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02 - A Confession - Leo Tolstory · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter two of a confession by Leo Tolstoy. Some day
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  Speaker 1: I will narrate the touching and instructive history of my
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  Speaker 1: life during those ten years of my youth. I think
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  Speaker 1: very many people have had a like experience with all
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  Speaker 1: my soul. I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate,
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  Speaker 1: and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time
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  Speaker 1: I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was
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  Speaker 1: to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule.
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  Speaker 1: But as soon as I yielded to low passions, I
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  Speaker 1: was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger,
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  Speaker 1: and revenge were all respected. Yielding to those passions, I
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  Speaker 1: became like the grown up folk, and felt that they
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  Speaker 1: approved of me. The kind aunt with whom I lived herself,
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  Speaker 1: the purest of beings, always told me that there was
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  Speaker 1: nothing she so desired for me as that I should
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  Speaker 1: have relations with a married woman ryenniform u hunehom kom
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  Speaker 1: una liaison eviez unfem komeno foe. Another happiness she desired
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  Speaker 1: for me was that I should become an aide de
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  Speaker 1: camp and if possible, aide de camp to the Emperor.
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  Speaker 1: But the greatest happiness of all would be that I
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  Speaker 1: should marry a very rich girl and so become possessed
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  Speaker 1: of as many serves as possible. I cannot think of
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  Speaker 1: those years without horror, loathing, and heartache. I killed men
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  Speaker 1: in war and challenge men to duels in order to
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  Speaker 1: kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of
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  Speaker 1: the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, live loosely and deceived people, lying, robbery,
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  Speaker 1: adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder. There was no
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  Speaker 1: crime I did not commit, And in spite of that,
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  Speaker 1: people praised my conduct, and my contemporaries considered and consider
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  Speaker 1: me to be a comparatively moral man. So I lived
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  Speaker 1: for ten years. During that time I began to write
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  Speaker 1: from vanity, covetousness, and pride. In my writings, I did
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  Speaker 1: the same as in my life. To get fame and money.
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  Speaker 1: For the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary
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  Speaker 1: to hide the good and to despoy the evil, and
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  Speaker 1: I did so. How often in my writings I contrived
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  Speaker 1: to hide under the guise of indifference or even of banter,
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  Speaker 1: those strivings of mind towards goodness, which gave meaning to
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  Speaker 1: my life. And I succeeded in this and was praised.
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  Speaker 1: At twenty six years of age, I returned to Petersburg
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  Speaker 1: after the war and met the writers. They received me
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  Speaker 1: as one of themselves and flattered me. And before I
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  Speaker 1: had time to look round, I had adopted the views
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  Speaker 1: on life of the set of authors I had come among,
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  Speaker 1: and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve.
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  Speaker 1: They furnished a theory that justified the dissoluteness of my life.
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  Speaker 1: The view of life of these people, my comrades and
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  Speaker 1: authorship insisted in this that life in general goes on developing,
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  Speaker 1: and in this development we men of thought have the
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  Speaker 1: chief part. And among men of thought it is we
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  Speaker 1: artists and poets who have the greatest influence. Our vocation
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  Speaker 1: is to teach mankind, and lest a simple question should
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  Speaker 1: suggest itself, what do I know and what can I teach?
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  Speaker 1: It was explained that in this theory it need not
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  Speaker 1: be known that the artists and the poets teach unconsciously.
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  Speaker 1: I was considered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore
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  Speaker 1: it was very natural for me to adopt this theory,
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  Speaker 1: I artist and poet, wrote and taught without myself knowing what.
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  Speaker 1: For this. I was paid money. I had excellent food, lodging, women,
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  Speaker 1: and society. And I had fame, which showed that what
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  Speaker 1: I taught was very good. This faith in the meaning
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  Speaker 1: of poetry and in the development of life was a religion,
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  Speaker 1: and I was one of its priests. To be its
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  Speaker 1: priest was very pleasant and profitable. And I lived a
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  Speaker 1: considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity. But
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  Speaker 1: in the second and still more third year of this life,
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  Speaker 1: I began to doubt the infallibility of this religion and
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  Speaker 1: to examine it. My first cause of doubt was that
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  Speaker 1: I began to notice that the priests of this religion
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  Speaker 1: were not at all in a court amongst themselves. Some said,
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  Speaker 1: we are the best and most useful teachers. We teach
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  Speaker 1: what is needed, but the others teach wrongly. Others said, no,
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  Speaker 1: we are the real teachers, and you teach wrongly. And
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  Speaker 1: they disputed, quarreled, abused, cheated, and tricked one another. There
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  Speaker 1: were also many among us who did not care who
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  Speaker 1: was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent
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  Speaker 1: on attaining their covetous aims by means of this activity
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  Speaker 1: of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity
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  Speaker 1: of our creed. Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth
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  Speaker 1: of the author's as creed itself, I also began to
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  Speaker 1: observe its priests more attentively, and I became convinced that
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  Speaker 1: almost all the priests of that religion the writers, were immoral,
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  Speaker 1: and for the most part, meant of bad, worthless character,
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  Speaker 1: much inferior to those whom I had met in my
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  Speaker 1: former dissipated and military life. But they were self confident
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  Speaker 1: and self satisfied, as only they can be who are
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  Speaker 1: quite holy, or who do not know what holiness is.
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  Speaker 1: These people revolted me. I became revolting to myself, and
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  Speaker 1: I realized that that faith was a fraud. But strange
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  Speaker 1: to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it,
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  Speaker 1: yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me,
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  Speaker 1: the rank of artist, poet and teacher, and naively imagined
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  Speaker 1: that I was a poet and artist and could teach
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  Speaker 1: everybody without myself knowing what I was teaching, and acted accordingly.
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  Speaker 1: From my intimacy with these men, I acquired a new vice,
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  Speaker 1: abnormally developed pride, in an insane assurance that it was
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  Speaker 1: my vocation to teach men without knowing what to remember.
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  Speaker 1: That time, in my own state of mind and that
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  Speaker 1: of those men, though there are thousands like them, today
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  Speaker 1: is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the
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  Speaker 1: feeling one experience is in a lunatic asylum. We were
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  Speaker 1: all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write,
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  Speaker 1: and print as quickly as possible, and as much as possible,
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  Speaker 1: and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity.
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  Speaker 1: And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all
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  Speaker 1: printed and wrote, teaching others, and without noticing that we
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  Speaker 1: knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions,
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  Speaker 1: what is good and what is evil, we did not
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  Speaker 1: know how to reply. We all talked at the same time,
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  Speaker 1: not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one
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  Speaker 1: another in order to be seconded and praised, and turned
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  Speaker 1: sometimes getting angry with one another, just like an a
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  Speaker 1: lunatic asylum. Thousands of workmen labored to the ex stream
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  Speaker 1: limit of their strength day and night, setting the type
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  Speaker 1: and printing millions of words, which the post carried all
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  Speaker 1: over Russia. And still we went on teaching, and could
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  Speaker 1: in no way find time to teach enough. We were
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  Speaker 1: always angry that sufficient attention was not paid to us.
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  Speaker 1: It was terribly strange, but now it is quite comprehensible.
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  Speaker 1: Our real, innermost concern was to get as much money
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  Speaker 1: and praise as possible. To gain that end, we could
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  Speaker 1: do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that.
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  Speaker 1: But nor to get such useless work, and to feel
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  Speaker 1: assured that we were very important people, we required a
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  Speaker 1: theory justifying our activity, and so among us this theory
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  Speaker 1: was devised. All that exists is reasonable, All that exists develops,
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  Speaker 1: and it all develops by the means of culture, and
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  Speaker 1: culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers.
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  Speaker 1: And we are paid money and are respected because we
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  Speaker 1: write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most
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  Speaker 1: useful in the best of men. This theory would have
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  Speaker 1: all been very well if we had been unanimous. But
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  Speaker 1: as every thought expressed by one of us was always
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  Speaker 1: meant by diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought
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  Speaker 1: to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this.
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  Speaker 1: People paid us money, and those on our side praised us,
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  Speaker 1: so each of us considered himself justified. It is now
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  Speaker 1: clear to me that this was just as in a
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  Speaker 1: lunatic asylum. But then I only dimly suspected this, and,
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  Speaker 1: like all lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself.
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  Speaker 1: End of Chapter two