A Confession by Leo Tolstoy - Chapter 15

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fifteen of a confession by Leo Tolstoy, translated by
Almer Maud. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
How often I envied the peasants for 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 them only to me unhappy man. Was it

(00:22):
clear that with truth falsehood was interwoven by the finest threads,
and that I could not accept them in that form.
So I lived for about three years at first, when
I was only slightly associated with truth as a catashuman,
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

(00:43):
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 that which I do
not understand because I am not able to understand it,
and what cannot be understood except by lying to one's self.
In spite of my doubt and sufferings, I still clung
to the Orthodox Church. But questions of life arose which

(01:04):
had to be decided, And the decision of these questions
by the Church, contrary to the very basis 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 so called sectarians. At
that time, in consequence in my interest in religion, I

(01:26):
came into touch with believers of various faiths, Catholics, Protestants,
old Believers, Molochans, and others. And I met among them
many men of lofty morals who are truly religious. I
wished to be a brother to them. And what happened
that feeling which promised to unite all in one faith
in love, that very teaching, in the person of its
best representatives, told me that these men were all living

(01:47):
a lie, and that what gave them their power of
life was a temptation of the devil, and that we
alone possessed 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 considered the Orthodox to be heretics.
And I saw that the Orthodox, though they tried to
hide this regard with hostility all those who do not

(02:08):
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 his brothers to a false belief.
And that hostilities increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge

(02:30):
of theology. And to me, who considered that truthly in
union by love, it became self evident that theology was
itself destroying what it ought to practice. This offense is
so obvious to us educated people who have lived in
countries where various religions are professed, and have seen the contempt,
self assurance and invincible contradiction with which Catholics behave to
the Orthodox Greeks and to the Protestants, and the Orthodox

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to the Catholics and the Protestants, and the Protestants to
the two others, and the similar attitude of old believers, Pashchovites,
rushing EVAs, Angelicals, 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

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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 could
give me any explanation except the one which causes the
Sumski Hussars to consider the Sumski Hussars the best regiment
in the world, and the Yeo Uchans to consider the

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best regimen of the world. As the Yeo Luchans. 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 arkamandrites, bishops, elders, monks of the strictest
orders and ask them, But none made any attempt to
explain the matter to me, except one man, who explained

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it all, and explained it so that I never had
to ask anyone any more about it. I said that
for every unbeliever turning to 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

(04:19):
their faith is the only true one. Historical evidence twisted
by each religion in its own favor, 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 the path like the
one we are following with the old believers. They emphasize

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the fact that they have a differently shaped cross in
different aleluliahs, and a different procession around the altar. We reply,
you believe in the Nicene Creed and the seven Sacraments,
and so do we let us hold to that, and
in all other matters, you do as you please. 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, so and so, and so

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and so, which are the chief things as for the
filioqui 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 to 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 and all

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spurity the Greco Russian Orthodox faith inherited from our forefathers.
And I understood it all. I am seeking a faith
the power of life, and they are seeking the best
way to fulfill in the eyes of men, certain human obligations,
and fulfilling these human affairs, they fulfill them in a
human way, however much they may talk of their pity
for their erring brethren, and of addressing prayers for them

(05:43):
to the throne of the almighty. To carry out human purposes,
violence is necessary, and it always has 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 teacher is preached to the inexperienced
sons of their church which has the truth, that that

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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 incarcerate him. Under the Tsar
Alexis Mikailovitch, people were burned at the stake. That is

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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 solitary confinement. The second
relation of the Church to a question of life was
with regard to war and executions. At the time Russia
was at war and Russians, in the name of Christian love,
began to kill their fellow men. It was impossible not

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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 church for the successes
of our arms, and the teachings of the faith acknowledged
killing to be an act resulting from faith. And besides
the murders during war, I saw it during the disturbances
which followed the war, Christian dignitaries and teachers and monks
of the wesser and stricter orders who approved the killing

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of helpless, erring youths. And I took note of all
that is done by men who professed Christianity, and I
was horrified. End of Chapter fifteen