that we suffer and die, these folk live and suffer, and they
approach death and suffering with tranquillity and in most cases
gladly. In contrast to the fact that a tranquil death, a death
without horror and despair, is a very rare exception in our circle,
a troubled, rebellious, and unhappy death is the rarest exception
among the people. and such people, lacking all that for us and for
Solomon is the only good of life and yet experiencing the greatest
happiness, are a great multitude. I looked more widely around me.
I considered the life of the enormous mass of the people in the
past and the present. And of such people, understanding the
meaning of life and able to live and to die, I saw not two or
three, or tens, but hundreds, thousands, and millions. and they
all -- endlessly different in their manners, minds, education, and
position, as they were -- all alike, in complete contrast to my
ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, laboured quietly,
endured deprivations and sufferings, and lived and died seeing
therein not vanity but good.
And I learnt to love these people. The more I came to know
their life, the life of those who are living and of others who are
dead of whom I read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier
it became for me to live. So I went on for about two years, and a
change took place in me which had long been preparing and the
promise of which had always been in me. It came about that the
life of our circle, the rich and learned, not merely became
distasteful to me, but lost all meaning in my eyes. All our
actions, discussions, science and art, presented itself to me in a
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.
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 went on to seek my relation with Him; and
again I imagined *that* God -- our Creator in Three Persons who
sent His Son, the Saviour -- and again *that* God, detached from
the world and from me, melted like a block of ice, melted before my
eyes, and again nothing remained, and again the spring of life
dried up within me, and I despaired and felt that I had nothing to
do but to kill myself. And the worst of all was, that I felt I
could not do it.
Not twice or three times, but tens and hundreds of times, I
reached those conditions, first of joy and animation, and then of
despair and consciousness of the impossibility of living.
I remember that it was in early spring: I was alone in the
wood listening to its sounds. I listened and thought ever of the
same thing, as I had constantly done during those last three years.
I was again seeking God.
"Very well, there is no God," said I to myself; "there is no
one who is not my imagination but a reality like my whole life.
He does not exist, and no miracles can prove His existence, because
the miracles would be my imagination, besides being irrational.
"But my *perception* of God, of Him whom I seek," I asked
myself, "where has that perception come from?" And again at this
thought the glad waves of life rose within me. All that was around
me came to life and received a meaning. But my joy did not last
long. My mind continued its work.
"The conception of God is not God," said I to myself. "The
conception is what takes place within me. The conception of God is
something I can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself. That
is not what I seek. I seek that without which there can be no
life." And again all around me and within me began to die, and
again I wished to kill myself.
But then I turned my gaze upon myself, on what went on within
me, and I remembered all those cessations of life and reanimations
that recurred within me hundreds of times. I remembered that I
only lived at those times when I believed in God. As it was
before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need
only forget Him, or disbelieve Him, and I died.
