and banish a person who is leading
her children into temptation. What is to be done with a sectary
who passionately proclaims what the Church regards as a false
faith and who is leading the children of the Church astray in the
most important thing in life, in faith? What is to be done with
him except to chop off his head or lock him up? In the time of
Alexis Mikhailovich* they were burned at the stake, that is, they
met with the full measure of the law; the same is true in our own
times: they are locked up in solitary confinement. When I turned
my attention to what is done in the name of religion I was horrified
and very nearly withdrew from the Orthodox Church entirely.
Another thing was the Church's relation to questions of life with
*Alexis Mikhailovich (16z9-1676) was the second Romanov tsar of Russia (1645-
76) and the father of Peter the Great.
88
( EO TOL S TOY
respect to its attitude toward war and executions.
During this time Russia was at war. * And in the name of
Christian love Russians were killing their brothers. There was no
way to avoid thinking about this. There was no way to ignore the
fact that murder was evil and contrary to the most fundamental
tenets of any faith. Nonetheless, in the churches they were praying for the success of our weapons, and the teachers of faith
looked upon this murder as the outcome of faith. And not only
was the murder that came with the war sanctioned, but during the
disturbances that followed the war I saw members of the
Church, its teachers, monks, and ascetics, condoning the murder of straying, helpless youths. I turned my attention to everything that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I
was horrified.
XVI
I no longer had any doubts and was firmly convinced that the
teachings of the faith with which I had associated myself were not
all true. At one time I would have said that all of it was a lie; but
now it was impossible to say this. There could be no doubt that
all of the people had a knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they
would not be living. Moreover, this knowledge of the truth was
already accessible to me; already I was living by it and could feel
that this was indeed the truth; but in these teachings there was
also a lie. There was no doubt about it. And everything that had
previously repelled me was now vividly before me. Although I
could see that among the people there was less tinged with the lie
*Here Tolstoy is referring to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-'78, which ended
when Russia advanced on Istanbul. This was also a time when Russia was plagued
by terrorism.
C ONFES S ION
that repelled me than among the representatives of the Church,
I could still see that even among the people the lie was mixed with
the truth.
But where did the lie come from and where the truth? Both
the lie and the truth came from what was known as the Church.
Both the lie and the truth were part of a tradition, part of a
so-called sacred tradition, part of the Scriptures.
And, like it or not, I came to study and analyze the Scriptures
and the tradition; I undertook an analysis that up till now I had
feared to undertake.
Thus I turned to a study of the very theology that at one time
I had contemptuously rejected as unnecessary. Then it had struck
me as so much useless nonsense; then I had been surrounded by
life's phenomena, which I thought to be clear and full of meaning.
Now I would have been glad to free myself of everything that did
not foster a healthy mind, but I did not know how to escape.
Rooted in this religious teaching, or at least directly connected to
it, is the one meaning of life that has been revealed to me. No
matter how outrageous it might seem to me in my oId stubborn
intellect, here lies the one hope of salvation. It must be examined
carefully and attentively in order to be understood, even if I do
not understand it in the way I understand the position of science.
I do not and cannot seek such an understanding of it due to the
peculiar nature of the knowledge of faith. I shall not seek an
explanation of all things. I know that the explanation of all things,
like the origin of all things, must remain hidden in infinity. But
I do want to understand in order that I might be brought to the
inevitably incomprehensible; I want all that is incomprehensible
to be such not because the demands of the intellect are not sound
(they are sound, and apart from them I understand nothing) but
because I perceive the limits of the intellect. I want to understand,
LEO TOL S TOY
so that any instance of the incomprehensible occurs as a necessity
of reason and not as an obligation to believe.
I have no doubt that there is truth in the doctrine; but there
can also be no doubt that it harbors a lie; and I must find the truth
and the lie so I can tell them apart. This is what I set out to do.
What I found that was a lie, what I found that was the truth, and
the conclusions I came to are presented in the subsequent portion
of this work, which, if someone should find it useful, will probably
be published someday, somewhere. *
I wrote the above three years ago. t
The other day, as I was looking over this printed portion and
returning to the thoughts and feelings that went through me when
I was experiencing all this, I had a dream. This dream expressed
for me in a condensed form everything I lived through and wrote
about; therefore I think that for those who have understood me,
a description of the dream will refresh, clarify, and gather into one
piece what has been discussed at length in these pages. Here is the
dream: I see that I am lying in bed. Feeling neither good nor bad,
I am lying on my back. But I begin to wonder whether it is a good
thing for me to be lying there; and it seems to me that there is
something wrong with my legs; whether they are too short or
uneven, I do not know, but there is something awkward about
them. As I start to move my legs, I begin to wonder how and on
what I am lying, something that up till now had not entered my
mind. Looking about my bed, I see that I am lying on some cords
*The work Tolstoy is referring to is An Investigation of Dogmatic Theology, which
he never published.
tThis last portion of the Confession was written in 1882.
C ON FES S ION
woven together and attached to the sides of the bed. My heels are
resting on one of the cords and my lower legs on another in an
uncomfortable way. Somehow I know that these cords can be
shifted. Moving one leg, I push away the furthest cord. It seems
to me that it will be more comfortable that way. But I have pushed
it too far away; I try to catch it, but this movement causes another
cord to slip out from under my legs, leaving them hanging down.
I rearrange my whole body, quite certain I will be settled now; but
this movement causes still other cords to shift and slip out from
under me, and I see that the whole situation is getting worse: the
whole lower part of my body is sinking and hanging down, and my
feet are not touching the ground. I am supported only along the
upper part of my back, and for some reason I begin to feel not only
uncomfortable but terrified. Only now do I ask myself what had
not yet occurred to me: where am I and what am I lying on? I
begin to look around, and the first place I look is down toward
where my body is dangling, in the direction where I feel I must
soon fall. I look below, and I cannot believe my eyes. I am resting
on a height such as I could never have imagined, a height altogether unlike that of the highest tower or mountain.
I cannot even tell whether I can see anything down below in
the bottomless depths of the abyss over which I am hanging and
into which I am drawn. My heart stops, and I am overcome with
horror. It is horrible to look down there. I feel that if I look down,
I will immediately slip from the last cord and perish. I do not look,
yet not looking is worse, for now I am thinking about what will
happen to me as soon as the last cord breaks. I feel that I am losing
the last ounce of my strength from sheer terror and that my back
is slowly sinking lower apd lower. Another instant and I shall break
away. And then a thought occurs to me: this cannot be real. It is
just a dream. I will wake up. I try to wake up, but I cannot. "What
am I to do, what am I to do?" I ask myself, looking up. Above me
L EO TOL S TOY
there is also an abyss. I gaze into this abyss of sky and try to forget
about the one below, and I actually do forget. The infinity below
repels and horrifies me; the infinity above attracts me and gives
me strength. Thus I am hanging over the abyss suspended by the
last of the cords that have not yet slipped out from under me. I
know I am hanging there, but I am only looking upward, and my
terror passes. As it happens in a dream, a voice is saying, "Mark
this, this is it!" I gaze deeper and deeper into the infinity above
me, and I seem to grow calm. I recall everything that has happened, and I remember how it all came about: how I moved my
1egs, how I was dangling there, the horror that came over me, and
how I was saved from the horror by looking up. And I ask myself,
"Well, am I still hanging here?" And as soon as I glance around,
I feel with my whole body a support that is holding me up. I can
see that I am no longer dangling or falling but am firmly supported. I ask myself how I am being supported; I touch myself,
look around, and see that there is a single cord underneath the
center of my body, that when I look up I am lying on it firmly
balanced, and that it alone has supported me all along. As it
happens in a dream, the mechanism by which I am supported
seems quite natural, understandable, and beyond doubt, in spite
of the fact that when I am awake the mechanism is completely
incomprehensible. In my sleep I am even astonished that I had
not understood this before. It seems that there is a pillar beside
me and that there is no doubt of the solidity of the pillar, even
though it has nothing to stand on. The cord is somehow very
cleverly yet very simply attached to the pillar, leading out from it,
and if you place the middle of your body on the cord and look up,
there cannot even be a question of falling. All this was clear to me,
and I was glad and at peace. Then it is as if someone is saying to
me, "See that you remember." And I awoke.
.93
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