A Confession by Leo Tolstoy - Chapter 7

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of a confession by Leo Tolstoy, translated by
Almer Maud. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Not finding an explanation in science, I began to seek
forward 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 attitude
was to this question which had brought me to despair.

(00:22):
And this is what I found among people who are
in the same position as myself, as regards education and
manner of life. I found that for people in my circle,
there are four ways out of the terrible position in
which we are all placed. The first was that of ignorance.
It consists in not knowing, of not understanding that life
is evil and an absurdity. People of this sort, chiefly women,
or very young or very dull people, have not yet

(00:44):
understood the question of life which presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon,
and Buddha. They see neither the dragon that awaits them,
nor the mice gnawing at the shrub by which they
are hanging. And they licked the drops of honey. But
they licked these 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 cannot cease to know

(01:05):
what one does know. The second way out is epicureanism.
It consists, while knowing of the hopelessness of life, in
making use meanwhile of the advantages one has disregarding the
dragon and the mice, and looking the honey in the
best way, especially if there is much of it within reach.
Solomon expresses this way. Thus, then I commanded mirth, because
man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat,

(01:27):
to drink, and to be merry, and that this should
accompany him in his labor the days of his life,
which God gaveth him under the sun. Therefore, eat thy
bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart,
with 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 labors, which thou
takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand fitteth to do

(01:50):
do with thy might, For there is not work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.
That is the way in which the majority of people
of our circle make life possible for themselves. Their circumstances
furnish them with more 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

(02:10):
everyone can have a thousand wives and palaces like Solomon,
and that for everyone who has a thousand wives, there
are a thousand without a wife, and that for every
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 solomon slave. The dulness of these people's imagination
enables them to forget the things that gave Boodh no peace,

(02:31):
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

(02:54):
imitate these people, not having their dullness of imagination. I
could not artificially produce it in myself. I could not
tear my eyes away from the mice in the dragon,
as no vital man can after he has once seen them.
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

(03:15):
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 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 and
a knife to stick in one's heart, or the trains
on a railway. And the number of those in our

(03:36):
circle who act this way becomes greater and greater. And
for the most part they act though at the best
time of their life, when the strength of their mind
is in full bloom, and few habits degrading to the
mind have as yet been acquired. I saw that this
was the worthiest way of escape, and I wished to
adopt it. The fourth way out is that of weakness.
It consists in seeing the truth of the situation and

(03:57):
yet clinging to life, knowing in advance that no think
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 seemed to wait for something. This is the escape
of weakness. For if I know what is best, and
it is within my power, why not yield to what
is best? I found myself in that category. So people

(04:19):
of my class evade the terrible contradiction in four ways,
strain my attention as I would. I saw no way
except these four. One was not to understand that life
is senseless, vanity, and and evil, and that it is
better not to live. I could not help knowing this,
and when I once knew that, I could not shut
my eyes to it. The second way was to use
life such as without thinking to the future, and I

(04:40):
could not do that. I, like Sakiamuni, 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 throw
pleasure to my lot. The third way, having understood that
life is evil and stupid, was to end it by
killing oneself. I underst stood that, but somehow still did

(05:01):
not kill myself. The fourth way was to live, like
Solomon and Schopenhauer, knowing that life was a stupid joke
played upon us, and yet still 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,

(05:24):
convincing an indubitable appeared to me the sequence of my
thoughts and of those of the wise, that had brought
us to the admission of the senselessness of life. There
remained in me a vague doubt of the justice of
my conclusion. 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.

(05:46):
If reason did not exist, there would be for me
no life. How could reason deny life when it is
the creator of life? Or, to put it in another way,
were there no life, my reason would not exist. And
therefore reason is life's son. Life is all reason is fruit,
and yet reason rejects life itself. I felt that there
was something wrong here. Life is a senseless evil, that

(06:06):
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, in
Schopenhauer are wise enough to understand the senselessness and evil
of life? The reasoning showing the vanity of life is
not difficult, and it has long been familiar to the

(06:27):
very simplest of folk. And yet they have lived and
still lived. How is it that they all live and
never think of doubting the reasonableness of life? My knowledge,
confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, has shown me
that everything on earth, organic and inorganic, is all the
most cleverly arranged. Only my own position is stupid, And
these fools, the enormous masks of people know nothing about

(06:49):
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 this 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,

(07:09):
it appears that there is a whole humanity that lived
and lives as if understanding the meaning of life. For
without understanding it could not live. But I say that
all life is senseless and that I cannot live. 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

(07:30):
finish it. 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 that dull and repulsive,
go away. Indeed, what are we who are convinced of
the necessity of suicide and yet do not commit it?
But the weakest, most inconsistent, and to put it plainly,
the stupidest of men, fussing about with our own stupidity

(07:53):
as a fool fusses about with a painted hussy. For
our wisdom, however indubitable it may be, has not given
us the noun of the meaning of our life. But
all mankind who sustain life, millions of them, do not
doubt the meaning of life. Indeed, from the most distant
time from which I knew anything, when life began, people
have lived knowing the argument about the vanity of life,

(08:14):
which has shown me its senselessness, and yet they have
lived attributing some meaning to it. From the time when
any life began among men, they had that meaning of life,
and they led that life which 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

(08:35):
condemn it, were all devised not by 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 forest, tame the cows and the horses, taught us
to so corn and to live together. Organized our life.
Taught me to think and speak, and I their product,
fed supplied with drink, taught by them, thinking with their

(08:56):
thoughts and words. Have argued that they are in absurdity.
Is something wrong? Said I to myself. I have wandered somewhere,
but it was a long time before I could find
out what that mistake was. End of chapter seven.