A Confession by Leo Tolstoy - Chapter 13

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter thirteen of a confession by Leo Tolstoy, translated by
Almer Maud. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
I turn from the life of our circle, acknowledging that
ours is not life but a simulation of life, that
the conditions of superfluidity 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

(00:20):
such as ours, who are parasites of life, but the
life of simple laboring folk, those who make it life,
and the meaning which they attribute to it. The simplest
laboring people around me were the Russian people, and I
turned to them into the meaning of life which they gave.
That meaning, if one can put it into words, was
as follows. Every man has come to the world by
the will of God, and God has so made men

(00:41):
that 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 pleasures of life,
must labor, humble himself, suffer, and be merciful. That meaning
people obtained 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

(01:01):
near to my heart. But together with this meaning of
the popular faith of our non sectarian folk among whom
I lived, much was inseparably bound up that revolted me
and seemed to me inexplicable. Sacraments, church services, fast in
the adoration of relics and icons. The people cannot separate
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,

(01:23):
knelt morning and evening in prayer, fasted and prepared to
receive the eucharists. 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,

(01:43):
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 articles of faith were far from presenting
themselves to me as nds necessary. On the contrary, I
had been led by indubitable experience to the conviction that

(02:04):
only these propositions presented by faith give life a meaning.
Formerly I looked on them as some quite unnecessary gibberish.
But now if I did not understand them, I yet
knew that they had a meaning, and I said to
myself that I must learn to understand them. I argued
as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of faith flows,
like all humanity, with its reason, from a mysterious source
that sources God, the origin both of the human body

(02:25):
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 development
of that understanding of life cannot be false. All that
people sincerely believe and 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

(02:47):
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, or an
old slave tormented by overwork, or of an unreasonable child,
of a wise old man, or a half witted old woman,
of a young and happy wife, of a youth tormented
by passions, of all people in the most varied conditions

(03:08):
of life and education. If there is one reply to
the one eternal question of life, why do I live? In?
What will result of 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 comfortably to the education
and position of each person. But this argument, justifying in

(03:29):
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 in
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 all which was sacred to me,
were I to do so. At this point, however, our

(03:50):
new Russian theological writers came to my rescue. According to
the explanation, these theologians gave the fundamental dogma of our
faith is the infallibility of the Church. From the admission
of that dogma follows inevitably the truth of all that
is professed by the Church. The Church, as an assembly
of true believers, united by love and therefore possessed of
true knowledge, became the basis of my faith. I told

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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 be separate,
and in order to not separate one's self, 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 rights of the Church, you transgress against love.
And by transgressing against love, you deprive yourself of the

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possibility of recognizing the truth. I did not then see
the selfistry contained in this argument. I did not see
that union and love may give the greatest love, but
certainly cannot give us divine truth expressed in the definite
words of the Nicene Creed. I also do not perceive
that love cannot make a certain expression of truth in
obligatory condition of union. I did not then see these
mistakes in the argument, and thanks to it, was able

(04:53):
to accept and perform all the rights of the Orthodox
Church without understanding most of them. I then tried with
all the strength of my soul to avoid all arguments
and contradictions, and tried to explain as reasonably as possible
the church statements I encountered. While fulfilling the rights of
the Church, I humbled my reason and submitted to the
traditions possessed by all humanity. I united myself with my forefathers,
the father, mother, and grandparents that I loved. They and

(05:16):
all my predecessors believed and lived, and they produced me.
I united myself also with the mission of the common people,
whom I respected. Moreover, 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

(05:36):
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 not for the sake of something good. I fasted,
prepared for communion, and observed the fixed hours of prayers
at home and in church. During church service, I attended

(05:59):
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 furthest words,
and unity. We believe in the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost. I passed by because I could not
understand them. End of Chapter thirteen.