A Confession by Leo Tolstoy - Chapter 12

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of a confession by Leo Tolstoy, translated by
Almer Maud. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge it helped
me to free myself from the temptation of ido readiocination.
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

(00:20):
was able to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to
see the real life of the plain working people, and
to understand that that alone is real life. I understood
that if I wished 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 life by the real humanity, and merging myself in
that life verify it. During that time, this is what

(00:42):
happened to me, during that whole year, when I was
asking myself almost every moment whether or not I should
end matters with a noose or a bullet. All that time,
together with my course of thought and the observation about
which I have spoken, my heart was oppressed with a
painful feeling, which I can only describe as a search
for God. I say that that search for God was
not reached, but a feeling, because that search proceeded not

(01:02):
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, and 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, Conte had shown, and I quite understood him
that it could not be proven. I yet sought for God,
hoping that I could find him, and from old habit

(01:22):
addressed prayers to that which I had sought but had
not found. I went over in my mind the arguments
of Kanton Schopenhauer showing the impossibility of proving the existence
of a God, and I began to verify those arguments
and refute them. Cause, said I to myself, is not
a category of thoughts, such as are time and space.
If I exist, there must be some cause of it,
and a cause for causes, And that first cause of

(01:44):
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?
To think of it? What are my relations to that
which I call God? And only the familiar replies occurred

(02:05):
to me, He is the creator and the preserver. This
reply did not satisfy me, and I felt that 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 I could address myself. And with despair
in my heart that there is no God at all,

(02:26):
I said, Lord, have mercy, save me, Lord teach me.
But no one had mercy on me, and I felt
that my life was coming to a standstill. But again
and again, from varying 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,

(02:47):
lying on my back crying in the high grass. Even
then I cried because I know a mother has borne
me within her, has hatched me, warned me, fed me,
and loved me. Where is she that mother? If I
had been deserted, who has deserted me? I can hide
from myself that someone bored me loving me? Who was
that someone? Again, God, he knows and sees my searching
my despair in my struggle. He exists, said I to myself.

(03:11):
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 out
to search my relation with him. And again I imagined
that God, our creator in three persons, who sent his son,
the Savior. And again that God detached from the world
and from me, melted like a block of ice, melted

(03:31):
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 kill myself.
And worst of all was that 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

(03:52):
alone in the woods, listening to its sounds. I listened
and thought, ever of the same thing as I had
continually done during those last three years. I was again
seeking God very well. There is no God, said I
to myself. There is no one who is not my
imagination but a reality like my whole life. He does
not exist, and no miracles can prove his existence, because
the miracles would be my imagination, besides being irrational, But

(04:14):
my perception of God, of him whom I seek, I
asked myself, where is that perception come from? And again
at this thought, the glad waves of life rose within me.
All that was around me came to life and received
a meaning. But my joy did not last long. My
mind continued its work. The conception of God is not God,
said I to myself. The conception is what takes place
within me. The conception of God is something I can evoke,

(04:37):
or can refrain from evoking. In myself. That is not
what I seek. I seek that without which there can
be no life. And again, all around me and within
me began to die. And again I wished to kill myself.
But then I turned my gaze upon myself on what
went on within me. I remembered all those cessations of
life and reanimations that had reoccurred within me hundreds of times.
I remember that I only lived at those times when

(04:59):
I believed in God. As it was before, so it
was now. I need only be aware of God. To live,
I needed only to forget Him or disbelieve Him, and
I died. What is this animation in dying? I do
not live when I lose belief in the existence of God.
I should long ago have killed myself had I not
a dim hope of finding him. I live, really live
only when I feel Him and seek Him. What more

(05:20):
do you seek? Exclaimed a voice within me. This is He.
He is that without which one cannot live. To know
God and to live is one and the same thing.
God is life. Live seeking God, and then you will
not live without God. And more than ever before, all
within me and around me lit up, and the light
did not again abandon me, and I was saved from suicide.

(05:40):
When and how this change occurred in me, 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 the force of
life return to me. And strange to say that the
strength of life which returned me was not new, but
quite old, the same that had borne me along in

(06:01):
my earliest days. I quite returned to what belonged to
my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief
in that will which produced me and desire 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 expression of that
will in what humanity, in the distant past, hidden from

(06:22):
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 it I could not live.
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

(06:43):
the opposite shore, had ores put in my unpracticed hands,
and was left alone. I rowed as best as 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 few rowers who continued to row.
There were others who had abandoned their oars. There were

(07:04):
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 to me in the very center of the stream.
Amid the crowds 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,

(07:26):
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. 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

(07:48):
was rushing, in 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 against
the stream. And I remembered about the shore, the oars
in the direction, and began to pull back upwards against
the stream and towards the shore. That shore was God,
and the direction was tradition. The oars were the freedom
given to me to pull for the shore and unite

(08:10):
with God. And so the force of life was renewed
in me, and I again began to live. End of
Chapter twelve.