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01 - A Confession - Leo Tolstory · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of a confession by Leo Tolstoy. Chapter one.
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  Speaker 1: I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith.
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  Speaker 1: I was taught it in childhood and throughout my boyhood
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  Speaker 1: and youth. But when I abandoned the second course of
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  Speaker 1: the university at the age of eighteen, I no longer
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  Speaker 1: believed any of the things I had been taught. Judging
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  Speaker 1: by certain memories, I never seriously believed them, but it
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  Speaker 1: merely relied on what I was taught and on what
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  Speaker 1: was professed by grown up people around me, and that
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  Speaker 1: reliance was very unstable. I remember that before I was eleven,
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  Speaker 1: a grammar school pupil, Vladimir miul Yuden, long since dead,
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  Speaker 1: visited us one Sunday and announced it the latest novelty
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  Speaker 1: a discovery made at his school. This discovery was that
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  Speaker 1: there is no God, and that all we are taught
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  Speaker 1: about him is a mere invention. This was in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: thirty eight. I remember how interested my elder brothers were
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  Speaker 1: in this information. They called me to their council, and
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  Speaker 1: we all, I remember it became very animated and accepted
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  Speaker 1: it as something very interesting and quite possible. I remember
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  Speaker 1: also that when my elder brother Dmitri, who was by
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  Speaker 1: then at the university, suddenly, in the passionate way natural
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  Speaker 1: to him, devoted himself to religion and began to attend
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  Speaker 1: all the church services to fast. UNTI lead a pure
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  Speaker 1: and moral life. We all, even our elders, unceasingly held
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  Speaker 1: him up to ridicule and for some unknown reason called
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  Speaker 1: him Noah. I remember that Mushin Pushkin, then the curator
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  Speaker 1: of Kazan University, when inviting us to dance at his home,
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  Speaker 1: ironically persuaded my brother, who was declining the invitation, by
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  Speaker 1: the argument that even David danced before the ark. I
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  Speaker 1: sympathized with these jokes made by my elders and drew
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  Speaker 1: from them the conclusion that though that it is necessary
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  Speaker 1: to learn the Catechism and go to church, one must
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  Speaker 1: not take these things too seriously. I remember also that
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  Speaker 1: I read Voltaire when I was very young, and that
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  Speaker 1: his raillery, far from shocking me, amused me very much.
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  Speaker 1: My lapse from faith occurred, as is usual among people
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  Speaker 1: on our level of education. In most cases, I think
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  Speaker 1: it happens to us. A man lives like everybody else
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  Speaker 1: on the basis of principles, not merely having nothing in
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  Speaker 1: common with the religious doctrine, but generally opposed to it.
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  Speaker 1: Religious doctrine does not play a part in life and
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  Speaker 1: intercourse with others. It is never encountered, and in man's
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  Speaker 1: own life he never has to reckon with it. Religious
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  Speaker 1: doctrine is professed far away from life and independently of it.
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  Speaker 1: If it is encountered, it is only as an external phenomenon,
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  Speaker 1: disconnected from life. Then, as now it was and is
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  Speaker 1: quite impossible to judge by a man's life and conduct
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  Speaker 1: whether he is a believer or not. If there be
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  Speaker 1: a difference between a man who publicly professes Orthodoxy and
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  Speaker 1: one who denies it, the difference is not in favor
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  Speaker 1: of the former, then is now the public profession and
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  Speaker 1: confession of Orthodoxy was chiefly met among people who are
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  Speaker 1: dull and cruel, and who consider themselves very important. Ability, honesty, reliability,
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  Speaker 1: good nature, and moral conduct were more often met among
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  Speaker 1: non believers. The schools teach the Catechism and send the
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  Speaker 1: pupils to church, and government officials must produce certificates of
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  Speaker 1: having received communion. But a man of our circle who
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  Speaker 1: has finished his education and is not in the government
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  Speaker 1: service may even now, and formerly it was still easier
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  Speaker 1: for him to do so, live for ten or twenty
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  Speaker 1: years without once remembering that he is living among Christians,
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  Speaker 1: and he is himself reckoned, a member of the Orthodox
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  Speaker 1: Christian Church. So that now as formerly religious doctrine, accepted
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  Speaker 1: on trust and supported by external pressure, falls away gradually
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  Speaker 1: under the influence of knowledge and experience of life which
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  Speaker 1: conflicts with it, and a man very often lives imagining
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  Speaker 1: that he still holds intact their religious doctrine and powered
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  Speaker 1: to him in childhood, whereas in fact not a trace
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  Speaker 1: of it remains. S a clever and truthful man once
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  Speaker 1: told me a story of how he ceased to believe. Once,
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  Speaker 1: on a hunting expedition, when he was already twenty six,
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  Speaker 1: he at the place where they had put up for
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  Speaker 1: the night, knelt down in the evening to pray, a
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  Speaker 1: habit retained from childhood. His elder brother, who was at
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  Speaker 1: the hunt with him, was lying on some hay and
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  Speaker 1: watching him. When S had finished and was settling down
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  Speaker 1: for the night, his brother said to him, so you
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  Speaker 1: still do that. They said nothing more to each other,
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  Speaker 1: but from that day S ceased to say his prayers
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  Speaker 1: are to go to church, and now he has not prayed,
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  Speaker 1: received communion, are gone to church for thirty years. And
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  Speaker 1: this is not because he knows his brother's convictions and
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  Speaker 1: has joined him in them, nor because he has decided
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  Speaker 1: anything in his own soul, but simply because the word
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  Speaker 1: spoken by his brother was like the push of a
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  Speaker 1: finger onto a wall that was ready to fall by
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  Speaker 1: its own weight. The word only showed that where he
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  Speaker 1: had thought there was faith, in reality there had long
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  Speaker 1: since been an empty space, and that therefore the utterances
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  Speaker 1: of words and the making of the signs of the
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  Speaker 1: cross and genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions. Becoming
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  Speaker 1: conscious of their senselessness, he could not continue them. So
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  Speaker 1: it has been and is, I think, with the great
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  Speaker 1: majority of people. I am speaking of people of our
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  Speaker 1: educational level who are sincere with themselves, and not of
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  Speaker 1: those who make the profession of faith a means of
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  Speaker 1: attaining worldly Such people are the most fundamental infidels, For
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  Speaker 1: if faith is for them a means of attaining any
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  Speaker 1: worldly aims, then certainly it is not faith. These people
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  Speaker 1: of our education are so placed that the light of
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  Speaker 1: knowledge and life has caused an artificial direction to melt away,
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  Speaker 1: and they have either already noticed this and swept its
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  Speaker 1: place clear, or they have not yet noticed it. Their
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  Speaker 1: religious doctrine taught me from childhood disappeared in me as
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  Speaker 1: in other's, but with this difference that as from the
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  Speaker 1: age of fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my
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  Speaker 1: rejection of the doctrine became a conscious one at a
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  Speaker 1: very early age. From the time I was sixteen, I
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  Speaker 1: ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to
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  Speaker 1: churchill to fasten my own volition. I did not believe
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  Speaker 1: what had been taught to me in childhood, but I
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  Speaker 1: believed in something. What it was I believed in, I
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  Speaker 1: could not have said I believed in a God, or rather,
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  Speaker 1: I did not deny God, but I could not have
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  Speaker 1: said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ
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  Speaker 1: in his teachings, But what his teachings consisted in, I
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  Speaker 1: again could not have said. Looking back on that time,
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  Speaker 1: I now see that clearly my faith, my only real faith,
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  Speaker 1: that which, apart from my animal instincts, gave me an
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  Speaker 1: impulse in life, was a belief in perfecting myself. But
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  Speaker 1: in what this perfectioning consisted of, and what its object
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  Speaker 1: was I could not have said I tried to perfect myself.
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  Speaker 1: I studied everything I could, anything life threw my way.
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  Speaker 1: I tried to perfect my will. I drew up rules
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  Speaker 1: I tried to follow. I perfected myself physically, cultivating my
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  Speaker 1: strength and agility by all sorts of exercises, and accustoming
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  Speaker 1: myself to endurance and patience by all sorts of privations.
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  Speaker 1: And all this I considered to be the pursuit of perfection.
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  Speaker 1: The beginning of it all was, of course, moral perfection,
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  Speaker 1: but that was soon replaced by perfection in general, by
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  Speaker 1: the desire to be better, not my own eyes or
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  Speaker 1: those of God, but in the eyes of other people.
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  Speaker 1: And very soon this effort again changed into a desire
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  Speaker 1: to be stronger than others, to be more famous, more important,
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  Speaker 1: and richer than others. End of Chapter one