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03 - A Confession - Leo Tolstory · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter three of a confession by Leo Tolstoy. So I
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  Speaker 1: lived abandoning myself to this insanity for another six years
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  Speaker 1: till my marriage. During that time I went abroad life
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  Speaker 1: in Europe, and my acquaintance with leading and warned Europeans
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  Speaker 1: confirmed me yet more in the faith of striving after
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  Speaker 1: perfection in which I believed. For I found the same
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  Speaker 1: faith among them. That faith took with me the common
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  Speaker 1: form it assumes with the majority of educated people of
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  Speaker 1: our day. It was expressed by the word progress. It
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  Speaker 1: then appeared to me that this word meant something I
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  Speaker 1: did not as yet understand, that, being tormented, like every
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  Speaker 1: vital man, by the question of how it is best
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  Speaker 1: for me to live? In my answer living conformity with progress,
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  Speaker 1: I was like a man in a boat, who, when
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  Speaker 1: carried along by wind and waves, should reply to what
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  Speaker 1: for him is the chief and only question whither to
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  Speaker 1: steer by saying we are being carried somewhere. I did
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  Speaker 1: not then notice this only occasionally, not by reason, but
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  Speaker 1: by instinct. I revolted again this superstition so common in
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  Speaker 1: our day, by which people hide from themselves their lack
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  Speaker 1: of understanding of life. So, for instance, during my stay
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  Speaker 1: in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me
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  Speaker 1: the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I
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  Speaker 1: saw the head part from the body, and how they
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  Speaker 1: thumped separately into the box, I understood not with my mind,
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  Speaker 1: but with my whole being, that no theory of the
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  Speaker 1: reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed, and
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  Speaker 1: that though everybody from the creation of the world had
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  Speaker 1: held it to be necessary on whatever theory, I knew
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  Speaker 1: it to be unnecessary in bad And therefore the arbiter
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  Speaker 1: of what is good and evil is not the people
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  Speaker 1: who say and do, nor is it progress, but is
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  Speaker 1: my heart and I. Another instance of a realization that
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  Speaker 1: the superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide
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  Speaker 1: of life was my brother's death, Wise good, serious. He
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  Speaker 1: fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more
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  Speaker 1: than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he
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  Speaker 1: had lived that, still less why he had to die.
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  Speaker 1: No theories could give me or him any reply to
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  Speaker 1: these questions during his slow and painful dying. But these
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  Speaker 1: were only rare instances of doubt, and I actually continued
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  Speaker 1: to live, professing of faith only in progress. Everything evolves,
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  Speaker 1: and I evolved with it. And why it is that
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  Speaker 1: I evolved with all things will be known some day,
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  Speaker 1: so I ought to have formulated my faith at the time.
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  Speaker 1: On returning from abroad, I settled in the country and
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  Speaker 1: chanced to occupy myself with peasant schools. This work was
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  Speaker 1: particularly to my taste, because in it I had not
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  Speaker 1: to face the falsity which had been obvious to me
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  Speaker 1: and had stared me in the face when I tried
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  Speaker 1: to teach to people by literary means. Here also I
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  Speaker 1: acted in the name of progress. But I already regarded
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  Speaker 1: progress itself critically. I said to myself, in some of
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  Speaker 1: its developments, progress has proceeded wrongly, and with primitive peasant children,
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  Speaker 1: one must deal in a spirit of perfect freedom, letting
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  Speaker 1: them choose what path of progress they please. In reality,
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  Speaker 1: I was ever revolving round one and the same and
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  Speaker 1: solvable problem, which was how to teach without knowing what
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  Speaker 1: to teach? In the higher spheres of literary activity, I
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  Speaker 1: realized that one could not teach without knowing what, For
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  Speaker 1: I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarreling
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  Speaker 1: among themselves, only succeeded in hiding their ignorance from one another.
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  Speaker 1: But here with peasant children, I thought to evade this
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  Speaker 1: difficulty by letting them learn what they liked. It amuses
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  Speaker 1: me now when I remember how I shuffled in trying
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  Speaker 1: to satisfy my desire to teach. While in the depth
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  Speaker 1: of my soul, I knew very well that I could
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  Speaker 1: not teach anything needful, for I did not know what
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  Speaker 1: was needful. After spending a year at school work, I
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  Speaker 1: went abroad a second time to discover how to teach
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  Speaker 1: others while myself knowing nothing. And it seemed to me
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  Speaker 1: that I had learned this abroad, And in the year
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  Speaker 1: of the peasants's emancipation eighteen sixty one, I returned to Russia,
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  Speaker 1: armed with all this wisdom, and having become an arbiter,
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  Speaker 1: I began to teach both the uneducated peasants in schools
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  Speaker 1: and the educated classes through a magazine I published. Things
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  Speaker 1: appeared to be going well, but I felt I was
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  Speaker 1: not quite sound mentally, and that matters could not long
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  Speaker 1: continue in that way. I should perhaps then have come
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  Speaker 1: to the state of despair I reached fifteen years later.
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  Speaker 1: Had there not been one side of life still unexplored
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  Speaker 1: by me, which promised me happiness that was my marriage.
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  Speaker 1: For a year, I busied myself with arbitration work, the
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  Speaker 1: schools and the magazine, and I became so worn out
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  Speaker 1: as a result, especially of my mental confusion, and so
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  Speaker 1: hard was my struggle as arbiter, so obscure, the results
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  Speaker 1: of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my shuffling
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  Speaker 1: in the magazine, which always amounted to one and the
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  Speaker 1: same thing. I desired to teach everybody, and to hide
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  Speaker 1: the fact that I did not know what to teach.
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  Speaker 1: That I felt ill mentally, rather than physically, threw up
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  Speaker 1: everything and went away to the bashkirs in the steps
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  Speaker 1: to breathe fresh air, drink koumis and with a merely
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  Speaker 1: animal life. Returning from there I married. The new conditions
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  Speaker 1: of happy family life completely diverted me from all search
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  Speaker 1: for the general meaning of life. My whole life was
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  Speaker 1: centered at that time in my family, wife and children.
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  Speaker 1: And therefore, in care to increase our means of life livelihood,
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  Speaker 1: my striving after self perfection, for which I had already
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  Speaker 1: substituted as striving for perfection in general, I e. Progress,
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  Speaker 1: was now again replaced by the effort simply to secure
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  Speaker 1: the best possible conditions for myself and my family. So
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  Speaker 1: another fifteen years passed in spite of the fact that
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  Speaker 1: I now regarded authorship as of no importance, the temptation
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  Speaker 1: of immense monetary rewards and the applause for my insignificant work,
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  Speaker 1: and I devoted myself to it as a means of
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  Speaker 1: improving my material position, or of stifling in my soul
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  Speaker 1: all questions as to the meaning of my own life
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  Speaker 1: or life in general. I wrote, teaching what was for
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  Speaker 1: me the only truth, namely that one should live so
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  Speaker 1: as to have the best for oneself and one's family.
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  Speaker 1: So I lived. But five years ago something very strange
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  Speaker 1: began to happen to me. At first, I experienced moments
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  Speaker 1: of perplexity and the rest of life as though I
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  Speaker 1: did not know what to do or how to live,
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  Speaker 1: and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed
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  Speaker 1: and I went on living as before. Then, these moments
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  Speaker 1: moments of perplexity began to recur, oftener and oftener, and
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  Speaker 1: always in the same form. They were always expressed by
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  Speaker 1: the questions what is it for? What does it lead to?
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  Speaker 1: At first, it seemed to me that These were aimless
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  Speaker 1: and irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well
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  Speaker 1: known that if I should ever wish to deal with
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  Speaker 1: the solution, it would not cost me much effort. Just
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  Speaker 1: at present I had no time for it. But when
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  Speaker 1: I wanted to, I should be able to find the answer.
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  Speaker 1: The questions, however, began to repeat themselves more frequently, and
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  Speaker 1: to demand replies more and more insistently, and like drops
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  Speaker 1: of ink always falling on one place, they ran together
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  Speaker 1: into one black blot. Then occurred what happens to everyone
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  Speaker 1: sickening with immortal internal disease. At first, trivial signs of
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  Speaker 1: indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no attention.
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  Speaker 1: Then these signs reappear more and more often and merge
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  Speaker 1: into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases, and
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  Speaker 1: before the sick man can look round, what he took
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  Speaker 1: for a mere indisposition has already become more important to
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  Speaker 1: him than any thing else in the world. It is death,
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  Speaker 1: that is what happened to me. I understood that it
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  Speaker 1: was no casual indisposition, but something very important, and that
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  Speaker 1: if these questions constantly repeated themselves, they would have to
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  Speaker 1: be answered, and I tried to answer them. The question
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  Speaker 1: seemed such stupid, simple, childish ones. But as soon as
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  Speaker 1: I touched them and tried to solve them, I at
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  Speaker 1: once became convinced, first that they are not childish and stupid,
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  Speaker 1: but the most important and profound of life's questions. And
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  Speaker 1: secondly that occupying myself with my Samara estate, the education
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  Speaker 1: of my son, or the writing of a book, I
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  Speaker 1: had to know why I was doing it. As long
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  Speaker 1: as I did not know why, I could do nothing
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  Speaker 1: and could not live amid the thoughts of a state management,
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  Speaker 1: which greatly occupied me at that time, the question would
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  Speaker 1: suddenly occur, well, you will have six thousand distantiatinas of
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  Speaker 1: land in the Samoraw government and three hundred horses, and
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  Speaker 1: what then? Now, I was quite disconcerted and did not
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  Speaker 1: know what to think. Or when considering plans for the
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  Speaker 1: education of my children, I would ask myself what for?
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  Speaker 1: Or when considering how the peasants might become prosperous, I
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  Speaker 1: would suddenly say to myself, but what does it matter
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  Speaker 1: to me? Or when thinking of the fame my works
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  Speaker 1: would bring me, I would say to myself, very well,
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  Speaker 1: you will be more famous than Gogo or Pushkin, or Shakespeare, Molaire,
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  Speaker 1: or than all the writers in the world, and what
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  Speaker 1: of it? And I could find no reply at all.
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  Speaker 1: The questions would not wait. They had to be answered
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  Speaker 1: at once, and if I did not answer them, it
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  Speaker 1: was impossible to live. But there was no answer. I
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  Speaker 1: felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed,
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  Speaker 1: and that I had nothing left under my feet. What
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  Speaker 1: I had lived on no longer existed, and there was
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  Speaker 1: nothing left. End of Chapter three