A Confession, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [ereader for android TXT] 📗

new light. I

understood that it is all merely self-indulgence, and the to find a meaning

in it is impossible; while the life of the whole labouring people, the whole

of mankind who produce life, appeared to me in its true significance. I

understood that that is life itself, and that the meaning given to that life

is true: and I accepted it.

 

[8] This passage is noteworthy as being one of the few references made by

Tolstoy at this period to the revolutionary or “Back-to-the-People”

movement, in which many young men and women were risking and sacrificing

home, property, and life itself from motives which had much in common with

his own perception that the upper layers of Society are parasitic and prey

on the vitals of the people who support them.—A.M.

XI

And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed

meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them, and

how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I saw that

people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those

beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them

full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred

not so much because I thought incorrectly as because I lived badly. I

understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me

as much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean

gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question

as to what my life is, and the answer — and evil — was quite correct. The

only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life, while I had

referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the

reply: An evil and an absurdity. and really my life — a life of indulgence

of desires — was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, “Life is evil

and an absurdity”, referred only to my life, but not to human life in

general. I understood the truth which I afterwards found in the Gospels,

“that men loved darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil.

For everyone that doeth ill hateth the light, and cometh not to the light,

lest his works should be reproved.” I perceived that to understand the

meaning of life it is necessary first that life should not be meaningless

and evil, then we can apply reason to explain it. I understood why I had so

long wandered round so evident a truth, and that if one is to think and

speak of the life of mankind, one must think and speak of that life and not

of the life of some of life’s parasites. That truth was always as true as

that two and two are four, but I had not acknowledged it, because on

admitting two and two to be four I had also to admit that I was bad; and to

feel myself to be good was for me more important and necessary than for two

and two to be four. I came to love good people, hated myself, and confessed

the truth. Now all became clear to me.

 

What if an executioner passing his whole life in torturing people and

cutting off their heads, or a hopeless drunkard, or a madman settled for

life in a dark room which he has fouled and imagines that he would perish if

he left — what if he asked himself: “What is life?” Evidently he could not

other reply to that question than that life is the greatest evil, and the

madman’s answer would be perfectly correct, but only as applied to himself.

What if I am such a madman? What if all we rich and leisured people are such

madmen? and I understood that we really are such madmen. I at any rate was

certainly such.

 

And indeed a bird is so made that it must fly, collect food, and build a

nest, and when I see that a bird does this I have pleasure in its joy. A

goat, a hare, and a wolf are so made that they must feed themselves, and

must breed and feed their family, and when they do so I feel firmly assured

that they are happy and that their life is a reasonable one. then what

should a man do? He too should produce his living as the animals do, but

with this difference, that he will perish if he does it alone; he must

obtain it not for himself but for all. And when he does that, I have a firm

assurance that he is happy and that his life is reasonable. But what had I

done during the whole thirty years of my responsible life? Far from

producing sustenance for all, I did not even produce it for myself. I lived

as a parasite, and on asking myself, what is the use of my life? I got the

reply: “No use.” If the meaning of human life lies in supporting it, how

could I — who for thirty years had been engaged not on supporting life but

on destroying it in myself and in others — how could I obtain any other

answer than that my life was senseless and an evil? … It was both

senseless and evil.

 

The life of the world endures by someone’s will — by the life of the whole

world and by our lives someone fulfills his purpose. To hope to understand

the meaning of that will one must first perform it by doing what is wanted

of us. But if I will not do what is wanted of me, I shall never understand

what is wanted of me, and still less what is wanted of us all and of the

whole world.

 

If a naked, hungry beggar has been taken from the cross-roads, brought into

a building belonging to a beautiful establishment, fed, supplied with drink,

and obliged to move a handle up and down, evidently, before discussing why

he was taken, why he should move the handle, and whether the whole

establishment is reasonably arranged — the begger should first of all move

the handle. If he moves the handle he will understand that it works a pump,

that the pump draws water and that the water irrigates the garden beds; then

he will be taken from the pumping station to another place where he will

gather fruits and will enter into the joy of his master, and, passing from

lower to higher work, will understand more and more of the arrangements of

the establishment, and taking part in it will never think of asking why he

is there, and will certainly not reproach the master.

 

So those who do his will, the simple, unlearned working folk, whom we regard

as cattle, do not reproach the master; but we, the wise, eat the master’s

food but do not do what the master wishes, and instead of doing it sit in a

circle and discuss: “Why should that handle be moved? Isn’t it stupid?” So

we have decided. We have decided that the master is stupid, or does not

exist, and that we are wise, only we feel that we are quite useless and that

we must somehow do away with ourselves.

XII

The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge helped me to free

myself from the temptation of idle ratiocination. the conviction that

knowledge of truth can only be found by living led me to doubt the rightness

of my life; but I was saved only by the fact that I was able to tear myself

from my exclusiveness and to see the real life of the plain working people,

and to understand that it alone is real life. I understood that if I wish to

understand life and its meaning, I must not live the life of a parasite, but

must live a real life, and — taking the meaning given to live by real

humanity and merging myself in that life — verify it.

 

During that time this is what happened to me. During that whole year, when I

was asking myself almost every moment whether I should not end matters with

a noose or a bullet — all that time, together with the course of thought and

observation about which I have spoken, my heart was oppressed with a painful

feeling, which I can only describe as a search for God.

 

I say that that search for God was not reasoning, but a feeling, because

that search proceeded not from the course of my thoughts — it was even

directly contrary to them — but proceeded from the heart. It was a feeling

of fear, orphanage, isolation in a strange land, and a hope of help from

someone.

 

Though I was quite convinced of the impossibility of proving the existence

of a Deity (Kant had shown, and I quite understood him, that it could not be

proved), I yet sought for god, hoped that I should find Him, and from old

habit addressed prayers to that which I sought but had not found. I went

over in my mind the arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer showing the

impossibility of proving the existence of a God, and I began to verify those

arguments and to refute them. Cause, said I to myself, is not a category of

thought such as are Time and Space. If I exist, there must be some cause for

it, and a cause of causes. And that first cause of all is what men have

called “God”. And I paused on that thought, and tried with all my being to

recognize the presence of that cause. And as soon as I acknowledged that

there is a force in whose power I am, I at once felt that I could live. But

I asked myself: What is that cause, that force? How am I to think of it?

What are my relations to that which I call “God”? And only the familiar

replies occurred to me: “He is the Creator and Preserver.” This reply did

not satisfy me, and I felt I was losing within me what I needed for my life.

I became terrified and began to pray to Him whom I sought, that He should

help me. But the more I prayed the more apparent it became to me that He did

not hear me, and that there was no one to whom to address myself. And with

despair in my heart that there is no God at all, I said: “Lord, have mercy,

save me! Lord, teach me!” But no one had mercy on me, and I felt that my

life was coming to a standstill.

 

But again and again, from various sides, I returned to the same conclusion

that I could not have come into the world without any cause or reason or

meaning; I could not be such a fledgling fallen from its nest as I felt

myself to be. Or, granting that I be such, lying on my back crying in the

high grass, even then I cry because I know that a mother has borne me within

her, has hatched me, warmed me, fed me, and loved me. Where is she — that

mother? If I have been deserted, who has deserted me? I cannot hide from

myself that someone bored me, loving me. Who was that someone? Again “God”?

He knows and sees my searching, my despair, and my struggle.”

 

“He exists,” said I to myself. And I had only for an instant to admit that,

and at once life rose within me, and I felt the possibility and joy of

being. But again, from the admission of the existence of a God I