Confession
by Leo Tolstoy
XIII
I turned from the life of our circle, acknowledging that ours
is not life but a simulation of life — that the conditions of
superfluity in which we live deprive us of the possibility of
understanding life, and that in order to understand life I must
understand not an exceptional life such as our who are parasites
on life, but the life of the simple labouring folk — those who
make life — and the meaning which they attribute to it. The
simplest labouring people around me were the Russian people, and
I turned to them and to the meaning of life which they give. That
meaning, if one can put it into words, was as follows: Every man
has come into this world by the will of God. And God has so made
man that every man can destroy his soul or save it. The aim of
man in life is to save his soul, and to save his soul he must
live "godly" and to live "godly" he must
renounce all the pleasures of life, must labour, humble himself,
suffer, and be merciful. That meaning the people obtain from the
whole teaching of faith transmitted to them by their pastors and
by the traditions that live among the people. This meaning was
clear to me and near to my heart. But together with this meaning
of the popular faith of our non-sectarian folk, among whom I
live, much was inseparably bound up that revolted me and seemed
to me inexplicable: sacraments, Church services, fasts, and the
adoration of relics and icons. The people cannot separate the one
from the other, nor could I. And strange as much of what entered
into the faith of these people was to me, I accepted everything,
and attended the services, knelt morning and evening in prayer,
fasted, and prepared to receive the Eucharist: and at first my
reason did not resist anything. The very things that had formerly
seemed to me impossible did not now evoke in me any opposition.
My relations to faith before and after were quite different.
Formerly life itself seemed to me full of meaning and faith
presented itself as the arbitrary assertion of propositions to me
quite unnecessary, unreasonable, and disconnected from life. I
then asked myself what meaning those propositions had and,
convinced that they had none, I rejected them. Now on the
contrary I knew firmly that my life otherwise has, and can have,
no meaning, and the articles of faith were far from presenting
themselves to me as unnecessary — on the contrary I had been led
by indubitable experience to the conviction that only these
propositions presented by faith give life a meaning. formerly I
looked on them as on some quite unnecessary gibberish, but now,
if I did not understand them, I yet knew that they had a meaning,
and I said to myself that I must learn to understand them.
I argued as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of
faith flows, like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious
source. That source is God, the origin both of the human body and
the human reason. As my body has descended to me from God, so
also has my reason and my understanding of life, and consequently
the various stages of the development of that understanding of
life cannot be false. All that people sincerely believe in must
be true; it may be differently expressed but it cannot be a lie,
and therefore if it presents itself to me as a lie, that only
means that I have not understood it. Furthermore I said to
myself, the essence of every faith consists in its giving life a
meaning which death does not destroy. Naturally for a faith to be
able to reply to the questions of a king dying in luxury, of an
old slave tormented by overwork, of an unreasoning child, of a
wise old man, of a half-witted old woman, of a young and happy
wife, of a youth tormented by passions, of all people in the most
varied conditions of life and education — if there is one reply
to the one eternal question of life: "Why do I live and what
will result from my life?" — the reply, though one in its
essence, must be endlessly varied in its presentation; and the
more it is one, the more true and profound it is, the more
strange and deformed must it naturally appear in its attempted
expression, conformably to the education and position of each
person. But this argument, justifying in my eyes the queerness of
much on the ritual side of religion, did not suffice to allow me
in the one great affair of life — religion — to do things which
seemed to me questionable. With all my soul I wished to be in a
position to mingle with the people, fulfilling the ritual side of
their religion; but I could not do it. I felt that I should lie
to myself and mock at what was sacred to me, were I to do so. At
this point, however, our new Russian theological writers came to
my rescue.
According to the explanation these theologians gave, the
fundamental dogma of our faith is the infallibility of the Church.
From the admission of that dogma follows inevitably the truth
of all that is professed by the Church. The Church as an assembly
of true believers united by love and therefore possessed of true
knowledge became the basis of my belief. I told myself that
divine truth cannot be accessible to a separate individual; it is
revealed only to the whole assembly of people united by love. To
attain truth one must not separate, and in order not to separate
one must love and must endure things one may not agree with.
Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the
rites of the Church you transgress against love; and by
transgressing against love you deprive yourself of the
possibility of recognizing the truth. I did not then see the
sophistry contained in this argument. I did not see that union in
love may give the greatest love, but certainly cannot give us
divine truth expressed in the definite words of the Nicene Creed.
I also did not perceive that love cannot make a certain
expression of truth an obligatory condition of union. I did not
then see these mistakes in the argument and thanks to it was able
to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church
without understanding most of them. I then tried with all
strength of my soul to avoid all arguments and contradictions,
and tried to explain as reasonably as possible the Church
statements I encountered.
When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason
and submitted to the tradition possessed by all humanity. I
united myself with my forefathers: the father, mother, and
grandparents I loved. They and all my predecessors believed and
lived, and they produced me. I united myself also with the
missions of the common people whom I respected. Moveover, those
actions had nothing bad in themselves ("bad" I
considered the indulgence of one's desires). When rising early
for Church services I knew I was doing well, if only because I
was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental pride, for the
sake of union with my ancestors and contemporaries, and for the
sake of finding the meaning of life. It was the same with my
preparations to receive Communion, and with the daily reading of
prayers with genuflections, and also with the observance of all
the fasts. However insignificant these sacrifices might be I made
them for the sake of something good. I fasted, prepared for
Communion, and observed the fixed hours of prayer at home and in
church. During Church service I attended to every word, and gave
them a meaning whenever I could. In the Mass the most important
words for me were: "Let us love one another in conformity!"
The further words, "In unity we believe in the Father, the
Son, and Holy Ghost", I passed by, because I could not
understand them.
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