the question cannot be solved by it -- that for it the solution
remains indefinite.
Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible
to seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that
the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a
reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question
and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite is
included in the question. And I understood that, however
irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they
have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a
relation between the finite and the infinite, without which there
can be no solution.
In whatever way I stated the question, that relation appeared
in the answer. How am I to live? -- According to the law of God.
What real result will come of my life? -- Eternal torment or
eternal bliss. What meaning has life that death does not destroy?
-- Union with the eternal God: heaven.
So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the
only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all
live humanity has another irrational knowledge -- faith which makes
it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as
it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives
mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it
makes life possible. Reasonable knowledge had brought me to
acknowledge that life is senseless -- my life had come to a halt
and I wished to destroy myself. Looking around on the whole of
mankind I saw that people live and declare that they know the
meaning of life. I looked at myself -- I had lived as long as I
knew a meaning of life and had made life possible.
Looking again at people of other lands, at my contemporaries
and at their predecessors, I saw the same thing. Where there is
life, there since man began faith has made life possible for him,
and the chief outline of that faith is everywhere and always
identical.
Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give,
and to whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the
finite existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not
destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death. This means that
only in faith can we find for life a meaning and a possibility.
What, then, is this faith? And I understood that faith is not
merely "the evidence of things not seen", etc., and is not a
revelation (that defines only one of the indications of faith, is
not the relation of man to God (one has first to define faith and
then God, and not define faith through God); it not only agreement
with what has been told one (as faith is most usually supposed to
be), but faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in
consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith
is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something.
If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would
not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of
the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the
illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite.
Without faith he cannot live.
And I recalled the whole course of my mental labour and was
horrified. It was now clear to me that for man to be able to live
he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of
the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
Such an explanation I had had; but as long as I believed in the
finite I did not need the explanation, and I began to verify it by
reason. And in the light of reason the whole of my former
explanation flew to atoms. But a time came when I ceased to
believe in the finite. And then I began to build up on rational
foundations, out of what I knew, an explanation which would give a
meaning to life; but nothing could I build. Together with the best
human intellects I reached the result that o equals o, and was much
astonished at that conclusion, though nothing else could have
resulted.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in the experimental
sciences? I wished to know why I live, and for this purpose
studied all that is outside me. Evidently I might learn much, but
nothing of what I needed.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in philosophical
knowledge? I was studying the thoughts of those who had found
themselves in the same position as I, lacking a reply to the
question "why do I live?" Evidently I could learn nothing but what
I knew myself, namely that nothing can be known.
What am I? -- A part of the infinite. In those few words lies
the whole problem.
Is it possible that humanity has only put that question to
itself since yesterday? And can no one before me have set himself
that question -- a question so simple, and one that springs to the
tongue of every wise child?
Surely that question has been asked since man began; and
naturally for the solution of that question since man began it has
been equally insufficient to compare the finite with the finite and
the infinite with the infinite, and since man began the relation of
the finite to the infinite has been sought out and expressed.
All these conceptions in which the finite has been adjusted to
the infinite and a meaning found for life -- the conception of God,
of will, of goodness -- we submit to logical examination. And all
those conceptions fail to stand reason's criticism.
Were it not so terrible it would be ludicrous with what pride
and self-satisfaction we, like children, pull the watch to pieces,
take out the spring, make a toy of it, and are then surprised that
the watch does not go.
A solution of the contradiction between the finite and the
infinite, and such a reply to the question of life as will make it
possible to live, is necessary and precious. And that is the only
solution which we find everywhere, always, and among all peoples:
a solution descending from times in which we lose sight of the life
of man, a solution so difficult that we can compose nothing like it
-- and this solution we light-heartedly destroy in order again to
set the same question, which is natural to everyone and to which we
have no answer.
The conception of an infinite god, the divinity of the soul,
the connexion of human affairs with God, the unity and existence of
the soul, man's conception of moral goodness and evil -- are
conceptions formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought,
they are those conceptions without which neither life nor I should
exist; yet rejecting all that labour of the whole of humanity, I
wished to remake it afresh myself and in my own manner.
I did not then think like that, but the germs of these
thoughts were already in me. I understood, in the first place,
that my position with Schopenhauer and Solomon, notwithstanding our
wisdom, was stupid: we see that life is an evil and yet continue
to live. That is evidently stupid, for if life is senseless and I
am so fond of what is reasonable, it should be destroyed, and then
there would be no one to challenge it. Secondly, I understood that
all one's reasonings turned in a vicious circle like a wheel out of
gear with its pinion. However much and however well we may reason
we cannot obtain a reply to the question; and o will always equal
o, and therefore our path is probably erroneous. Thirdly, I began
to understand that in the replies given by faith is stored up the
deepest human wisdom and that I had no right to deny them on the
ground of reason, and that those answers are the only ones which
reply to life's question.
X
I understood this, but it made matters no better for me. I
was now ready to accept any faith if only it did not demand of me
a direct denial of reason -- which would be a falsehood. And I
studied Buddhism and Mohammedanism from books, and most of all I
studied Christianity both from books and from the people around me.
Naturally I first of all turned to the orthodox of my circle,
to people who were learned: to Church theologians, monks, to
theologians of the newest shade, and even to Evangelicals who
profess salvation by belief in the Redemption. And I seized on
these believers and questioned them as to their beliefs and their
understanding of the meaning of life.
But though I made all possible concessions, and avoided all
disputes, I could not accept the faith of these people. I saw that
what they gave out as their faith did not explain the meaning of
life but obscured it, and that they themselves affirm their belief
not to answer that question of life which brought me to faith, but
for some other aims alien to me.
I remember the painful feeling of fear of being thrown back
into my former state of despair, after the hope I often and often
experienced in my intercourse with these people.
The more fully they explained to me their doctrines, the more
clearly did I perceive their error and realized that my hope of
finding in their belief an explanation of the meaning of life was
vain.
It was not that in their doctrines they mixed many unnecessary
and unreasonable things with the Christian truths that had always
been near to me: that was not what repelled me. I was repelled by
the fact that these people's lives were like my own, with only this
difference -- that such a life did not correspond to the principles
they expounded in their teachings. I clearly felt that they
deceived themselves and that they, like myself found no other
meaning in life than to live while life lasts, taking all one's
hands can seize. I saw this because if they had had a meaning
which destroyed the fear of loss, suffering, and death, they would
not have feared these things. But they, these believers of our
circle, just like myself, living in sufficiency and superfluity,
tried to increase or preserve them, feared privations, suffering,
and death, and just like myself and all of us unbelievers, lived to
satisfy their desires, and lived just as badly, if not worse, than
the unbelievers.
No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith.
Only deeds which showed that they saw a meaning in life making what
was so dreadful to me -- poverty, sickness, and death -- not
dreadful to them, could convince me. And such deeds I did not see
among the various believers in our circle. On the contrary, I saw
such deeds done [Footnote: 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.] by people of
our circle who were the most unbelieving, but never by our so-
called believers.
And I understood that the belief of these people was not the
faith I sought, and that their faith is not a real faith but an
epicurean consolation in life.
I understood that that faith may perhaps serve, if not for a
consolation at least for some distraction for a repentant Solomon
on his death-bed, but it cannot serve for the great majority of
mankind, who are called on not to amuse themselves while consuming
the labour of others but to create life.
For all humanity to be able to live, and continue to live
attributing a meaning to life, they, those milliards, must have a
different, a real, knowledge of faith. Indeed, it was not the fact
that we, with Solomon and Schopenhauer, did not kill ourselves that
convinced me of the existence of faith, but the fact that those
milliards of people have lived and are living, and have borne
Solomon and us on the current of their lives.
And I began to draw near to the believers among the poor,
simple, unlettered folk: pilgrims, monks, sectarians, and peasants.
The faith of these common people was the same Christian faith as
was professed by the pseudo-believers of our circle. Among them,
too, I found a great deal of superstition mixed with the Christian
truths; but the difference was that the superstitions of the
believers of our circle were quite unnecessary to them and were not
in conformity with their lives, being merely a kind of epicurean
diversion; but the superstitions of the believers among the
labouring masses conformed so with their lives that it was
impossible to imagine them to oneself without those superstitions,
which were a necessary condition of their life. the whole life of
believers in our circle was a contradiction of their faith, but the
whole life of the working-folk believers was a confirmation of the
meaning of life which their faith gave them. And I began to look
well into the life and faith of these people, and the more I
considered it the more I became convinced that they have a real
faith which is a necessity to them and alone gives their life a
meaning and makes it possible for them to live. In contrast with
what I had seen in our circle -- where life without faith is
possible and where hardly one in a thousand acknowledges himself to
be a believer -- among them there is hardly one unbeliever in a
thousand. In contrast with what I had seen in our circle, where
the whole of life is passed in idleness, amusement, and
dissatisfaction, I saw that the whole life of these people was
passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life. In
contradistinction to the way in which people of our circle oppose
fate and complain of it on account of deprivations and sufferings,
these people accepted illness and sorrow without any perplexity or
opposition, and with a quiet and firm conviction that all is good.
In contradistinction to us, who the wiser we are the less we
understand the meaning of life, and see some evil irony in the fact
