A Confession .......................................................................................................................................................1

Tolstoy.....................................................................................................................................................1

I...............................................................................................................................................................1

II ..............................................................................................................................................................3

III .............................................................................................................................................................5

IV............................................................................................................................................................7

V ..............................................................................................................................................................9

VI..........................................................................................................................................................12

VII .........................................................................................................................................................16

VIII ........................................................................................................................................................18

IX..........................................................................................................................................................20

X ............................................................................................................................................................22

XI..........................................................................................................................................................24

XII .........................................................................................................................................................25

XIII ........................................................................................................................................................27

XIV.......................................................................................................................................................29

XV .........................................................................................................................................................30

XVI.......................................................................................................................................................32

1879......................................................................................................................................................33

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it in childhood and throughout my

boyhood and youth. But when I abandoned the second course of the university at the age of eighteen I no

Judging by certain memories, I never seriously believed them, but had merely relied on what I was taught and

on what was professed by the grownup people around me, and that reliance was very unstable.

I remember that before I was eleven a grammar school pupil, Vladimir Milyutin (long since dead), visited us

one Sunday and announced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his school. This discovery was that there

is no God and that all we are taught about Him is a mere invention (this was in 1838). I remember how

interested my elder brothers were in this information. They called me to their council and we all, I remember,

became very animated, and accepted it as something very interesting and quite possible.

I remember also that when my elder brother, Dmitriy, who was then at the university, suddenly, in the

passionate way natural to him, devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church services, to fast

and to lead a pure and moral life, we all even our elders unceasingly held him up to ridicule and for

some unknown reason called him "Noah". I remember that MusinPushkin, the then Curator of Kazan

University, when inviting us to dance at his home, ironically persuaded my brother (who was declining the

invitation) by the argument that even David danced before the Ark. I sympathized with these jokes made by

my elders, and drew from them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the catechism and go to

church, one must not take such things too seriously. I remember also that I read Voltaire when I was very

My lapse from faith occurred as is usual among people on our level of education. In most cases, I think, it

happens thus: a man lives like everybody else, on the basis of principles not merely having nothing in

common with religious doctrine, but generally opposed to it; religious doctrine does not play a part in life, in

intercourse with others it is never encountered, and in a man's own life he never has to reckon with it.

Religious doctrine is professed far away from life and independently of it. If it is encountered, it is only as an

Then as now, it was and is quite impossible to judge by a man's life and conduct whether he is a believer or

not. If there be a difference between a man who publicly professes orthodoxy and one who denies it, the

difference is not in favor of the former. Then as now, the public profession and confession of orthodoxy was

chiefly met with among people who were dull and cruel and who considered themselves very important.

Ability, honesty, reliability, goodnature and moral conduct, were often met with among unbelievers.

The schools teach the catechism and send the pupils to church, and government officials must produce

certificates of having received communion. But a man of our circle who has finished his education and is not

in the government service may even now (and formerly it was still easier for him to do so) live for ten or

twenty years without once remembering that he is living among Christians and is himself reckoned a member

So that, now as formerly, religious doctrine, accepted on trust and supported by external pressure, thaws

away gradually under the influence of knowledge and experience of life which conflict with it, and a man

very often lives on, imagining that he still holds intact the religious doctrine imparted to him in childhood

S., a clever and truthful man, once told me the story of how he ceased to believe. On a hunting expedition,

when he was already twentysix, he once, at the place where they put up for the night, knelt down in the

evening to pray a habit retained from childhood. His elder brother, who was at the hunt with him, was

lying on some hay and watching him. When S. had finished and was settling down for the night, his brother

They said nothing more to one another. But from that day S. ceased to say his prayers or go to church. And

now he has not prayed, received communion, or gone to church, for thirty years. And this not because he

knows his brother's convictions and has joined him in them, nor because he has decided anything in his own

soul, but simply because the word spoken by his brother was like the push of a finger on a wall that was ready

to fall by its own weight. The word only showed that where he thought there was faith, in reality there had

long been an empty space, and that therefore the utterance of words and the making of signs of the cross and

genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions. Becoming conscious of their senselessness he could

So it has been and is, I think, with the great majority of people. I am speaking of people of our educational

level who are sincere with themselves, and not of those who make the profession of faith a means of attaining

worldly aims. (Such people are the most fundamental infidels, for if faith is for them a means of attaining any

worldly aims, then certainly it is not faith.) these people of our education are so placed that the light of

knowledge and life has caused an artificial erection to melt away, and they have either already noticed this

The religious doctrine taught me from childhood disappeared in me as in others, but with this difference, that

as from the age of fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my rejection of the doctrine became a

conscious one at a very early age. From the time I was sixteen I ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to

church or to fast of my own volition. I did not believe what had been taught me in childhood but I believed in

something. What it was I believed in I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny

God but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his

Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith my only real faith that which apart from my

animal instincts gave impulse to my life was a belief in perfecting myself. But in what this perfecting

consisted and what its object was, I could not have said. I tried to perfect myself mentally I studied

everything I could, anything life threw in my way; I tried to perfect my will, I drew up rules I tried to follow;

I perfected myself physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts of exercises, and accustoming

myself to endurance and patience by all kinds of privations. And all this I considered to be the pursuit of

perfection. the beginning of it all was of course moral perfection, but that was soon replaced by perfection in

general: by the desire to be better not in my own eyes or those of God but in the eyes of other people. And

very soon this effort again changed into a desire to be stronger than others: to be more famous, more

Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive history of my life during those ten years of my youth. I

think very many people have had a like experience. With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young,

passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most

sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to

Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge were all respected.

Yielding to those passions I became like the grownup folk and felt that they approved of me. The kind aunt

with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me

as that I should have relations with a married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison

avec une femme comme il faut'. [1] Another happiness she desired for me was that I should become an

aidede camp, and if possible aidedecamp to the Emperor. But the greatest happiness of all would be that

I should marry a very rich girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible.

I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed men in war and challenged men

to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the peasants, sentenced them to

punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence,

murder there was no crime I did not commit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my

During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness, and pride. In my writings I did the same as in

my life. to get fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and to

display the evil. and I did so. How often in my writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference, or

even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave meaning to my life! And I succeeded in

At twentysix years of age [2] I returned to Petersburg after the war, and met the writers. They received me

as one of themselves and flattered me. And before I had time to look round I had adopted the views on life of

the set of authors I had come among, and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to

The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on

developing, and in this development we men of thought have the chief part; and among men of

thought it is we artists and poets who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind.

And lest the simple question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach? it was explained in

this theory that this need not be known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an

admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet,

wrote and taught without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food, lodging,

women, and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I taught was very good.

this faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests.

To be its priest was very pleasant and profitable. And I lived a considerable time in this faith without

doubting its validity. But in the second and still more in the third year of this life I began to doubt the

infallibility of this religion and to examine it. My first cause of doubt was that I began to notice that the

priests of this religion were not all in accord among themselves. Some said: We are the best and most useful

teachers; we teach what is needed, but the others teach wrongly. Others said: No! we are the real teachers,

and you teach wrongly. and they disputed, quarrelled, abused, cheated, and tricked one another. There were

also many among us who did not care who was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent on attaining

their covetous aims by means of this activity of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our creed.

Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more

attentively, and I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and

for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former

dissipated and military life; but they were self confident and selfsatisfied as only those can be who are

quite holy or who do not know what holiness is. These people revolted me, I became revolting to myself, and

But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these

people gave me: the rank of artist, poet, and teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet and artist and could

teach everybody without myself knowing what I was teaching, and I acted accordingly.

From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride and an insane

To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men (though there are thousands like

them today), is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic

We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and

as much as possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting

and abusing one another, all printed and wrote teaching others. And without noticing that we knew

nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to

reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one

another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another just as in a

Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength day and night, setting the type and

printing millions of words which the post carried all over Russia, and we still went on teaching and could in

no way find time to teach enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was not paid us.

It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real innermost concern was to get as much

money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we did

that. But in order to do such useless work and to feel assured that we were very important people we required

a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was devised: "All that exists is reasonable. All

that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of

books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers,

and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." This theory would have been all very well if we

had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposite

thought expressed by another, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us

money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered himself justified.

It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and like all

So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six years, till my marriage. During that time I went

abroad. Life in Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans [3] confirmed me yet more

in the faith of striving after perfection in which I believed, for I found the same faith among them. That faith

took with me the common form it assumes with the majority of educated people of our day. It was expressed

by the word "progress". It then appeared to me that this word meant something. I did not as yet understand

that, being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for me to live, in my answer, "Live

in conformity with progress", I was like a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves should

reply to what for him is the chief and only question. "whither to steer", by saying, "We are being carried

I did not then notice this. Only occasionally not by reason but by instinct I revolted against this

superstition so common in our day, by which people hide from themselves their lack of understanding of

life....So, for instance, during my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my

superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately

into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness

of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had

held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of

what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I. Another

instance of a realization that the superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide to life, was my

brother's death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and

died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give

me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying. But these were only rare instances

of doubt, and I actually continued to live professing a faith only in progress. "Everything evolves and I evolve

with it: and why it is that I evolve with all things will be known some day." So I ought to have formulated my

On returning >from abroad I settled in the country and chanced to occupy myself with peasant schools. This

work was particularly to my taste because in it I had not to face the falsity which had become obvious to me

and stared me in the face when I tried to teach people by literary means. Here also I acted in the name of

progress, but I already regarded progress itself critically. I said to myself: "In some of its developments

progress has proceeded wrongly, and with primitive peasant children one must deal in a spirit of perfect

freedom, letting them choose what path of progress they please." In reality I was ever revolving round one

and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach without knowing what to teach. In the higher

spheres of literary activity I had realized that one could not teach without knowing what, for I saw that people

all taught differently, and by quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their ignorance from

one another. But here, with peasant children, I thought to evade this difficulty by letting them learn what they

liked. It amuses me now when I remember how I shuffled in trying to satisfy my desire to teach, while in the

depth of my soul I knew very well that I could not teach anything needful for I did not know what was

needful. After spending a year at school work I went abroad a second time to discover how to teach others

And it seemed to me that I had learnt this aborad, and in the year of the peasants' emancipation (1861) I

returned to Russia armed with all this wisdom, and having become an Arbiter [4] I began to teach, both the

uneducated peasants in schools and the educated classes through a magazine I published. Things appeared to

be going well, but I felt I was not quite sound mentally and that matters could not long continue in that way.

And I should perhaps then have come to the state of despair I reached fifteen years later had there not been

one side of life still unexplored by me which promised me happiness: that was my marriage.

For a year I busied myself with arbitration work, the schools, and the magazine; and I became so worn out

as a result especially of my mental confusion and so hard was my struggle as Arbiter, so obscure the

results of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to

one and the same thing: a desire to teach everybody and to hide the fact that I did not know what to teach),

that I fell ill, mentally rather than physically, threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkirs in the

Returning from there I married. The new conditions of happy family life completely diverted me from all

search for the general meaning of life. My whole life was centred at that time in my family, wife and

children, and therefore in care to increase our means of livelihood. My striving after selfperfection, for

which I had already substituted a striving for perfection in general, i.e. progress, was now again replaced by

the effort simply to secure the best possible conditions for myself and my family.

In spite of the fact that I now regarded authorship as of no importance the temptation of immense

monetary rewards and applause for my insignificant work and I devoted myself to it as a means of

improving my material position and of stifling in my soul all questions as to the meaning of my own life or

I wrote: teaching what was for me the only truth, namely, that one should live so as to have the best for

So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me. At first I experienced moments

of perplexity and arrest of life, and though I did not know what to do or how to live; and I felt lost and

became dejected. But this passed and I went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began to

recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What

At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known,

and that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution it would not cost me much effort; just at present I had

no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be able to find the answer. The questions however began to

repeat themselves frequently, and to demand replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always

Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of

indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more and more often

and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can

look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to him than anything

That is what happened to me. I understood that it was no casual indisposition but something very important,

and that if these questions constantly repeated themselves they would have to be answered. And I tried to

answer them. The questions seemed such stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched them and

tried to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that they are not childish and stupid but the most

important and profound of life's questions; and secondly that, occupying myself with my Samara estate, the

education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not know

why, I could do nothing and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management which greatly occupied

me at that time, the question would suddenly occur: "Well, you will have 6,000 desyatinas [6] of land in

Samara Government and 300 horses, and what then?" ... And I was quite disconcerted and did not know what

to think. Or when considering plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: "What for?" Or

when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I would suddenly say to myself: "But what

does it matter to me?" Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I would say to myself, "Very

well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or than all the writers in the

world and what of it?" And I could find no reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be

answered at once, and if I did not answer them it was impossible to live. But there was no answer.

I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but

there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired

anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy

come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have know what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt

something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a

delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed

of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked,

till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was

impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was

It had come to this, that I, a healthy, fortunate man, felt I could no longer live: some irresistible power

impelled me to rid myself one way or other of life. I cannot say I wished to kill myself. The power which

drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, and more widespread than any mere wish. It was a force similar

to the former striving to live, only in a contrary direction. All my strength drew me away from life. The

thought of selfdestruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had come

formerly. and it was seductive that I had to be cunning with myself lest I should carry it out too hastily. I did

not wish to hurry, because I wanted to use all efforts to disentangle the matter. "If I cannot unravel matters,

there will always be time." and it was then that I, a man favoured by fortune, hid a cord from myself lest I

should hang myself from the crosspiece of the partition in my room where I undressed alone every evening,

and I ceased to go out shooting with a gun lest I should be tempted by so easy a way of ending my life. I did

not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what is considered complete good fortune. I was not

yet fifty; I had a good wife who lived me and whom I loved, good children, and a large estate which without

much effort on my part improved and increased. I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more

than at any previous time. I was praised by others and without much self deception could consider that my

name was famous. And far from being insane or mentally diseased, I enjoyed on the contrary a strength of

mind and body such as I have seldom met with among men of my kind; physically I could keep up with the

peasants at mowing, and mentally I could work for eight and ten hours at a stretch without experiencing any

ill results from such exertion. And in this situation I came to this that I could not live, and, fearing death,

My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has

played on me. Though I did not acknowledge a "someone" who created me, yet such a presentation that

someone had played an evil and stupid joke on my by placing me in the world was the form of expression

Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I

lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with

matured mental powers reached the summit of life >from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit

like an archfool seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be

But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no

reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided

understanding this from the very beginning it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness

and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and

worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why

go on making any effort? ... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising!

One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is

all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about

There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping

from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to

swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged

beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig

growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have

to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that

two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is

clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The

traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some

drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the

twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I

could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled

me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the

branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the

unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real

The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me.

No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but

live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going

round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false.

The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my love of family,

"Family"...said I to myself. But my family wife and children are also human. They are placed just as I

am: they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them,

guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else be stupid?

Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth

"Art, poetry?"...Under the influence of success and the praise of men, I had long assured myself that this was

a thing one could do though death was drawing near death which destroys all things, including my work

and its remembrance; but soon I saw that that too was a fraud. It was plain to me that art is an adornment of

life, an allurement to life. But life had lost its attraction for me, so how could I attract others? As long as I

was not living my own life but was borne on the waves of some other life as long as I believed that life

had a meaning, though one I could not express the reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds afforded

me pleasure: it was pleasant to look at life in the mirror of art. But when I began to seek the meaning of life

and felt the necessity of living my own life, that mirror became for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous,

or painful. I could no longer soothe myself with what I now saw in the mirror, namely, that my position was

stupid and desperate. It was all very well to enjoy the sight when in the depth of my soul I believed that my

life had a meaning. Then the play of lights comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible in life

amused me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw the dragon and saw the mice gnawing

Nor was that all. Had I simply understood that life had no meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing

that that was my lot. But I could not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a man living in a wood from

which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having

lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road. He knows that each step he takes confuses him more and

It was indeed terrible. And to rid myself of the terror I wished to kill myself. I experienced terror at what

awaited me knew that that terror was even worse than the position I was in, but still I could not patiently

await the end. However convincing the argument might be that in any case some vessel in my heart would

give way, or something would burst and all would be over, I could not patiently await that end. The horror of

darkness was too great, and I wished to free myself from it as quickly as possible by noose or bullet. that was

"But perhaps I have overlooked something, or misunderstood something?" said to myself several times. "It

cannot be that this condition of despair is natural to man!" And I sought for an explanation of these problems

in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I sought painfully and long, not from idle curiosity or

listlessly, but painfully and persistently day and night sought as a perishing man seeks for safety and I

I sought in all the sciences, but far from finding what I wanted, became convinced that all who like myself

had sought in knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing. And not only had they found nothing, but

they had plainly acknowledged that the very thing which made me despair namely the senselessness of

I sought everywhere; and thanks to a life spent in learning, and thanks also to my relations with the scholarly

world, I had access to scientists and scholars in all branches of knowledge, and they readily showed me all

their knowledge, not only in books but also in conversation, so that I had at my disposal all that science has to

I was long unable to believe that it gives no other reply to life's questions than that which it actually does

give. It long seemed to me, when I saw the important and serious air with which science announces its

conclusions which have nothing in common with the real questions of human life, that there was something I

had not understood. I long was timid before science, and it seemed to me that the lack of conformity between

the answers and my questions arose not by the fault of science but from my ignorance, but the matter was for

me not a game or an amusement but one of life and death, and I was involuntarily brought to the conviction

that my questions were the only legitimate ones, forming the basis of all knowledge, and that I with my

questions was not to blame, but science if it pretends to reply to those questions.

My question that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide was the simplest of

questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without

an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: "What will come of what I am

Differently expressed, the question is: "Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?" It can

also be expressed thus: "Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not

To this one question, variously expressed, I sought an answer in science. And I found that in relation to that

question all human knowledge is divided as it were into tow opposite hemispheres at the ends of which are

two poles: the one a negative and the other a positive; but that neither at the one nor the other pole is there an

The one series of sciences seems not to recognize the question, but replies clearly and exactly to its own

independent questions: that is the series of experimental sciences, and at the extreme end of it stands

mathematics. The other series of sciences recognizes the question, but does not answer it; that is the series of

From early youth I had been interested in the abstract sciences, but later the mathematical and natural

sciences attracted me, and until I put my question definitely to myself, until that question had itself grown up

within me urgently demanding a decision, I contented myself with those counterfeit answers which science

Now in the experimental sphere I said to myself: "Everything develops and differentiates itself, moving

towards complexity and perfection, and there are laws directing this movement. You are a part of the whole.

Having learnt as far as possible the whole, and having learnt the law of evolution, you will understand also

your place in the whole and will know yourself." Ashamed as I am to confess it, there wa a time when I

seemed satisfied with that. It was just the time when I was myself becoming more complex and was

developing. My muscles were growing and strengthening, my memory was being enriched, my capacity to

think and understand was increasing, I was growing and developing; and feeling this growth in myself it was

natural for me to think that such was the universal law in which I should find the solution of the question of

my life. But a time came when the growth within me ceased. I felt that I was not developing, but fading, my

muscles were weakening, my teeth falling out, and I saw that the law not only did not explain anything to me,

but that there never had been or could be such a law, and that I had taken for a law what I had found in

myself at a certain period of my life. I regarded the definition of that law more strictly, and it became clear to

me that there could be no law of endless development; it became clear that to say, "in infinite space and time

everything develops, becomes more perfect and more complex, is differentiated", is to say nothing at all.

These are all words with no meaning, for in the infinite there is neither complex nor simple, neither forward

Above all, my personal question, "What am I with my desires?" remained quite unanswered. And I

understood that those sciences are very interesting and attractive, but that they are exact and clear in inverse

proportion to their applicability to the question of life: the less their applicability to the question of life, the

more exact and clear they are, while the more they try to reply to the question of life, the more obscure and

unattractive they become. If one turns to the division of sciences which attempt to reply to the questions of

life to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology one encounters an appalling poverty of thought, the

greatest obscurity, a quite unjustifiable pretension to solve irrelevant question, and a continual contradiction

of each authority by others and even by himself. If one turns to the branches of science which are not

concerned with the solution of the questions of life, but which reply to their own special scientific questions,

one is enraptured by the power of man's mind, but one knows in advance that they give no reply to life's

questions. Those sciences simply ignore life's questions. They say: "To the question of what you are and why

you live we have no reply, and are not occupied with that; but if you want to know the laws of light, of

chemical combinations, the laws of development of organisms, if you want to know the laws of bodies and

their form, and the relation of numbers and quantities, if you want to know the laws of your mind, to all that

In general the relation of the experimental sciences to life's question may be expressed thus: Question: "Why

do I live?" Answer: "In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small particles change their forms in infinite

complexity, and when you have under stood the laws of those mutations of form you will understand why

Then in the sphere of abstract science I said to myself: "All humanity lives and develops on the basis of

spiritual principles and ideals which guide it. Those ideals are expressed in religions, in sciences, in arts, in

forms of government. Those ideals become more and more elevated, and humanity advances to its highest

welfare. I am part of humanity, and therefore my vocation is to forward the recognition and the realization of

the ideals of humanity." And at the time of my weakmindedness I was satisfied with that; but as soon as the

question of life presented itself clearly to me, those theories immediately crumbled away. Not to speak of the

unscrupulous obscurity with which those sciences announce conclusions formed on the study of a small part

of mankind as general conclusions; not to speak of the mutual contradictions of different adherents of this

view as to what are the ideals of humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theory consists in the

fact that in order to reply to the question facing each man: "What am I?" or "Why do I live?" or "What must I

do?" one has first to decide the question: "What is the life of the whole?" (which is to him unknown and of

which he is acquainted with one tiny part in one minute period of time. To understand what he is, one man

must first understand all this mysterious humanity, consisting of people such as himself who do not

I have to confess that there was a time when I believed this. It was the time when I had my own favourite

ideals justifying my own caprices, and I was trying to devise a theory which would allow one to consider my

caprices as the law of humanity. But as soon as the question of life arose in my soul in full clearness that

reply at once few to dust. And I understood that as in the experimental sciences there are real sciences, and

semisciences which try to give answers to questions beyond their competence, so in this sphere there is a

whole series of most diffused sciences which try to reply to irrelevant questions. Semisciences of that kind,

the juridical and the socialhistorical, endeavour to solve the questions of a man's life by pretending to decide

But as in the sphere of man's experimental knowledge one who sincerely inquires how he is to live cannot be

satisfied with the reply "Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time and in complexity, of

innumerable atoms, and then you will understand your life" so also a sincere man cannot be satisfied with

the reply: "Study the whole life of humanity of which we cannot know either the beginning or the end, of

which we do not even know a small part, and then you will understand your own life." And like the

experimental semisciences, so these other semisciences are the more filled with obscurities, inexactitudes,

stupidities, and contradictions, the further they diverge from the real problems. The problem of experimental

science is the sequence of cause and effect in material phenomena. It is only necessary for experimental

science to introduce the question of a final cause for it to become nonsensical. The problem of abstract

science is the recognition of the primordial essence of life. It is only necessary to introduce the investigation

of consequential phenomena (such as social and historical phenomena) and it also becomes nonsensical.

Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and displays the greatness of the human mind when

it does not introduce into its investigations the question of an ultimate cause. And, on the contrary, abstract

science is only then science and displays the greatness of the human mind when it puts quite aside questions

relating to the consequential causes of phenomena and regards man solely in relation to an ultimate cause.

Such in this realm of science forming the pole of the sphere is metaphysics or philosophy. That

science states the question clearly: "What am I, and what is the universe? And why do I exist, and why does

the universe exist?" And since it has existed it has always replied in the same way. Whether the philosopher

calls the essence of life existing within me, and in all that exists, by the name of "idea", or "substance", or

"spirit", or "will", he says one and the same thing: that this essence exists and that I am of that same essence;

but why it is he does not know, and does not say, if he is an exact thinker. I ask: "Why should this essence

exist? What results from the fact that it is and will be?" ... And philosophy not merely does not reply, but is

itself only asking that question. And if it is real philosophy all its labour lies merely in trying to put that

question clearly. And if it keeps firmly to its task it cannot reply to the question otherwise than thus: "What

am I, and what is the universe?" "All and nothing"; and to the question "Why?" by "I do not know".

So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can never obtain anything like an answer and not

because, as in the clear experimental sphere, the reply does not relate to my question, but because here,

though all the mental work is directed just to my question, there is no answer, but instead of an answer one

In my search for answers to life's questions I experienced just what is felt by a man lost in a forest.

He reaches a glade, climbs a tree, and clearly sees the limitless distance, but sees that his home is not and

cannot be there; then he goes into the dark wood and sees the darkness, but there also his home is not.

So I wandered n that wood of human knowledge, amid the gleams of mathematical and experimental science

which showed me clear horizons but in a direction where there could be no home, and also amid the darkness

of the abstract sciences where I was immersed in deeper gloom the further I went, and where I finally

Yielding myself to the bright side of knowledge, I understood that I was only diverting my gaze from the

question. However alluringly clear those horizons which opened out before me might be, however alluring it

might be to immerse oneself in the limitless expanse of those sciences, I already understood that the clearer

"I know," said I to myself, "what science so persistently tries to discover, and along that road there is no reply

to the question as to the meaning of my life." In the abstract sphere I understood that notwithstanding the fact,

or just because of the fact, that the direct aim of science is to reply to my question, there is no reply but that

which I have myself already given: "What is the meaning of my life?" "There is none." Or: "What will come

of my life?" "Nothing." Or: "Why does everything exist that exists, and why do I exist?" "Because it exists."

Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an innumerable quantity of exact replies concerning

matters about which I had not asked: about the chemical constituents of the stars, about the movement of the

sun towards the constellation Hercules, about the origin of species and of man, about the forms of infinitely

minute imponderable particles of ether; but in this sphere of knowledge the only answer to my question,

"What is the meaning of my life?" was: "You are what you call your 'life'; you are a transitory, casual

cohesion of particles. The mutual interactions and changes of these particles produce in you what you call

your "life". That cohesion will last some time; afterwards the interaction of these particles will cease and

what you call "life" will cease, and so will all your questions. You are an accidentally united little lump of

something. that little lump ferments. The little lump calls that fermenting its 'life'. The lump will disintegrate

and there will be an end of the fermenting and of all the questions." So answers the clear side of science and

From such a reply one sees that the reply does not answer the question. I want to know the meaning of my

life, but that it is a fragment of the infinite, far from giving it a meaning destroys its every possible meaning.

The obscure compromises which that side of experimental exact science makes with abstract science when it

says that the meaning of life consists in development and in cooperation with development, owing to their

The other side of science the abstract side when it holds strictly to its principles, replying directly to

the question, always replies, and in all ages has replied, in one and the same way: "The world is something

infinite and incomprehensible part of that incomprehensible 'all'." Again I exclude all those compromises

between abstract and experimental sciences which supply the whole ballast of the semisciences called

juridical, political, and historical. In those semisciences the conception of development and progress is

again wrongly introduced, only with this difference, that there it was the development of everything while

here it is the development of the life of mankind. The error is there as before: development and progress in

infinity can have no aim or direction, and, as far as my question is concerned, no answer is given.

In truly abstract science, namely in genuine philosophy not in that which Schopenhauer calls "professorial

philosophy" which serves only to classify all existing phenomena in new philosophic categories and to call

them by new names where the philosopher does not lose sight of the essential question, the reply is always

one and the same the reply given by Socrates, Schopenhauer, Solomon, and buddha.

"We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life", said Socrates when preparing for death. "For what

do we, who love truth, strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body, and >from all the evil that is

caused by the life of the body! If so, then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us?

"The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him."

"Having recognized the inmost essence of the world as will, and all its phenomena from the unconscious

working of the obscure forces of Nature up to the completely conscious action of man as only the

objectivity of that will, we shall in no way avoid the conclusion that together with the voluntary renunciation

and selfdestruction of the will all those phenomena also disappear, that constant striving and effort without

aim or rest on all the stages of objectivity in which and through which the world exists; the diversity of

successive forms will disappear, and together with the form all the manifestations of will, with its most

universal forms, space and time, and finally its most fundamental form subject and object. Without will

there is no concept and no world. Before us, certainly, nothing remains. But what resists this transition into

annihilation, our nature, is only that same wish to live Wille zum Leben which forms ourselves as well

as our world. That we are so afraid of annihilation or, what is the same thing, that we so wish to live, merely

means that we are ourselves nothing else but this desire to live, and know nothing but it. And so what remains

after the complete annihilation of the will, for us who are so full of the will, is, of course, nothing; but on the

other hand, for those in whom the will has turned and renounced itself, this so real world of ours with all its

"Vanity of vanities", says Solomon "vanity of vanities all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his

labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation commeth: but the

earth abideth for ever....The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which

shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is

new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. there is no remembrance of former things; neither

shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. I the Preacher was

King over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is

done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen

all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit....I communed with

my own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have

been before me over Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave

my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For

in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

"I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and behold this also is

vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I sought in my heart how to cheer my flesh

with wine, and while my heart was guided by wisdom, to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it was good

for the sons of men that they should do under heaven the number of the days of their life. I made me great

works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in

them of all kinds of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared: I

got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and

flocks above all that were before me in Jerusalem: I gathered me also silver and gold and the peculiar treasure

from kings and from the provinces: I got me men singers and women singers; and the delights of the sons of

men, as musical instruments and all that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were

before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever mine eyes desired I kept not from

them. I withheld not my heart from any joy....Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and

on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no

profit from them under the sun. And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly.... But I

perceived that one even happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it

happeneth even to me, and why was I then more wise? then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For

there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to

come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool. Therefore I hated life; because the work

that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my

labour which I had taken under the sun: seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall be after me.... For

what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For

all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, even in the night his heart taketh no rest. this is also vanity.

Man is not blessed with security that he should eat and drink and cheer his soul from his own labour.... All

things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the evil; to

the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the

sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that

there is one event unto all; yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart

while they live, and after that they go to the dead. For him that is among the living there is hope: for a living

dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither

have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. also their love, and their hatred, and their

envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun."

Sakya Muni, a young, happy prince, from whom the existence of sickness, old age, and death had been

hidden, went out to drive and saw a terrible old man, toothless and slobbering. the prince, from whom till

then old age had been concealed, was amazed, and asked his driver what it was, and how that man had come

to such a wretched and disgusting condition, and when he learnt that this was the common fate of all men,

that the same thing inevitably awaited him the young prince he could not continue his drive, but gave

orders to go home, that he might consider this fact. So he shut himself up alone and considered it. and he

probably devised some consolation for himself, for he subsequently again went out to drive, feeling merry

and happy. But this time he saw a sick man. He saw an emaciated, livid, trembling man with dim eyes. The

prince, from whom sickness had been concealed, stopped and asked what this was. And when he learnt that

this was sickness, to which all men are liable, and that he himself a healthy and happy prince might

himself fall ill tomorrow, he again was in no mood to enjoy himself but gave orders to drive home, and again

sought some solace, and probably found it, for he drove out a third time for pleasure. But this third time he

saw another new sight: he saw men carrying something. 'What is that?' 'A dead man.' 'What does dead mean?'

asked the prince. He was told that to become dead means to become like that man. The prince approached the

corpse, uncovered it, and looked at it. 'What will happen to him now?' asked the prince. He was told that the

corpse would be buried in the ground. 'Why?' 'Because he will certainly not return to life, and will only

produce a stench and worms.' 'And is that the fate of all men? Will the same thing happen to me? Will they

bury me, and shall I cause a stench and be eaten by worms?' 'Yes.' 'Home! I shall not drive out for pleasure,

And Sakya Muni could find no consolation in life, and decided that life is the greatest of evils; and he

devoted all the strength of his soul to free himself from it, and to free others; and to do this so that, even after

death, life shall not be renewed any more but be completely destroyed at its very roots. So speaks all the

These are the direct replies that human wisdom gives when it replies to life's question.

"The life of the body is an evil and a lie. Therefore the destruction of the life of the body is a blessing, and we

"Life is that which should not be an evil; and the passage into Nothingness is the only good in life," says

"All that is in the world folly and wisdom and riches and poverty and mirth and grief is vanity and

emptiness. Man dies and nothing is left of him. And that is stupid," says Solomon.

"To life in the consciousness of the inevitability of suffering, of becoming enfeebled, of old age and of death,

is impossible we must free ourselves from life, from all possible life," says Buddha.

And what these strong minds said has been said and thought and felt by millions upon millions of people like

So my wandering among the sciences, far from freeing me from my despair, only strengthened it. One kind of

knowledge did not reply to life's question, the other kind replied directly confirming my despair, indicating

not that the result at which I had arrived was the fruit of error or of a diseased state of my mind, but on the

contrary that I had thought correctly, and that my thoughts coincided with the conclusions of the most

It is no good deceiving oneself. It is all vanity! Happy is he who has not been born: death is better than

Not finding an explanation in science I began to seek for it in life, hoping to find it among the people around

me. And I began to observe how the people around me people like myself lived, and what their

And this is what I found among people who were in the same position as myself as regards education and

I found that for people of my circle there were four ways out of the terrible position in which we are all

The first was that of ignorance. It consists in not knowing, not understanding, that life is an evil and an

absurdity. People of this sort chiefly women, or very young or very dull people have not yet

understood that question of life which presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, and Buddha. They see

neither the dragon that awaits them nor the mice gnawing the shrub by which they are hanging, and they lick

the drops of honey. but they lick those drops of honey only for a while: something will turn their attention to

the dragon and the mice, and there will be an end to their licking. From them I had nothing to learn one

The second way out is epicureanism. It consists, while knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use

meanwhile of the advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and licking the honey in the best

way, especially if there is much of it within reach. Solomon expresses this way out thus: "Then I commended

mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: and that

this should accompany him in his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.

"Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart.... Live joyfully with the wife whom

thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity...for this is thy portion in life and in thy labours which thou

takest under the sun.... Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is not work, nor

That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle make life possible for themselves. Their

circumstances furnish them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral dullness makes it possible

for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental, and that not everyone can have a thousand

wives and palaces like Solomon, that for everyone who has a thousand wives there are a thousand without a

wife, and that for each palace there are a thousand people who have to build it in the sweat of their brows;

and that the accident that has today made me a Solomon may tomorrow make me a Solomon's slave. The

dullness of these people's imagination enables them to forget the things that gave Buddha no peace the

inevitability of sickness, old age, and death, which today or tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures.

So think and feel the majority of people of our day and our manner of life. The fact that some of these people

declare the dullness of their thoughts and imaginations to be a philosophy, which they call Positive, does not

remove them, in my opinion, from the ranks of those who, to avoid seeing the question, lick the honey. I

could not imitate these people; not having their dullness of imagination I could not artificially produce it in

myself. I could not tear my eyes from the mice and the dragon, as no vital man can after he has once seen

The third escape is that of strength and energy. It consists in destroying life, when one has understood that it

is an evil and an absurdity. A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act so. Having understood the

stupidity of the joke that has been played on them, and having understood that it is better to be dead than to

be alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since

there are means: a rope round one's neck, water, a knife to stick into one's heart, or the trains on the railways;

and the number of those of our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for the most part

they act so at the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits

The fourth way out is that of weakness. It consists in seeing the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life,

knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. People of this kind know that death is better than life, but

not having the strength to act rationally to end the deception quickly and kill themselves they seem to

wait for something. This is the escape of weakness, for if I know what is best and it is within my power, why

So people of my class evade the terrible contradiction in four ways. Strain my attention as I would, I saw no

way except those four. One way was not to understand that life is senseless, vanity, and an evil, and that it is

better not to live. I could not help knowing this, and when I once knew it could not shut my eyes to it. the

second way was to use life such as it is without thinking of the future. And I could not do that. I, like Sakya

Muni, could not ride out hunting when I knew that old age, suffering, and death exist. My imagination was

too vivid. Nor could I rejoice in the momentary accidents that for an instant threw pleasure to my lot. The

third way, having under stood that life is evil and stupid, was to end it by killing oneself. I understood that,

but somehow still did not kill myself. The fourth way was to live like Solomon and Schopenhauer

knowing that life is a stupid joke played upon us, and still to go on living, washing oneself, dressing, dining,

talking, and even writing books. This was to me repulsive and tormenting, but I remained in that position.

I see now that if I did not kill myself it was due to some dim consciousness of the invalidity of my thoughts.

However convincing and indubitable appeared to me the sequence of my thoughts and of those of the wise

that have brought us to the admission of the senselessness of life, there remained in me a vague doubt of the

It was like this: I, my reason, have acknowledged that life is senseless. If there is nothing higher than reason

(and there is not: nothing can prove that there is), then reason is the creator of life for me. If reason did not

exist there would be for me no life. How can reason deny life when it is the creator of life? Or to put it the

other way: were there no life, my reason would not exist; therefore reason is life's son. Life is all. Reason is

its fruit yet reason rejects life itself! I felt that there was something wrong here.

Life is a senseless evil, that is certain, said I to myself. Yet I have lived and am still living, and all mankind

lived and lives. How is that? Why does it live, when it is possible not to live? Is it that only I and

The reasoning showing the vanity of life is not so difficult, and has long been familiar to the very simplest

folk; yet they have lived and still live. How is it they all live and never think of doubting the reasonableness

My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, has shown me that everything on earth organic and

inorganic is all most cleverly arranged only my own position is stupid. and those fools the

enormous masses of people know nothing about how everything organic and inorganic in the world is

arranged; but they live, and it seems to them that their life is very wisely arranged! ...

And it struck me: "But what if there is something I do not yet know? Ignorance behaves just in that way.

Ignorance always says just what I am saying. When it does not know something, it says that what it does not

know is stupid. Indeed, it appears that there is a whole humanity that lived and lives as if it understood the

meaning of its life, for without understanding it could not live; but I say that all this life is senseless and that I

"Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide. well then, kill yourself, and you won't discuss. If life

displeases you, kill yourself! You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life then finish it, and do not

fool about in life, saying and writing that you do not understand it. You have come into good company where

people are contented and know what they are doing; if you find it dull and repulsive go away!"

Indeed, what are we who are convinced of the necessity of suicide yet do not decide to commit it, but the

weakest, most inconsistent, and to put it plainly, the stupidest of men, fussing about with our own stupidity as

a fool fusses about with a painted hussy? For our wisdom, however indubitable it may be, has not given us

the knowledge of the meaning of our life. But all mankind who sustain life millions of them do not

Indeed, from the most distant time of which I know anything, when life began, people have lived knowing the

argument about the vanity of life which has shown me its senselessness, and yet they lived attributing some

From the time when any life began among men they had that meaning of life, and they led that life which has

descended to me. All that is in me and around me, all, corporeal and incorporeal, is the fruit of their

knowledge of life. Those very instruments of thought with which I consider this life and condemn it were all

devised not be me but by them. I myself was born, taught, and brought up thanks to them. They dug out the

iron, taught us to cut down the forests, tamed the cows and horses, taught us to sow corn and to live together,

organized our life, and taught me to think and speak. And I, their product, fed, supplied with drink, taught by

them, thinking with their thoughts and words, have argued that they are an absurdity! "There is something

wrong," said I to myself. "I have blundered somewhere." But it was a long time before I could find out where

All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less systematically, I could not then have

expressed. I then only felt that however logically inevitable were my conclusions concerning the vanity of

life, confirmed as they were by the greatest thinkers, there was something not right about them. Whether it

was in the reasoning itself or in the statement of the question I did not know I only felt that the conclusion

was rationally convincing, but that that was insufficient. All these conclusions could not so convince me as to

make me do what followed from my reasoning, that is to say, kill myself. And I should have told an untruth

had I, without killing myself, said that reason had brought me to the point I had reached. Reason worked, but

something else was also working which I can only call a consciousness of life. A force was working which

compelled me to turn my attention to this and not to that; and it was this force which extricated me from my

desperate situation and turned my mind in quite another direction. This force compelled me to turn my

attention to the fact that I and a few hundred similar people are not the whole of mankind, and that I did not

Looking at the narrow circle of my equals, I saw only people who had not understood the question, or who

had understood it and drowned it in life's intoxication, or had understood it and ended their lives, or had

understood it and yet from weakness were living out their desperate life. And I saw no others. It seemed to

me that that narrow circle of rich, learned, and leisured people to which I belonged formed the whole of

humanity, and that those milliards of others who have lived and are living were cattle of some sort not real

Strange, incredibly incomprehensible as it now seems to me that I could, while reasoning about life, overlook

the whole life of mankind that surrounded me on all sides; that I could to such a degree blunder so absurdly

as to think that my life, and Solomon's and Schopenhauer's, is the real, normal life, and that the life of the

milliards is a circumstance undeserving of attention strange as this now is to me, I see that so it was. In the

delusion of my pride of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable that I and Solomon and Schopenhauer had

stated the question so truly and exactly that nothing else was possible so indubitable did it seem that all

those milliards consisted of men who had not yet arrived at an apprehension of all the profundity of the

question that I sought for the meaning of my life without it once occurring to me to ask: "But what

meaning is and has been given to their lives by all the milliards of common folk who live and have lived in

I long lived in this state of lunacy, which, in fact if not in words, is particularly characteristic of us very

liberal and learned people. But thanks either to the strange physical affection I have for the real labouring

people, which compelled me to understand them and to see that they are not so stupid as we suppose, or

thanks to the sincerity of my conviction that I could know nothing beyond the fact that the best I could do

was to hang myself, at any rate I instinctively felt that if I wished to live and understand the meaning of life, I

must seek this meaning not among those who have lost it and wish to kill themselves, but among those

milliards of the past and the present who make life and who support the burden of their own lives and of ours

also. And I considered the enormous masses of those simple, unlearned, and poor people who have lived and

are living and I saw something quite different. I saw that, with rare exceptions, all those milliards who have

lived and are living do not fit into my divisions, and that I could not class them as not understanding the

question, for they themselves state it and reply to it with extraordinary clearness. Nor could I consider them

epicureans, for their life consists more of privations and sufferings than of enjoyments. Still less could I

consider them as irrationally dragging on a meaningless existence, for every act of their life, as well as death

itself, is explained by them. To kill themselves they consider the greatest evil. It appeared that all mankind

had a knowledge, unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of life. It appeared that reasonable

knowledge does not give the meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed to life by

Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses

of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational knowledge is

faith, that very thing which I could not but reject. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils

and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason.

My position was terrible. I knew I could find nothing along the path of reasonable knowledge except a denial

of life; and there in faith was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet more impossible for me

than a denial of life. From rational knowledge it appeared that life is an evil, people know this and it is in

their power to end life; yet they lived and still live, and I myself live, though I have long known that life is

senseless and an evil. By faith it appears that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my

A contradiction arose from which there were two exits. Either that which I called reason was not so rational

as I supposed, or that which seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I supposed. And I began to verify

Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found it quite correct. The conclusion that life is

nothing was inevitable; but I noticed a mistake. The mistake lay in this, that my reasoning was not in accord

with the question I had put. The question was: "Why should I live, that is to say, what real, permanent result

will come out of my illusory transitory life what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?"

The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it

at first appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite, and vice versa.

I asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?" And I replied to quite another

question: "What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?" With the result that, after long

In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do otherwise) the finite with the finite, and the infinite

with the infinite; but for that reason I reached the inevitable result: force is force, matter is matter, will is will,

the infinite is the infinite, nothing is nothing and that was all that could result.

It was something like what happens in mathematics, when thinking to solve an equation, we find we are

working on an identity. the line of reasoning is correct, but results in the answer that a equals a, or x equals x,

or � equals �. the same thing happened with my reasoning in relation to the question of the meaning of my

life. The replies given by all science to that question only result in identity.

And really, strictly scientific knowledge that knowledge which begins, as Descartes's did, with complete

doubt about everything rejects all knowledge admitted on faith and builds everything afresh on the laws of

reason and experience, and cannot give any other reply to the question of life than that which I obtained: an

indefinite reply. Only at first had it seemed to me that knowledge had given a positive reply the reply of

Schopenhauer: that life has no meaning and is an evil. But on examining the matter I understood that the

reply is not positive, it was only my feeling that so expressed it. Strictly expressed, as it is by the Brahmins

and by Solomon and Schopenhauer, the reply is merely indefinite, or an identity: � equals �, life is nothing.

So that philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but only replies that the question cannot be solved by it

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,

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

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

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 � equals �, and was

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.

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

Were it not so terrible it would be ludicrous with what pride and selfsatisfaction 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 lightheartedly

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,

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

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

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

I remember the painful feeling of fear of being thrown back into my former state of despair, after the hope I

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 [8] by people of our circle who were the most unbelieving, but never by our so called

And I understood that the belief of these people was not the faith I sought, and that their faith is not a real

I understood that that faith may perhaps serve, if not for a consolation at least for some distraction for a

repentant Solomon on his deathbed, 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 pseudobelievers 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

workingfolk 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 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 selfindulgence, 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

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

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

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

If a naked, hungry beggar has been taken from the crossroads, 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

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

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

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 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,

"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

"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

"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

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

What is this animation and dying? I do not live when I lose belief in the existence of God. I should long ago

have killed myself had I not had a dim hope of finding Him. I live, really live, only when I feel Him and seek

Him. "What more do you seek?" exclaimed a voice within me. "This is He. He is that without which one

"Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God." And more than ever before, all within me and

And I was saved >from suicide. When and how this change occurred I could not say. As imperceptibly and

gradually the force of life in me had been destroyed and I had reached the impossibility of living, a cessation

of life and the necessity of suicide, so imperceptibly and gradually did that force of life return to me. And

strange to say the strength of life which returned to me was not new, but quite old the same that had borne

I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief in that Will

which produced me and desires something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim of my

life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will. and I returned to the belief that I can find the

expression of that Will in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from, has produced for its guidance: that

is to say, I returned to a belief in God, in moral perfection, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life.

There was only this difference, that then all this was accepted unconsciously, while now I knew that without

What happened to me was something like this: I was put into a boat (I do not remember when) and pushed off

from an unknown shore, shown the direction of the opposite shore, had oars put into my unpractised hands,

and was left alone. I rowed as best I could and moved forward; but the further I advanced towards the middle

of the stream the more rapid grew the current bearing me away from my goal and the more frequently did I

encounter others, like myself, borne away by the stream. There were a few rowers who continued to row,

there were others who had abandoned their oars; there were large boats and immense vessels full of people.

Some struggled against the current, others yielded to it. And the further I went the more, seeing the progress

down the current of all those who were adrift, I forgot the direction given me. In the very centre of the

stream, amid the crowd of boats and vessels which were being borne down stream, I quite lost my direction

and abandoned my oars. Around me on all sides, with mirth and rejoicing, people with sails and oars were

borne down the stream, assuring me and each other that no other direction was possible. And I believed them

and floated with them. And I was carried far; so far that I heard the roar of the rapids in which I must be

shattered, and I saw boats shattered in them. And I recollected myself. I was long unable to understand what

had happened to me. I saw before me nothing but destruction, towards which I was rushing and which I

feared. I saw no safety anywhere and did not know what to do; but, looking back, I perceived innumerable

boats which unceasingly and strenuously pushed across the stream, and I remembered about the shore, the

oars, and the direction, and began to pull back upwards against the stream and towards the whore.

That shore was God; that direction was tradition; the oars were the freedom given me to pull for the shore and

unite with God. And so the force of life was renewed in me and I again began to live.

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 nonsectarian 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

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 halfwitted 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

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

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.

In was then so necessary for me to believe in order to live that I unconsciously concealed from myself the

contradictions and obscurities of theology. but this reading of meanings into the rites had its limits. If the

chief words in the prayer for the Emperor became more and more clear to me, if I found some explanation for

the words "and remembering our Sovereign MostHoly Mother of God and all the Saints, ourselves and one

another, we give our whole life to Christ our God", if I explained to myself the frequent repetition of prayers

for the Tsar and his relations by the fact that they are more exposed to temptations than other people and

therefore are more in need of being prayed for the prayers about subduing our enemies and evil under our

feet (even if one tried to say that sin was the enemy prayed against), these and other prayers, such as the

"cherubic song" and the whole sacrament of oblation, or "the chosen Warriors", etc. quite two thirds of

all the services either remained completely incomprehensible or, when I forced an explanation into them,

made me feel that I was lying, thereby quite destroying my relation to God and depriving me of all possibility

I felt the same about the celebration of the chief holidays. To remember the Sabbath, that is to devote one day

to God, was something I could understand. But the chief holiday was in commemoration of the Resurrection,

the reality of which I could not picture to myself or understand. And that name of "Resurrection" was also

given the weekly holiday. [9] And on those days the Sacrament of the Eucharist was administered, which was

quite unintelligible to me. The rest of the twelve great holidays, except Christmas, commemorated miracles

the things I tried not to think about in order not to deny: the Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, the Feast of

the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, etc. At the celebration of these holidays, feeling that importance was

being attributed to the very things that to me presented a negative importance, I either devised tranquillizing

Most of all this happened to me when taking part in the most usual Sacraments, which are considered the

most important: baptism and communion. There I encountered not incomprehensible but fully

comprehensible doings: doings which seemed to me to lead into temptation, and I was in a dilemma

Never shall I forge the painful feeling I experienced the day I received the Eucharist for the first time after

many years. The service, confession, and prayers were quite intelligible and produced in me a glad

consciousness that the meaning of life was being revealed to me. The Communion itself I explained as an act

performed in remembrance of Christ, and indicating a purification >from sin and the full acceptance of

Christ's teaching. If that explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so happy was I at humbling

and abasing myself before the priest a simple, timid country clergyman turning all the dirt out of my

soul and confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought with the humility of the fathers who wrote

the prayers of the office, so glad was I of union with all who have believed and now believe, that I did not

notice the artificiality of my explanation. But when I approached the altar gates, and the priest made me say

that I believed that what I was about to swallow was truly flesh and blood, I felt a pain in my heart: it was not

merely a false note, it was a cruel demand made by someone or other who evidently had never known what

I now permit myself to say that it was a cruel demand, but I did not then think so: only it was indescribably

painful to me. I was no longer in the position in which I had been in youth when I thought all in life was

clear; I had indeed come to faith because, apart from faith, I had found nothing, certainly nothing, except

destruction; therefore to throw away that faith was impossible and I submitted. And I found in my soul a

feeling which helped me to endure it. This was the feeling of selfabasement and humility. I humbled myself,

swallowed that flesh and blood without any blasphemous feelings and with a wish to believe. But the blow

I continued to fulfil the rites of the Church and still believed that the doctrine I was following contained the

truth, when something happened to me which I now understand but which then seemed strange.

I was listening to the conversation of an illiterate peasant, a pilgrim, about God, faith, life, and salvation,

when a knowledge of faith revealed itself to me. I drew near to the people, listening to their opinions of life

and faith, and I understood the truth more and more. So also was it when I read the Lives of Holy men, which

became my favourite books. Putting aside the miracles and regarding them as fables illustrating thoughts, this

reading revealed to me life's meaning. There were the lives of Makarius the Great, the story of Buddha, there

were the words of St. John Chrysostom, and there were the stories of the traveller in the well, the monk who

found some gold, and of Peter the publican. There were stories of the martyrs, all announcing that death does

not exclude life, and there were the stories of ignorant, stupid men, who knew nothing of the teaching of the

But as soon as I met learned believers or took up their books, doubt of myself, dissatisfaction, and

exasperated disputation were roused within me, and I felt that the more I entered into the meaning of these

How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of learning! Those statements in the creeds which to

me were evident absurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept them and could believe in

the truth the truth I believed in. Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was

So I lived for about three years. At first, when I was only slightly associated with truth as a catechumen and

was only scenting out what seemed to me clearest, these encounters struck me less. When I did not

understand anything, I said, "It is my fault, I am sinful"; but the more I became imbued with the truths I was

learning, the more they became the basis of my life, the more oppressive and the more painful became these

encounters and the sharper became the line between what I do not understand because I am not able to

In spite of my doubts and sufferings I still clung to the Orthodox Church. But questions of life arose which

had to be decided; and the decision of these questions by the Church contrary to the very bases of the

belief by which I lived obliged me at last to renounce communion with Orthodoxy as impossible. These

questions were: first the relation of the Orthodox Eastern Church to other Churches to the Catholics and to

the socalled sectarians. At that time, in consequence of my interest in religion, I came into touch with

believers of various faiths: Catholics, protestants, OldBelievers, Molokans [10], and others. And I met

among them many men of lofty morals who were truly religious. I wished to be a brother to them. And what

happened? That teaching which promised to unite all in one faith and love that very teaching, in the

person of its best representatives, told me that these men were all living a lie; that what gave them their power

of life was a temptation of the devil; and that we alone possess the only possible truth. And I saw that all who

do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the Orthodox to be heretics, just as the

Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to

hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same external symbols and words as

themselves; and this is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is

the most cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and

brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a false belief. And

that hostility is increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology. And to me who considered

that truth lay in union by love, it became selfevident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to

This offence is so obvious to us educated people who have lived in countries where various religions are

professed and have seen the contempt, selfassurance, and invincible contradiction with which Catholics

behave to the Orthodox Greeks and to the Protestants, and the Orthodox to Catholics and Protestants, and the

Protestants to the two others, and the similar attitude of Old Believers, Pashkovites (Russian Evangelicals),

Shakers, and all religions that the very obviousness of the temptation at first perplexes us. One says to

oneself: it is impossible that it is so simple and that people do not see that if two assertions are mutually

contradictory, then neither of them has the sole truth which faith should possess. There is something else

here, there must be some explanation. I thought there was, and sought that explanation and read all I could on

the subject, and consulted all whom I could. And no one gave me any explanation, except the one which

causes the Sumsky Hussars to consider the Sumsky Hussars the best regiment in the world, and the Yellow

Uhlans to consider that the best regiment in the world is the Yellow Uhlans. The ecclesiastics of all the

different creeds, through their best representatives, told me nothing but that they believed themselves to have

the truth and the others to be in error, and that all they could do was to pray for them. I went to

archimandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the strictest orders, and asked them; but none of them made any

attempt to explain the matter to me except one man, who explained it all and explained it so that I never

asked any one any more about it. I said that for every unbeliever turning to a belief (and all our young

generation are in a position to do so) the question that presents itself first is, why is truth not in Lutheranism

nor in Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy? Educated in the high school he cannot help knowing what the peasants

do not know that the Protestants and Catholics equally affirm that their faith is the only true one.

Historical evidence, twisted by each religion in its own favour, is insufficient. Is it not possible, said I, to

understand the teaching in a loftier way, so that from its height the differences should disappear, as they do

for one who believes truly? Can we not go further along a path like the one we are following with the

OldBelievers? They emphasize the fact that they have a differently shaped cross and different alleluias and a

different procession round the altar. We reply: You believe in the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and

so do we. Let us hold to that, and in other matters do as you pease. We have united with them by placing the

essentials of faith above the unessentials. Now with the Catholics can we not say: You believe in so and so

and in so and so, which are the chief things, and as for the Filioque clause and the Pope do as you please.

Can we not say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them in what is most important?

My interlocutor agreed with my thoughts, but told me that such conceptions would bring reproach o the

spiritual authorities for deserting the faith of our forefathers, and this would produce a schism; and the

vocation of the spiritual authorities is to safeguard in all its purity the GrecoRussian Orthodox faith

And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith, the power of life; and they are seeking the best way to fulfil in

the eyes of men certain human obligations. and fulfilling these human affairs they fulfil them in a human

way. However much they may talk of their pity for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers for them

to the throne of the Almighty to carry out human purposes violence is necessary, and it has always been

applied and is and will be applied. If of two religions each considers itself true and the other false, then men

desiring to attract others to the truth will preach their own doctrine. And if a false teaching is preached to the

inexperienced sons of their Church which as the truth then that Church cannot but burn the books and

remove the man who is misleading its sons. What is to be done with a sectarian burning, in the opinion of

the Orthodox, with the fire of false doctrine who in the most important affair of life, in faith, misleads the

sons of the Church? What can be done with him except to cut off his head or to incarcerate him? Under the

Tsar Alexis Mikhaylovich people were burned at the stake, that is to say, the severest method of punishment

of the time was applied, and in our day also the severest method of punishment is applied detention in

The second relation of the Church to a question of life was with regard to war and executions.

At that time Russia was at war. And Russians, in the name of Christian love, began to kill their fellow men. It

was impossible not to think about this, and not to see that killing is an evil repugnant to the first principles of

any faith. Yet prayers were said in the churches for the success of our arms, and the teachers of the Faith

acknowledged killing to be an act resulting from the Faith. And besides the murders during the war, I saw,

during the disturbances which followed the war, Church dignitaries and teachers and monks of the lesser and

stricter orders who approved the killing of helpless, erring youths. And I took note of all that is done by men

And I ceased to doubt, and became fully convinced that not all was true in the religion I had joined. Formerly

I should have said that it was all false, but I could not say so now. The whole of the people possessed a

knowledge of the truth, for otherwise they could not have lived. Moreover, that knowledge was accessible to

me, for I had felt it and had lived by it. But I no longer doubted that there was also falsehood in it. And all

that had previously repelled me now presented itself vividly before me. And though I saw that among the

peasants there was a smaller admixture of the lies that repelled me than among the representatives of the

Church, I still saw that in the people's belief also falsehood was mingled with the truth.

But where did the truth and where did the falsehood come from? Both the falsehood and the truth were

contained in the socalled holy tradition and in the Scriptures. Both the falsehood and the truth had been

And whether I liked or not, I was brought to the study and investigation of these writings and traditions

And I turned to the examination of that same theology which I had once rejected with such contempt as

unnecessary. Formerly it seemed to me a series of unnecessary absurdities, when on all sides I was

surrounded by manifestations of life which seemed to me clear and full of sense; now I should have been glad

to throw away what would not enter a health head, but I had nowhere to turn to. On this teaching religious

doctrine rests, or at least with it the only knowledge of the meaning of life that I have found is inseparably

connected. However wild it may seem too my firm old mind, it was the only hope of salvation. It had to be

carefully, attentively examined in order to understand it, and not even to understand it as I understand the

propositions of science: I do not seek that, nor can I seek it, knowing the special character of religious

knowledge. I shall not seek the explanation of everything. I know that the explanation of everything, like the

commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish to understand in a way which will

bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable as being so not

because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing),

but because I recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is

inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am

That there is truth in the teaching is to me indubitable, but it is also certain that there is falsehood in it, and I

must find what is true and what is false, and must disentangle the one from the other. I am setting to work

upon this task. What of falsehood I have found in the teaching and what I have found of truth, and to what

conclusions I came, will form the following parts of this work, which if it be worth it and if anyone wants it,

Now a few days ago, when revising it and returning to the line of thought and to the feelings I had when I

was living through it all, I had a dream. This dream expressed in condensed form all that I had experienced

and described, and I think therefore that, for those who have understood me, a description of this dream will

refresh and elucidate and unify what has been set forth at such length in the foregoing pages. The dream was

I saw that I was lying on a bed. I was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable: I was lying on my back. But I

began to consider how, and on what, I was lying a question which had not till then occurred to me. And

observing my bed, I saw I was lying on plaited string supports attached to its sides: my feet were resting on

one such support, by calves on another, and my legs felt uncomfortable. I seemed to know that those supports

were movable, and with a movement of my foot I pushed away the furthest of them at my feet it seemed

to me that it would be more comfortable so. But I pushed it away too far and wished to reach it again with my

foot, and that movement caused the next support under my calves to slip away also, so that my legs hung in

the air. I made a movement with my whole body to adjust myself, fully convinced that I could do so at once;

but the movement caused the other supports under me to slip and to become entangled, and I saw that matters

were going quite wrong: the whole of the lower part of my body slipped and hung down, though my feet did

not reach the ground. I was holding on only by the upper part of my back, and not only did it become

uncomfortable but I was even frightened. And then only did I ask myself about something that had not before

occurred to me. I asked myself: Where am I and what am I lying on? and I began to look around and first of

all to look down in the direction which my body was hanging and whiter I felt I must soon fall. I looked

down and did not believe my eyes. I was not only at a height comparable to the height of the highest towers

I could not even make out whether I saw anything there below, in that bottomless abyss over which I was

hanging and whiter I was being drawn. My heart contracted, and I experienced horror. To look thither was

terrible. If I looked thither I felt that I should at once slip from the last support and perish. And I did not look.

But not to look was still worse, for I thought of what would happen to me directly I fell from the last support.

And I felt that from fear I was losing my last supports, and that my back was slowly slipping lower and

lower. Another moment and I should drop off. And then it occurred to me that this cannot e real. It is a

dream. Wake up! I try to arouse myself but cannot do so. What am I to do? What am I to do? I ask myself,

and look upwards. Above, there is also an infinite space. I look into the immensity of sky and try to forget

about the immensity below, and I really do forget it. The immensity below repels and frightens me; the

immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the abyss by the last supports that

have not yet slipped from under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes.

As happens in dreams, a voice says: "Notice this, this is it!" And I look more and more into the infinite above

me and feel that I am becoming calm. I remember all that has happened, and remember how it all happened;

how I moved my legs, how I hung down, how frightened I was, and how I was saved from fear by looking

upwards. And I ask myself: Well, and now am I not hanging just the same? And I do not so much look round

as experience with my whole body the point of support on which I am held. I see that I no longer hang as if

about to fall, but am firmly held. I ask myself how I am held: I feel about, look round, and see that under me,

under the middle of my body, there is one support, and that when I look upwards I lie on it in the position of

securest balance, and that it alone gave me support before. And then, as happens in dreams, I imagined the

mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake

that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner. It

appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there

was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the

middle of one's body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to

me, and I was glad and tranquil. And it seemed as if someone said to me: "See that you remember."

Footnote 1. Nothing so forms a young man as an intimacy with a woman of good breeding.

Footnote 3. Russians generally make a distinction between Europeans and Russians. A.M.

Footnote 7. Tolstoy's version differs slightly in a few places from our own Authorized or Revised version. I

have followed his text, for in a letter to Fet, quoted on p. 18, vol. ii, of my "Life of Tolstoy," he says that

Footnote 8. This passage is noteworthy as being one of the few references made by Tolstoy at this period to

the revolutionary or "BacktothePeople" 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

Footnote 11. At the time this was written capital punishment was considered to be abolished in Russia.