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Leo Tolstoy "Confession" - a brief analysis. Confession (Plans and options) L n thick confession summary

Lev Tolstoy

"Confession"

Judging by some reminiscences, I never really believed seriously, but only had confidence in what I was taught and in what the big ones confessed to me; but this trust was very shaky.

I remember that when I was eleven years old, one boy, long dead, Volodenka M., who studied at the gymnasium, came to us on Sunday, as the latest novelty, he announced to us the discovery made in the gymnasium. The discovery was that there is no God and that everything we are taught is just fiction (this was in 1838). I remember how the older brothers became interested in this news, and called me for advice. We all, I remember, were very animated and accepted this news as something very entertaining and very possible.

I also remember that when my older brother Dmitry, while at the university, suddenly, with the passion characteristic of his nature, gave himself up to faith and began to go to all services, fast, lead a pure and moral life, then we all, and even the elders, did not stop ridiculed him and for some reason called him Noah. I remember Musin-Pushkin, who was then a trustee of Kazan University, who invited us to dance at his place, mockingly persuaded his brother who refused by saying that David also danced in front of the ark. At that time I sympathized with these jokes of the elders and deduced from them the conclusion that it was necessary to learn the catechism, it was necessary to go to church, but all this should not be taken too seriously. I also remember that I read Voltaire very young, and his ridicule not only did not revolt, but greatly amused me.

My falling away from the faith happened in me just as it happened and is happening now in people of our educational background. It seems to me that in most cases it happens like this: people live the way everyone else lives, and they all live on the basis of principles that not only have nothing in common with dogma, but for the most part are opposite to it; dogma does not participate in life, and in relations with other people one never has to deal with it and in one's own life one never has to cope with it; this dogma is confessed somewhere out there, far from life and independently of it. If you come across it, then only as an external, not connected with life, phenomenon.

From the life of a person, from his deeds, both now and then, it is impossible to know whether he is a believer or not. If there is a difference between those who openly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. As now, so then, a clear recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found in stupid, cruel and immoral people who consider themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, directness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognize themselves as unbelievers.

The schools teach the catechism and send pupils to the church; officials are required to testify in being at the sacrament. But a person of our circle, who no longer studies and is not in the public service, and now, but even more in the old days, could live for decades without ever remembering that he lives among Christians and is himself considered to profess the Christian Orthodox faith.

So, just as now, just as before, the dogma, accepted by trust and supported by external pressure, gradually melts away under the influence of knowledge and experiences of life that are contrary to the dogma, and a person very often lives for a long time, imagining that the dogma that was communicated to him is whole in him. since childhood, while there is no trace of him for a long time.

And they said nothing more to each other. And S. ceased from that day to pray and go to church. And now for thirty years he has not prayed, has not received communion, and has not gone to church. And not because he knew the convictions of his brother and would join them, not because he decided something in his soul, but only because this word, spoken by his brother, was like a push with a finger into a wall that was ready fall from their own weight; this word was an indication that where he thought that there was faith, there had long been an empty place, and that because the words that he says, and the crosses, and bows that he makes while standing at prayer, are completely meaningless actions. Realizing their senselessness, he could not continue them.

It has been and is, I think, with the vast majority of people. I'm talking about people of our education, I'm talking about people who are true to themselves, and not about those who make the very object of faith a means to achieve any temporary goals. (These people are the most fundamental unbelievers, because if faith for them is a means to achieve some worldly goals, then this is probably not faith.) These people of our education are in the position that the light of knowledge and life has melted an artificial building, and they either already noticed it and made room, or they haven't noticed it yet.

The doctrine communicated to me from childhood disappeared in me just as it did in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the doctrine became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen, I stopped standing up for prayer and stopped, on my own impulse, going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I was told from childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed in, I could never say. I also believed in God, or rather I did not deny God, but which God I could not say; I did not deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching was, I could not say either.

Now, looking back at that time, I see clearly that my faith—that which, besides animal instincts, drove my life—my only true faith at that time was faith in perfection. But what was the perfection and what was the purpose of it, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and what life led me to; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself, which I tried to follow; improved himself physically, by all sorts of exercises, refining strength and dexterity, and by all sorts of hardships accustoming himself to endurance and patience. And all this I considered perfection. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral perfection, but soon it was replaced by perfection in general, i.e. a desire to be better not in front of oneself or before God, but a desire to be better in front of other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by a desire to be stronger than other people, i.e. more glorious, more important, richer than others.

Ambition, lust for power, greed, lust, pride, anger, revenge - all this was respected.

Surrendering to these passions, I became like a big man, and I felt that I was satisfied. My good aunt, the purest being with whom I lived, always told me that she would want nothing more for me than that I have an affair with a married woman: “Rein ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut"; she wished me another happiness - that I be an adjutant, and best of all with the sovereign; and the greatest happiness is that I marry a very rich girl and that, as a result of this marriage, I have as many slaves as possible.

I cannot remember those years without horror, disgust and heartache. I killed people in war, challenged them to duels to kill, lost cards, ate the labors of peasants, executed them, fornicated, deceived. Lies, theft, fornications of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder ... There were no crimes that I would not have committed, and for all this I was praised, my peers considered and still consider me a relatively moral person.

So I lived for ten years.

At this time I began to write out of vanity, greed and pride. In my writings I did the same thing as in life. In order to have fame and money, for which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and show the bad. I did. How many times have I managed to hide in my writings, under the guise of indifference and even slight mockery, those my strivings for goodness, which constituted the meaning of my life. And I achieved this: I was praised.

I

Judging by some reminiscences, I never really believed seriously, but only had confidence in what I was taught and in what the big ones confessed to me; but this trust was very shaky.

I remember that when I was eleven years old, one boy, long dead, Volodenka M., who studied at the gymnasium, came to us on Sunday, as the latest novelty, he announced to us the discovery made in the gymnasium. The discovery was that there is no god and that everything we are taught is just fiction (this was in 1838). I remember how the older brothers became interested in this news, and called me for advice. We all, I remember, were very animated and accepted this news as something very entertaining and very possible.

I also remember that when my older brother Dmitry, while at the university, suddenly, with passion characteristic of his nature, gave himself up to faith and began to go to all services, fast, lead a pure and moral life, then we all, and even the elders, did not stop ridiculed him and for some reason called him Noah. I remember Musin-Pushkin, who was then a trustee of Kazan University, who invited us to dance at his place, mockingly persuaded his brother who refused by saying that David also danced in front of the ark. At that time I sympathized with these jokes of the elders and deduced from them the conclusion that it was necessary to learn the catechism, it was necessary to go to church, but all this should not be taken too seriously. I also remember that I read Voltaire very young, and his ridicule not only did not revolt, but greatly amused me.

My falling away from the faith happened in me just as it happened and is happening now in people of our educational background. It seems to me that in most cases it happens like this: people live the way everyone else lives, and they all live on the basis of principles that not only have nothing in common with dogma, but for the most part are opposite to it; dogma does not participate in life, and in relations with other people one never has to deal with it, and in one's own life one never has to cope with it; this dogma is confessed somewhere out there, far from life and independently of it. If you come across it, then only as an external, not connected with life, phenomenon.

According to a person's life, according to his deeds, both now and then, there is no way to know whether he is a believer or not. If there is a difference between those who openly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. As now, so then, a clear recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found in people who were stupid, cruel, and immoral, and who considered themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, directness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognize themselves as unbelievers.

S., a smart and truthful man, told me how he stopped believing. He was twenty-six years old already, once at a lodging for the night during a hunt, according to an old habit adopted from childhood, he stood in the evening for prayer. The older brother, who was with him on the hunt, lay on the hay and looked at him. When S. finished and began to lie down, his brother said to him: “Are you still doing this?” And they said nothing more to each other. And S. ceased from that day to pray and go to church. And now for thirty years he has not prayed, has not received communion, and has not gone to church. And not because he knew the convictions of his brother and would join them, not because he decided something in his soul, but only because this word, spoken by his brother, was like a push with a finger into a wall that was ready fall from their own weight; this word was an indication that where he thought that there was faith, there had long been an empty place, and that because the words that he says, and the crosses, and bows that he makes while standing at prayer, are completely meaningless actions. Realizing their senselessness, he could not continue them.

Now, looking back at that time, I see clearly that my faith—that which, besides animal instincts, drove my life—my only true faith at that time was faith in perfection. But what was the perfection and what was the purpose of it, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and what life led me to; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself, which I tried to follow; improved himself physically, by all sorts of exercises, refining strength and dexterity, and by all sorts of hardships accustoming himself to endurance and patience. And all this I considered perfection. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral perfection, but soon it was replaced by perfection in general, that is, by the desire to be better not before oneself or before God, but by the desire to be better in front of other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by a desire to be stronger than other people, that is, more glorious, more important, richer than others.

Lev Tolstoy

"Confession"

Judging by some reminiscences, I never really believed seriously, but only had confidence in what I was taught and in what the big ones confessed to me; but this trust was very shaky.

It has been and is, I think, with the vast majority of people. I'm talking about people of our education, I'm talking about people who are true to themselves, and not about those who make the very object of faith a means to achieve any temporary goals. (These people are the most fundamental unbelievers, because if faith for them is a means to achieve some worldly goals, then this is probably not faith.) These people of our education are in the position that the light of knowledge and life has melted an artificial building, and they have either already noticed it and made room, or they haven't noticed it yet.

Now, remembering that time, I see clearly that my faith - that which, apart from animal instincts, moved my life - my only true faith at that time was faith in perfection. But what was the perfection and what was the purpose of it, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and what life led me to; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself, which I tried to follow; improved himself physically, by all sorts of exercises, refining strength and dexterity, and by all sorts of hardships accustoming himself to endurance and patience. And all this I considered perfection. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral perfection, but soon it was replaced by perfection in general, i.e. a desire to be better not in front of oneself or before God, but a desire to be better in front of other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by a desire to be stronger than other people, i.e. more glorious, more important, richer than others.

Ambition, lust for power, greed, lust, pride, anger, revenge - all this was respected.

So I lived for ten years.

At the age of twenty-six I came to Petersburg after the war and made friends with writers. They accepted me as one of their own, flattered me. And before I had time to look back, the class writers' views on the life of those people with whom I made friends became assimilated by me and completely erased in me all my previous attempts to become better. These views, under the licentiousness of my life, substituted a theory that justified it.

The outlook on the life of these people, my writing comrades, was that life in general goes on developing and that we, people of thought, take the main part in this development, and of the people of thought, we, artists, poets, have the main influence. Our mission is to teach people. In order not to present that natural question to oneself: what do I know and what should I teach, - in this theory it was found out that this is not necessary to know, but that the artist and poet unconsciously teaches. I was considered a wonderful artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to assimilate this theory. I am an artist, a poet - I wrote, taught, without knowing what. I was paid money for this, I had excellent food, premises, women, society, I had fame. So what I taught was very good.

This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was faith, and I was one of its priests. Being her priest was very profitable and pleasant. And I lived in this faith for quite a long time, not doubting its truth. But in the second and especially in the third year of such a life, I began to doubt the infallibility of this faith and began to investigate it. The first reason for doubt was that I began to notice that the priests of this faith did not all agree with each other. Some said: we are the most good and useful teachers, we teach what is needed, while others teach wrong. And others said: no, we are real, and you teach wrong. And they argued, quarreled, scolded, deceived, cheated against each other. In addition, there were many people among them who did not care about who was right and who was wrong, but simply achieved their own selfish goals with the help of our activities. All this made me doubt the truth of our faith.

In addition, having doubted the truth of the writer’s faith itself, I began to observe its priests more carefully and became convinced that almost all the priests of this faith, the writers, were immoral people and, in the majority, bad people, insignificant in character - much lower than those people whom I I met in my former wild and military life - but self-confident and self-satisfied, as soon as completely holy people or those who do not even know what holiness can be satisfied. People got sick of me, and I got sick of myself, and I realized that this faith is a deceit.

But the strange thing is that although I soon understood all this lie of faith and renounced it, I did not renounce the rank given to me by these people, the rank of an artist, poet, teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet, an artist, and could teach everyone without knowing what I was teaching. I did.

From rapprochement with these people, I took out a new vice - a painfully developed pride and crazy confidence that I was called to teach people without knowing what.

Now, remembering this time, my mood then and the mood of those people (however, there are thousands of them now), I feel sorry, scared, and funny - exactly the same feeling arises that you experience in a lunatic asylum.

We were all then convinced that we needed to speak and speak, write, print - as soon as possible, as much as possible, that all this was necessary for the good of mankind. And thousands of us, denying, scolding each other, all printed, wrote, instructing others. And, not noticing that we don’t know anything, what is the simplest question of life: what’s good, what’s bad, we don’t know what to answer, we all, not listening to each other, all spoke at once, sometimes indulging each other and praising each other so that they indulge me and praise me, sometimes getting irritated and shouting over each other, just like in a madhouse.

Thousands of workers worked day and night with their last strength, typed, printed millions of words, and the mail delivered them all over Russia, but we still taught more and more, taught and taught, and did not have time to teach everything, and everyone was angry that we were few are listening.

Terribly strange, but now I understand. Our real, sincere reasoning was that we want to get as much money and praise as possible. To achieve this goal, we knew how to do nothing but write books and newspapers. We did it. But in order for us to do such a useless thing and have confidence that we are very important people, we also needed reasoning that would justify our activities. And so we came up with the following: everything that exists is reasonable. Everything that exists, everything develops. Everything develops through enlightenment. Enlightenment is measured by the distribution of books and newspapers. But we are paid money and we are respected for the fact that we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and good people. This reasoning would be very good if we all agreed; but since for every thought expressed by one, there was always a thought, diametrically opposed, expressed by others, this should have made us think again. But we didn't notice it. We were paid money, and the people of our party praised us, so we, each of us, considered ourselves right.

Now it is clear to me that there was no difference with the madhouse; then I only vaguely suspected it, and then only, like all crazy people, I called everyone crazy, except myself.

Then I did not notice it. Only occasionally, not reason, but feeling, revolted against this superstition common in our time, by which people screen their misunderstanding of life from themselves. Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of the death penalty revealed to me the fragility of my superstition of progress. When I saw how the head separated from the body, and both of them pounded apart in a box, I understood - not with my mind, but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of the existing and progress can justify this act and that if all people in the world , according to whatever theories, from the creation of the world, they found that this is necessary - I know that this is not necessary, that it is bad and that therefore the judge of what is good and necessary is not what people say and do , and not progress, but me with my heart. Another instance of a consciousness of insufficiency for a life of superstition of progress was the death of my brother. An intelligent, kind, serious man, he fell ill young, suffered for more than a year and died painfully, not understanding why he lived, and even less understanding why he was dying. No theories could answer these questions for me or for him during his slow and painful death. But these were only rare cases of doubt, but in essence I continued to live, professing only faith in progress. “Everything develops, and I develop; and why am I developing together with everyone, it will be seen. That is how I should have formulated my faith then.

Returning from abroad, I settled in the countryside and ended up taking classes in peasant schools. This occupation was especially to my heart, because it did not contain that lie, which had become obvious to me, which had already hurt my eyes in the activity of literary teaching. Here, too, I acted in the name of progress, but I was already critical of progress itself. I told myself that progress in some of my manifestations was being made incorrectly, and that one should treat primitive people, peasant children, completely free, inviting them to choose the path of progress that they want. In essence, however, I revolved around the same unsolvable problem, which is to teach without knowing what. In the higher spheres of literary activity, it was clear to me that it was impossible to teach without knowing what to teach, because I saw that everyone teaches in different ways and, by disputes among themselves, only hide their ignorance from themselves; here, with peasant children, I thought that this difficulty could be circumvented by leaving the children to learn what they wanted. Now it’s funny for me to remember how I hung around to fulfill my lust - to teach, although I knew very well in the depths of my soul that I can’t teach anything that is necessary, because I myself don’t know what is needed. After a year spent in school, I went abroad another time to find out there how to do it so that, knowing nothing myself, I could teach others.

And it seemed to me that I had learned this abroad, and, armed with all this wisdom, I returned to Russia in the year of the liberation of the peasants and, having taken the place of an intermediary, began to teach both the uneducated people in schools and educated people in a magazine that I began to publish. . Things seemed to be going well, but I felt that I was not quite mentally healthy and could not continue for long. And then, perhaps, I would have come to that despair to which I came at the age of fifty, if I had not had another side of life that I had not yet experienced and promised me salvation: it was family life.

For a year I was engaged in mediation, schools and the magazine, and I became so exhausted, especially because I got confused, the struggle for mediation became so difficult for me, my activity in the schools was so vaguely manifested, my influence in the magazine, which consisted all in one, became so disgusting to me. and the same - in the desire to teach everyone and hide what I don’t know what to teach, that I fell ill more spiritually than physically - I left everything and went to the steppe to the Bashkirs to breathe air, drink koumiss and live an animal life.

When I returned from there, I got married. new conditions happy family life completely distracted me from any search for the general meaning of life. My whole life was concentrated during this time in the family, in my wife, in children, and therefore in worries about increasing the means of subsistence. The desire for improvement, which had already been replaced by the desire for improvement in general, for progress, was now directly replaced by the desire to ensure that my family and I were as good as possible.

So another fifteen years passed.

Despite the fact that I considered writing a trifle, during these fifteen years I still continued to write. I have already tasted the temptation of writing, the temptation of huge monetary rewards and applause for insignificant work, and indulged in it as a means to improve my financial situation and drown out in my soul any questions about the meaning of my life and the common one.

I wrote, teaching what was the only truth for me, that one must live in such a way that oneself and one's family would be as good as possible.

So I lived, but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: at first they began to find minutes of bewilderment, of a stoppage of life, as if I did not know how to live, what to do, and I was lost and fell into despondency. But it passed, and I continued to live as before. Then these moments of bewilderment began to be repeated more and more often and all in the same form. These stops of life were always expressed by the same questions: Why? Well, and then?

At first it seemed to me that this is so - pointless, irrelevant questions. It seemed to me that all this was known, and that if I ever wanted to deal with their resolution, it would not cost me any trouble - that now only I had no time to deal with it, and when I wanted to, then I would find answers. But questions began to be repeated more and more often, answers were urgently needed, and like dots, falling all in one place, these questions merged without answers into one black spot.

What happened to everyone who falls ill with a deadly internal disease has happened. At first, insignificant signs of malaise appear, to which the patient does not pay attention, then these signs are repeated more and more often and merge into one suffering that is inseparable in time. Suffering grows, and the patient does not have time to look back, as he already realizes that what he took for an indisposition is what is most significant for him in the world, that this is death.

The same happened to me. I realized that this is not an accidental ailment, but something very important, and that if the same questions are repeated, then they must be answered. And I tried to answer. The questions seemed so stupid, simple, childish questions. But as soon as I touched them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately convinced, firstly, that these were not childish and stupid questions, but the most important and profound questions in life, and, secondly, that I I cannot and cannot, no matter how much I think, resolve them. Before you take up the Samara estate, raise your son, write a book, you need to know why I will do this. Until I know why, I can't do anything. Among my thoughts about the economy, which greatly occupied me at that time, the question suddenly occurred to me: “Well, you will have 6,000 acres in the Samara province, 300 heads of horses, and then? ..” And I was completely taken aback and did not knew what to think next. Or, starting to think about how I would raise children, I said to myself: “Why?” Or, discussing how the people can achieve prosperity, I suddenly said to myself: “But what does it matter to me?” Or, thinking about the glory that my writings will gain me, I said to myself: “Well, you will be more glorious than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what! ..” could not answer anything. Questions do not wait, we must now answer; If you don't answer, you can't live. And there is no answer.

I felt that what I stood on had given way, that there was nothing for me to stand on, that what I had lived for was no longer there, that I had nothing to live on.

What happened to me was that I, a healthy, happy person, felt that I could no longer live - some irresistible force impelled me to somehow get rid of it. You can't say that I wanted to kill myself.

The force that pulled me away from life was stronger, fuller, the general desire. It was a force similar to the former striving of life, only in reverse. I tried with all my might to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally as thoughts of better life had come before. This thought was so seductive that I had to use cunning against myself in order not to carry it out too hastily. I didn't want to rush just because I wanted to do my best to unravel! If I don't unravel, I'll always make it, I told myself. And then I, a happy man, took out of my room a cord, where I was alone every evening, undressing, so as not to hang myself on the crossbar between the scales, and stopped going hunting with a gun, so as not to be tempted by a too easy way to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted: I was afraid of life, I longed to get away from it, and meanwhile I still hoped for something from it.

And this happened to me at a time when on all sides I had what is considered perfect happiness: this was when I was not fifty years old. I had a kind, loving and beloved wife, good children, a large estate, which grew and increased without difficulty on my part. I was respected by relatives and acquaintances, more than ever before I was praised by strangers and could consider that I had fame, without much self-delusion. At the same time, not only was I not bodily or spiritually unhealthy, but, on the contrary, I used strength both spiritual and bodily, which I rarely met in my peers: bodily I could work on the mowing, keeping up with the peasants; Mentally, I could work for eight to ten hours straight without experiencing any consequences from such stress. And in this position I came to the point that I could not live and, fearing death, I had to use tricks against myself so as not to take my own life.

This state of mind was expressed for me like this: my life is some kind of stupid and cruel joke played on me by someone. Despite the fact that I did not recognize any "someone" who would have created me, this form of representation that someone had played a trick on me evilly and stupidly, having brought me into the world, was the most natural form of representation to me.

Involuntarily, it seemed to me that there was someone somewhere who was now making fun of me, looking at me, how I lived for 30-40 years, lived learning, developing, growing in body and spirit, and how I now, having completely strengthened my mind, having reached that pinnacle of life, from which all of it opens up - like a fool like a fool I stand on this peak, clearly understanding that there is nothing in life, and never was, and never will be. And he's funny...

But whether or not there is this someone who laughs at me, it does not make me feel better. I could not give any rational meaning to any act, nor to my whole life. I was only surprised how I could not understand this at the very beginning. All this has been known to everyone for so long. Not today, tomorrow, illnesses, death (and have already come) will come to loved ones, to me, and nothing will be left but stench and worms. My deeds, whatever they may be, will all be forgotten sooner or later, and I will not be there either. So why bother? How can a person not see this and live - that's what's amazing! One can live only while drunk on life; but when you sober up, you can't help but see that it's all just a hoax, and a stupid hoax! That's it, that there is nothing even funny and witty, but simply cruel and stupid.

The oriental fable has long been told about a traveler caught in the steppe by an angry beast. Fleeing from the beast, the traveler jumps into a waterless well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its mouth open to devour it. And the unfortunate man, not daring to get out, so as not to die from an angry beast, not daring to jump to the bottom of the well, so as not to be devoured by a dragon, grabs onto the branches of a wild bush growing in the crevices of the well and clings to it. His hands are weakening, and he feels that soon he will have to give himself up to the death that awaits him on both sides; but he keeps on holding on, and while he is holding on, he looks around and sees that two mice, one black, the other white, evenly going around the trunk of the bush on which he hangs, undermine it. The bush is about to break off and break off by itself, and it will fall into the mouth of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while he is hanging, he searches around him and finds drops of honey on the leaves of a bush, takes them out with his tongue and licks them. So I hold on to the branches of life, knowing that the dragon of death is inevitably waiting, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand why I fell into this torment. And I try to suck on that honey that used to comfort me; but this honey no longer pleases me, and the white and black mice - day and night - undermine the branch that I hold on to. I see the dragon clearly, and honey is no longer sweet to me. I see one thing - the inevitable dragon and mice - and I cannot turn my eyes away from them. And this is not a fable, but this is the true, undeniable and understandable truth to everyone.

The former deception of the joys of life, which drowned out the horror of the dragon, no longer deceives me. No matter how much you tell me: you cannot understand the meaning of life, do not think, live - I cannot do this, because I have done this for too long before. Now I can't help but see the day and night running and leading me to death. I see this one because this one is the truth. Everything else is a lie.

Those two drops of honey that took my eyes off the cruel truth longer than others - love for the family and for writing, which I called art - are no longer sweet to me.

“Family,” I said to myself, “but the family is a wife, children; they are people too. They are in the same conditions as I am: they either have to live a lie, or they have to see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, cherish, nurture and guard them? For the same despair that is in me, or for stupidity! Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them, every step in knowledge leads them to this truth. And the truth is death.

“Art, poetry?..” For a long time, under the influence of the success of people’s praise, I assured myself that this is a thing that can be done, despite the fact that death will come, which will destroy everything - both me, and my deeds, and the memory of them ; but I soon saw that this, too, was a deceit. It was clear to me that art is an adornment of life, a lure to life. But life has lost its temptation for me, how can I lure others? While I did not live my own life, and someone else's life carried me on its waves, while I believed that life had meaning, although I did not know how to express it, reflections of life of all kinds in poetry and art gave me joy, it was fun for me to look to life in this mirror of art; but when I began to search for the meaning of life, when I felt the need to live myself, this mirror became either unnecessary, superfluous and ridiculous, or painful. I could no longer console myself with the fact that I saw in the mirror that my situation was stupid and desperate. It was good for me to rejoice at this, when in the depths of my soul I believed that my life had meaning. Then this play of lights and shadows of the comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, terrible in life - amused me. But when I knew that life was meaningless and terrible, the game in the mirror could no longer amuse me. No sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw the dragon and the mice undermining my footing.

But even this is not enough. If I simply understood that life has no meaning, I could calmly know this, I could know that this is my lot. But I could not rest on this. If I were like a man who lives in a forest from which he knows there is no way out, I could live; but I was like a man lost in the woods, who was horrified by the fact that he was lost, and he rushes about, wanting to get onto the road, he knows that every step confuses him even more, and cannot help rushing about.

That was terrible. And to get rid of this horror, I wanted to kill myself. I was terrified of what awaited me - I knew that this horror was more terrible than the situation itself, but I could not drive it away and could not patiently wait for the end. No matter how convincing the reasoning was that the vessel in the heart would still burst or something would burst, and everything would end, I could not patiently wait for the end. The horror of the darkness was too great, and I wanted to quickly, quickly get rid of it with a noose or a bullet. And it was this feeling that most of all attracted me to suicide.

“But maybe I overlooked something, did not understand something? I said to myself several times. “It cannot be that this state of despair is characteristic of people!” And I was looking for explanations to my questions in all the knowledge that people have acquired. And I searched painfully and for a long time, and not out of idle curiosity, I did not search languidly, but I searched painfully, stubbornly, day and night, I searched, as a perishing person seeks salvation, and found nothing.

I searched in all knowledge, and not only did not find it, but I became convinced that all those who, like me, searched in knowledge, found nothing in the same way. And not only did they not find it, but they clearly recognized that the very thing that drove me to despair - the meaninglessness of life - is the only undoubted knowledge available to man.

I searched everywhere, and, thanks to a life spent in teaching, and also to the fact that, due to their connections with the world of scientists, scientists themselves of all various branches of knowledge were available to me, who did not refuse to reveal to me all their knowledge not only in books, but also in conversations - I learned everything that knowledge answers the question of life.

For a long time I could not believe that knowledge does not answer the questions of life other than that which it answers. For a long time it seemed to me, peering into the importance and seriousness of the tone of science, which asserted its positions, which had nothing in common with questions of human life, that I did not understand something. For a long time I was shy before knowledge, and it seemed to me that the inconsistency of the answers to my questions was not the fault of knowledge, but my ignorance; but it was not a joke for me, not amusement, but the business of my whole life, and I was, willy-nilly, led to the conviction that my questions were only legitimate questions that serve as the basis of all knowledge, and that it was not I who was to blame with my questions, but science, if it has the pretension to answer these questions.

My question - the one that led me to suicide at the age of fifty - was the simplest question lying in the soul of every person, from a stupid child to the wisest old man - the question without which life is impossible, as I experienced it in practice. The question is: "What will come out of what I do today, what will I do tomorrow - what will come out of my whole life?"

Otherwise expressed, the question would be: "Why should I live, why want anything, why do anything?" In another way, the question can be expressed as follows: “Is there such a meaning in my life that would not be destroyed by the inevitable death that is coming to me?”

To this same, differently expressed question, I sought an answer in human knowledge. And I found that in relation to this question, all human knowledge is divided, as it were, into two opposite hemispheres, at the two opposite ends of which there are two poles: one is negative, the other is positive; but that neither at the one nor the other pole there are answers or questions of life.

One series of knowledge, as it were, does not recognize the question, but on the other hand it clearly and accurately answers its independently posed questions: this is a series of experimental knowledge, and mathematics stands at its extreme point; another series of knowledge recognizes the question, but does not answer it: this is a series of speculative knowledge, and at their extreme point is metaphysics.

From early youth I was occupied with speculative knowledge, but then both mathematical and natural sciences attracted me, and until I put my question clearly to myself, until this question grew up in me, demanding urgent resolution, until then I was satisfied with those fake answers to the question that gives knowledge.

Then, in the field of experience, I said to myself: “Everything develops, differentiates, goes towards complication and improvement, and there are laws governing this course. You are part of the whole. Knowing the whole as far as possible and knowing the law of development, you will know both your place in this whole and yourself. Ashamed as I am to admit, there was a time when I seemed to be satisfied with this. It was the time when I myself became more complicated and developed. My muscles grew and strengthened, my memory was enriched, my ability to think and understand increased, I grew and developed, and, feeling this growth in myself, it was natural for me to think that this is the law of the whole world, in which I will find solutions and questions. of my life. But the time came when growth in me ceased - I felt that I was not developing, but shrinking, my muscles were weakening, my teeth were falling - and I saw that this law not only did not explain anything to me, but that there had never been such a law. and it could not be, but what I took for a law is what I found in myself at a certain time in my life. I took a stricter view of the definition of this law; and it became clear to me that there could be no laws of infinite development; it became clear what to say: in infinite space and time, everything develops, improves, becomes more complicated, differentiates - this means to say nothing. All these are words without meaning, because in the infinite there is neither complex nor simple, neither front nor back, neither better nor worse.

The main thing is that my question is personal: what am I with my desires? - remained completely unanswered. And I realized that this knowledge is very interesting, very attractive, but that this knowledge is accurate and clear in inverse proportion to its applicability to the questions of life: the less it is applicable to the questions of life, the more accurate and clear it is, the more they try to give solutions to questions life, the more they become unclear and unattractive. If you turn to that branch of this knowledge that tries to give solutions to the questions of life - to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology - then you will encounter a striking poverty of thought, the greatest ambiguity, an unjustified pretension to solve irrelevant questions and the incessant contradictions of one thinker with others and even with yourself. If you turn to a branch of knowledge that does not deal with the solution of life's questions, but answers its own scientific, special questions, then you admire the power of the human mind, but you know in advance that there are no answers to the questions of life. This knowledge directly ignores the question of life. They say: “We have no answers to what you are and why you live, and we do not deal with this; but if you need to know the laws of light, chemical compounds, the laws of the development of organisms, if you need to know the laws of bodies, their shapes and the ratio of numbers and magnitudes, if you need to know the laws of your mind, then we have clear, accurate and undeniable answers.

In general, the attitude of the experimental sciences to the question of life can be expressed as follows: Question: Why do I live? - Answer: In an infinitely large space, in an infinitely long time, infinitely small particles change in infinite complexity, and when you understand the laws of these modifications, then you will understand why you live.

Then, in the speculative realm, I said to myself: “All mankind lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles, ideals that guide it. These ideals are expressed in religions, in sciences, arts, forms of statehood. These ideals keep getting higher and higher, and humanity is advancing towards the highest good. I am a part of humanity, and therefore my calling is to promote the consciousness and realization of the ideals of humanity. And I, during my dementia, was satisfied with this; but as soon as the question of life clearly arose in me, this whole theory instantly collapsed. Not to mention the unscrupulous inaccuracy in which knowledge of this kind passes off the conclusions drawn from the study of a small part of humanity as general conclusions, not to mention the mutual inconsistency of various supporters of this view about what the ideals of mankind consist of, a strange thing, not to say - the stupidity of this view lies in the fact that in order to answer the question that every person faces: “what am I”, or “why do I live”, or “what should I do”, a person must first resolve the question: "what is the life of all mankind unknown to him, of which he knows one tiny part in one tiny period of time." In order to understand what he is, a person must first understand what all this mysterious humanity is, consisting of people like himself, who do not understand themselves.

I must confess that there was a time when I believed this. This was the time when I had my favorite ideals that justified my whims, and I tried to come up with a theory by which I could look at my whims as the law of mankind. But as soon as the question of life arose in my soul in all its clarity, this answer immediately shattered into dust. And I realized that just as in the experimental sciences there are real sciences and semi-sciences that try to give answers to questions that are not subject to them, so in this area I realized that there is a whole series of the most widespread knowledge that tries to answer questions that are not subject to them. The semi-sciences of this area - legal, social, historical sciences - try to resolve human issues by the fact that they seem to, each in its own way, resolve the issue of the life of all mankind.

But just as in the field of experimental knowledge, a person who sincerely asks how I should live cannot be satisfied with the answer: study in infinite space the complexities of change of infinite particles, infinite in time, and then you will understand your life, just as a sincere person cannot be satisfied with the answer: study the life of all mankind, of which we cannot know either the beginning or the end, and a small part of which we do not know, and then you will understand your life. And just as in the experimental semi-sciences, these semi-sciences are all the more full of obscurities, inaccuracies, stupidities and contradictions, the further they deviate from their tasks. The task of experimental science is the causal succession of material phenomena. It is enough for experimental science to introduce the question of the final cause, and the result is nonsense. The task of speculative science is the consciousness of the causeless essence of life. It is enough to introduce the study of causal phenomena as social, historical phenomena, and the result is nonsense.

Experimental science only gives positive knowledge and shows the greatness of the human mind when it does not introduce the final cause into its research. And vice versa, speculative science - then only science and shows the greatness of the human mind, when it completely eliminates questions about the sequence of causal phenomena and considers a person only in relation to the final cause. Such is the science in this field, constituting the pole of this hemisphere, metaphysics, or speculative philosophy. This science clearly raises the question: what am I and the whole world? and why me and why the whole world? And since she is, she always answers the same way. Whether ideas, or substance, or spirit, or will, the philosopher calls the essence of life, which is in me and in everything that exists, the philosopher says one thing, that this essence is and that I am the same essence; but why it is, he does not know and does not answer if he is an exact thinker. I ask: Why should this entity exist? What will come out of the fact that it is and will be?.. And philosophy not only does not answer, but itself only asks this. And if it is true philosophy, then its whole work consists only in posing this question clearly. And if it firmly adheres to its task, then it cannot answer the question in any other way: "What am I and the whole world?" - "everything and nothing"; and to the question: “why does the world exist and why do I exist?” - "I do not know".

So, no matter how I turn those speculative answers of philosophy, I will in no way get anything resembling an answer - and not because, as in the field of clear, experimental, the answer does not relate to my question, but because here, although all mental work is directed precisely at my question, there is no answer, and instead of an answer, the same question is obtained, only in a complicated form.

In searching for answers to the question of life, I experienced exactly the same feeling that a person gets lost in the forest.

He went out into the clearing, climbed a tree and clearly saw boundless spaces, but he saw that there was no house there and could not be; he went into the thicket, into the darkness, and saw the darkness, and he was also not and is not at home.

So I wandered in this forest of human knowledge, between gaps of mathematical and experimental knowledge, which opened up clear horizons for me, but such in the direction of which there could be no home, and between the darkness of speculative knowledge, in which I plunged into greater darkness, the farther I moved. , and finally convinced that there is no way out and cannot be.

Surrendering to the light side of knowledge, I realized that I was only averting my eyes from the question. No matter how tempting, clear were the horizons that opened up to me, no matter how tempting it was to plunge into the infinity of this knowledge, I already understood that they, this knowledge, are all the clearer, the less I need them, the less they answer the question.

Well, I know, - I said to myself, - everything that science so stubbornly wants to know, but there is no answer to the question about the meaning of my life on this path. In the speculative realm, however, I understood that, despite the fact, or precisely because the purpose of knowledge was directly aimed at answering my question, there is no answer other than the one that I myself gave myself: What is the meaning of my life? - None. - Or: What will come out of my life? Nothing. - Or: Why does everything that exists exist, and why do I exist? - Then what exists.

Asking one side human knowledge, I received countless exact answers about what I did not ask: about the chemical composition of the stars, about the movement of the sun towards the constellation Hercules, about the origin of species and man, about the forms of infinitesimal atoms, about the oscillation of infinitely small weightless particles of ether; but the answer in this field of knowledge to my question: what is the meaning of my life? - there was one: you are what you call your life, you are a temporary, random clutch of particles. Mutual influence, change of these particles produces in you what you call your life. This clutch will last for some time; then the interaction of these particles will stop - and what you call life will stop, and all your questions will stop. You are a random lump of something. The lump is coming. Debate this lump calls his life. The lump will jump - and the debate and all the questions will end. This is the answer of the clear side of knowledge, and can say nothing else if it strictly follows its foundations.

With such an answer, it turns out that the answer does not answer the question. I need to know the meaning of my life, and the fact that it is a particle of the infinite not only does not give it meaning, but destroys any possible meaning.

The same vague transactions that this side of experienced, accurate knowledge makes with speculation, in which it is said that the meaning of life consists in development and the promotion of this development, due to their inaccuracy and obscurity, cannot be considered answers.

The other side of knowledge, speculative, when it strictly adheres to its foundations, directly answering the question, everywhere and in all ages answers and answered the same thing: the world is something infinite and incomprehensible. Human life is an incomprehensible part of this incomprehensible "everything". Again I exclude all those transactions between speculative and experiential knowledge that constitute the entire ballast of the semi-sciences, the so-called juridical, political, historical. The concepts of development and improvement are again introduced into these sciences just as incorrectly, with the only difference that there is the development of everything, and here it is the life of people. The incorrectness is the same: development, perfection in the infinite cannot have either a goal or a direction, and in relation to my question it answers nothing.

But where speculative knowledge is exact, namely in true philosophy, not in that which Schopenhauer called professorial philosophy, which serves only to distribute all existing phenomena according to new philosophical graphs and call them new names, - where the philosopher does not miss as an essential question, the answer is always the same - the answer given by Socrates, Schopenhauer, Solomon, Buddha.

“We will approach the truth only as far as we move away from life,” says Socrates, preparing for death. - What do we, who love the truth, strive for in life? To be freed from the body and from all the evil that flows from the life of the body. If so, how can we not rejoice when death comes to us?”

"The wise man seeks death all his life, and therefore death is not terrible to him."

Here is what Schopenhauer says:

“Having cognized the inner essence of the world as will and in all phenomena, from the unconscious striving of the dark forces of nature to the full consciousness of human activity, recognizing only the objectivity of this will, we can in no way avoid the consequence that along with the free negation, self-destruction of the will, all those phenomena will disappear. , then the constant striving and attraction without a goal and rest at all levels of objectivity, in which and through which the world consists, the variety of successive forms will disappear, together with the form all its phenomena will disappear with their general forms, space and time, and finally its last main form is subject and object. No will, no idea, no peace. Before us, of course, there is only nothing. But what resists this transition into nothingness, our nature, is, after all, only this very will to exist (Wille zum Leben), which constitutes ourselves, like our world. That we are so afraid of nothingness, or, what is the same, that we want to live like that, only means that we ourselves are nothing but this desire for life, and we know nothing but it. Therefore, what remains after the complete destruction of the will for us, who are still full of will, is, of course, nothing; but, conversely, for those in whom the will has turned and renounced itself, for them this ours is so real world, with all its suns and milky ways, is nothing."

“Vanity of vanities,” says Solomon, “vanity of vanities—all is vanity! What is the use of a man from all his labors with which he toils under the sun? A generation passes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. What was, is what will be; and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. There is something about which they say: “Look, this is new”; but that was already in the ages that were before us. There is no memory of the former; and of what will be, there will be no memory for those who will come after. I, the Ecclesiastes, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to explore and try with wisdom everything that is done under heaven: this hard work God gave to the sons of men, so that they would exercise in it. I saw all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of the spirit ... I also spoke in my heart like this: behold, I have been exalted, I have acquired wisdom more than all who were before me over Jerusalem, and my heart saw a lot of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know foolishness and foolishness; I learned that this, too, is the vexation of the spirit. For in much wisdom there is much sorrow; and whoever multiplies knowledge multiplies sorrow.

“I said in my heart: let me test you with joy and enjoy good; but that too is vanity. About laughter I said: stupidity, but about joy: what does it do? I decided in my heart to delight my body with wine, and while my heart was guided by wisdom, to hold fast to foolishness until I see what is good for the sons of men, what they should do under heaven in the few days of their lives. I undertook great deeds: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself. He made for himself gardens and groves, and planted in them all sorts of fruitful trees; he made himself reservoirs to irrigate from them groves that grow trees; I bought myself servants and maids, and I had households; I also had more herds and flocks than all those who were before me in Jerusalem; collected for himself silver, and gold, and jewels from kings and regions; got singers and female singers and delights of the sons of men - various musical instruments. And I became great and richer than all who were before me in Jerusalem; and my wisdom was with me. Whatever my eyes desired, I did not refuse them, did not forbid my heart any joy. And I looked back at all my works that my hands had done, and at the labor that I had labored in doing them, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of the spirit, and they were of no use under the sun. And I looked back to look at wisdom, and madness, and stupidity. But I learned that one fate befell them all. And I said in my heart: and the same fate will befall me as a fool, - why have I become very wise? And I said in my heart that this too is vanity. Because the wise will not be remembered forever, nor the fool; in the days to come all will be forgotten, and, alas, the wise die as well as the fool! And I hated life, because the deeds that are done under the sun became disgusting to me, for everything is vanity and vexation of the spirit. And I hated all my labor that I toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. For what will a man have from all his labor and the care of his heart, that he labors under the sun? Because all his days are sorrows, and his labors are restlessness; even at night his heart does not know peace. And this is vanity. It is not in the power of man that good is to eat and drink and delight his soul from his labor ...

“Everything and everyone is one: one fate for the righteous and the wicked, the good and the evil, the pure and the impure, the one who sacrifices and who does not sacrifice; both the virtuous and the sinner; both the one who swears, and the one who fears the oath. This is what is evil in everything that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all, and the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart, in their life; and after that they go to the dead. Whoever is among the living, there is still hope, for even a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything, and there is no longer any retribution for them, because the memory of them is forgotten; and their love, and their hatred, and their jealousy have already vanished, and there is no more honor for them forever in anything that is done under the sun.

So says Solomon, or the one who wrote these words.

And here is what Indian wisdom says: Shakya Muni, a young happy prince, from whom diseases, old age, death were hidden, goes for a walk and sees a terrible old man, toothless and drooling. The prince, from whom old age has been hidden until now, is surprised and asks the driver, what is it and why did this man come to such a miserable, disgusting, ugly state? And when he learns that this is the common fate of all people, that he, the young prince, will inevitably face the same thing, he can no longer go for a walk and orders him to return to think it over. And he locks himself alone and thinks. And, probably, he thinks up some kind of consolation for himself, because again, cheerful and happy, he goes out for a walk. But this time he meets the patient. He sees an emaciated, blue, shaking man, with clouded eyes. The prince, from whom the diseases were hidden, stops and asks what it is. And when he learns that this is a disease to which all people are subject, and that he himself, a healthy and happy prince, may fall ill tomorrow in the same way, he again does not have the spirit to have fun, orders him to return and again seeks peace and, probably, finds it. because for the third time he is going for a walk; but the third time he sees another new sight; he sees that they are carrying something. "What is it?" - Dead man. - "What does dead mean?" - asks the prince. He is told that to become dead is to become what the man has become. The prince approaches the dead man, opens it and looks at him. "What will happen to him next?" - asks the prince. He is told that he will be buried in the ground. "Why?" - Because he probably will never be alive again, but only stench and worms will come from him. - “And this is the lot of all people? And the same will happen to me? Will I be buried, and there will be a stench from me, and worms will eat me? - Yes. - "Back! I don't go out and never go again."

And Shakya Muni could not find consolation in life, and he decided that life is the greatest evil, and used all the powers of the soul to get rid of it and free others. And free so that even after death life would not be renewed somehow, in order to destroy life completely, in the bud. This is what all Indian wisdom says.

So these are the direct answers that human wisdom gives when it answers the question of life.

“The life of the body is evil and falsehood. And therefore the destruction of this life of the body is good, and we must desire it, ”says Socrates.

"Life is what should not be - evil, and the transition to nothingness is the only good of life," says Schopenhauer.

“Everything in the world - both stupidity and wisdom, and wealth and poverty, and fun and sorrow - is all vanity and trifles. The man dies and nothing remains. And that's stupid," says Solomon.

“It is impossible to live with the consciousness of the inevitability of suffering, weakening, old age and death - one must free oneself from life, from any possibility of life,” says the Buddha.

And what these strong minds said was said, thought and felt by millions of millions of people like them. And I think and I feel.

So my wandering in knowledge not only did not bring me out of my despair, but only strengthened it. One knowledge did not answer the questions of life, while another knowledge answered, directly confirming my despair and indicating that what I had come to was not the fruit of my delusion, a diseased state of mind - on the contrary, it confirmed to me what I thought was true. and agreed with the conclusions of the strongest minds of mankind.

There is nothing to deceive yourself. Everything is vanity. Happy is he who is not born, death is better than life; gotta get rid of her.

Not finding an explanation in knowledge, I began to look for this explanation in life, hoping to find it in the people around me, and I began to observe people - the same as me, how they live around me and how they relate to this issue, which led to me to despair.

And this is what I found among people who are in the same position as me in terms of education and lifestyle.

I found that for people in my circle there are four ways out of the terrible situation in which we all find ourselves.

The first way out is the way out of ignorance. It consists in not knowing, not understanding that life is evil and nonsense. People of this category - for the most part women, or very young, or very stupid people - have not yet understood the question of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, Buddha. They do not see the dragon waiting for them, nor the mice undermining the bushes they hold on to and licking the drops of honey. But they lick these drops of honey only for the time being: something will turn their attention to the dragon and the mice, and that's the end of their licking. I have nothing to learn from them, you can't stop knowing what you know.

The second way out is the way out of epicureanism. It consists in, knowing the hopelessness of life, to enjoy for the time being those blessings that are, not to look at either the dragon or the mice, but to lick the honey in the best way, especially if there is a lot of it on the bush. Solomon expresses this output thus:

“And I praised joy, because there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat, drink and be merry: this accompanies him in his labors in the days of his life, which God gave him under the sun.

“So go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine in the joy of your heart ... Enjoy life with the woman you love, all the days of your vain life, all your vain days, because this is your share, in life and in your labors, with what you work under the sun ... Everything that your hand can do with your strength, do it, because in the grave where you will go, there is no work, no reflection, no knowledge, no wisdom.

This is how the majority of people in our circle support the possibility of life. The conditions in which they find themselves make it that they have more good than evil, and moral stupidity makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental, that everyone cannot have 1,000 wives and palaces, like Solomon, that for each person with 1,000 wives, there are 1,000 people without wives, and for every palace there are 1,000 people building it by the sweat of their brows, and that the accident that today made me Solomon may tomorrow make me Solomon's slave. The dullness of the imagination of these people gives them the opportunity to forget about what haunted the Buddha - the inevitability of illness, old age and death, which not today - tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures.

This is how most people of our time and way of life think and feel. The fact that some of these people claim that the dullness of their thought and imagination is the philosophy that they call positive does not, in my opinion, distinguish them from the category of those who, not seeing the question, lick honey. And I could not imitate these people: not having their stupidity of imagination, I could not artificially produce it in myself. I could not, just as no living person can, take my eyes off the mice and the dragon when he once saw them.

The third way out is the way out of strength and energy. It consists in the fact that, having understood that life is evil and nonsense, to destroy it. This is what rare strong and consistent people do. Realizing all the stupidity of the joke that was played on them, and realizing that the blessings of the dead are more than the blessings of the living, and that it’s best not to be, they act like that and immediately end this stupid joke, fortunately there are means: a noose around the neck, water, a knife, so that they pierce the heart, trains on the railways. And there are more and more people from our circle doing this. And people do this for the most part in the best period of their lives, when the powers of the soul are in their prime, and few habits that degrade the human mind have yet been mastered.

I saw that this was the most worthy way out, and I wanted to do so.

The fourth exit is the exit of weakness. It consists in understanding this and the meaninglessness of life, and continuing to drag it out, knowing in advance that nothing can come out of it. People of this analysis know that death is better than life, but, not having the strength to act reasonably - to quickly end the deception and kill themselves, they seem to be waiting for something. This is a way out of weakness, because if I know the best and it is in my power, why not surrender to the best? .. I was in this category.

Thus the people of my analysis are saved in four ways from a terrible contradiction. No matter how much I strained my mental attention, besides these four exits, I did not see anything else. One way out: not to understand that life is nonsense, vanity and evil, and that it is better not to live. I could not help but know this, and when I once found out, I could not close my eyes to it. Another way out is to enjoy life as it is, without thinking about the future. And he couldn't do it. I, like Shakya Muni, could not go hunting when I knew that there is old age, suffering, death. My imagination was too vivid. Besides, I could not rejoice at the momentary chance that threw pleasure for a moment into my lot. The third way out: realizing that life is evil and stupidity, stop, kill yourself. I figured it out, but somehow still didn't kill myself. The fourth way out is to live in the position of Solomon, Schopenhauer - to know that life is a stupid joke played on me, and still live, wash, dress, dine, talk and even write books. It was disgusting, painful for me, but I remained in this position.

Now I see that if I did not kill myself, then the reason for this was a vague consciousness of the injustice of my thoughts. No matter how convincing and undoubted the course of my thought and the thoughts of the wise, which led us to the recognition of the nonsense of life, seemed to me, a vague doubt remained in me about the truth of the starting point of my reasoning.

It was like this: I, my mind - recognized that life is unreasonable. If there is no higher mind (and there is none, and nothing can prove it), then the mind is the creator of life for me. If there were no reason, there would be no life for me. How then does this mind deny life, while it is the creator of life itself? Or, on the other hand: if there were no life, there would be no my reason - therefore, reason is the son of life. Life is everything. Reason is the fruit of life, and this reason denies life itself. I felt that something was wrong here.

Life is a senseless evil, that's for sure, I said to myself. - But I lived, I still live, and all mankind has lived and lives. How so? Why does it live when it can not live? Well, am I alone with Schopenhauer so clever that I understood the meaninglessness and evil of life?

The reasoning about the vanity of life is not so cunning, and it has been done for a long time by all the simplest people, but they lived and live. Well, do they all live and never think of doubting the rationality of life?

My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, revealed to me that everything in the world - organic and inorganic - everything is unusually cleverly arranged, only my position is stupid. And these fools - huge masses of ordinary people - do not know anything about how everything organic and inorganic is arranged in the world, but they live, and it seems to them that their life is very reasonably arranged!

And it occurred to me: why don't I know something else? After all, this is exactly what ignorance does. Ignorance after all always this most says. When it doesn't know something, it says that what it doesn't know is stupid. In fact, it turns out that there is a whole humanity that has been acting weird and lives, as if understanding the meaning of its life, because, without understanding it, it could not live, but I say that all this life is nonsense, and I cannot live.

Nobody prevents Schopenhauer and me from denying life. But then kill yourself - and you will not argue. If you don't like life, kill yourself. But you live, you cannot understand the meaning of life, so stop it, and do not spin in this life, telling and painting that you do not understand life. He came to a cheerful company, everyone is very good, everyone knows what they are doing, but you are bored and disgusted, so leave.

Indeed, what are we, convinced of the necessity of suicide and not daring to commit it, if not the weakest, inconsistent and, to put it simply, stupid people, rushing around with our stupidity like a fool with a written sack?

After all, our wisdom, no matter how undoubtedly true, did not give us knowledge of the meaning of our lives. Yet mankind, making life, millions, do not doubt the meaning of life.

In fact, since those ancient, ancient times, as there is a life about which I know something, people lived, knowing that reasoning about the futility of life, which showed me its nonsense, and yet they lived, giving it some kind of that's the meaning.

Since the beginning of any life of people, they already had this meaning of life, and they led this life, which has come down to me. Everything that is in me and around me, all this is the fruit of their knowledge of life. The very tools of thought with which I discuss this life and condemn it, all this was not done by me, but by them. I myself was born, brought up, grew up thanks to them. They dug up iron, taught them how to cut wood, tamed cows and horses, taught them how to sow, taught us how to live together, put our lives in order; they taught me to think, to speak. And I, their work, nourished by them, inspired by them, taught by them, thinking with their thoughts and words, proved to them that they are nonsense! “Something is wrong here,” I said to myself. “Somewhere I made a mistake.” But I couldn't find what was wrong.

All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less coherently, then I could not express. Then I only felt that, however logically inevitable my conclusions about the futility of life, confirmed by the greatest thinkers, were, something was wrong with them. Whether in the reasoning itself, or in the formulation of the question, I did not know; I only felt that the reasonable persuasiveness was perfect, but that it was not enough. All these arguments could not convince me so that I did what followed from my reasoning, i.e. for me to kill myself. And I would be lying if I said that I came to what I came to by reason and did not kill myself. The mind worked, but something else also worked, which I cannot call otherwise than the consciousness of life. There was also a force at work that forced me to pay attention to this, and not to that, and it was this force that brought me out of my desperate situation and directed my mind in a completely different way. This force forced me to pay attention to the fact that I, with hundreds of people like me, do not have the whole of humanity, that I still do not know the life of humanity.

Looking around the close circle of people my peers, I saw only people who did not understand the question, who understood and drowned out the question with the drunkenness of life, who understood and ended life and who understood and, out of weakness, lived out a desperate life. And I didn't see any others. It seemed to me that that close circle of scientists, rich and leisurely people, to which I belonged, made up all of humanity, and that those billions of living and living people were just that, some kind of cattle - not people.

Strange as it may seem, it seems incredibly incomprehensible to me now how, while talking about life, I could overlook the life of mankind surrounding me from all sides, how could I be so ridiculously mistaken as to think that my life, Solomon’s and Schopenhauer’s, is real. , a normal life, and the life of billions is a circumstance not worthy of attention, however strange it may seem to me now, I see that it was so. In the delusion of the pride of my mind, it seemed to me so undoubted that Solomon and Schopenhauer and I raised the question so truly and truly that nothing else could be, it seemed so undoubtedly that all these billions belonged to those who had not yet reached the comprehension of all depth. the question that I was looking for the meaning of my life and never once thought: “But what meaning do all the billions who have lived and continue to give their lives in the world give and give to their lives?”

For a long time I lived in this madness, which is especially characteristic, not in words, but in deeds, of us - the most liberal and learned people. But is it due to my strange physical love for the real working people, which made me understand them and see that they are not so stupid as we think, or due to the sincerity of my conviction that I cannot know anything, like that, that the best thing I can do is to hang myself, I felt that if I want to live and understand the meaning of life, then I need to seek this meaning of life not from those who have lost the meaning of life and want to kill themselves, but from those billions of obsolete and living people who make life and bear their own and our lives on themselves. And I looked back at the huge masses of obsolete and living simple people, not scientists and not rich people, and I saw something completely different. I saw that all these billions of living and living people, all, with rare exceptions, do not fit into my division, that I cannot recognize them as not understanding the question, because they themselves put it and answer it with extraordinary clarity. I cannot recognize them as Epicureans either, because their life is made up more of hardships and sufferings than pleasures; I can even less recognize them as unreasonably living a meaningless life, since every act of their life and death itself is explained by them. They consider killing themselves to be the greatest evil. It turned out that all mankind has some kind of knowledge of the meaning of life that I do not recognize and despise. It turned out that rational knowledge does not give the meaning of life, excludes life; the meaning given to life by billions of people, by all mankind, is based on some despicable, false knowledge.

Reasonable knowledge in the face of scientists and the wise denies the meaning of life, and the vast masses of people, all of humanity, recognize this meaning in unreasonable knowledge. And this unreasonable knowledge is faith, the very one that I could not help rejecting. It's God 1 and 3, it's creation in 6 days, devils and angels and all the things that I can't accept until I'm crazy.

My position was terrible. I knew that I would not find anything on the path of rational knowledge, except the denial of life, and there in faith - nothing but the denial of reason, which is even more impossible than the denial of life. According to rational knowledge, it turned out that life is evil, and people know this, it depends on people not to live, but they lived and live, and I myself lived, although I knew for a long time that life is meaningless and evil. By faith, it turned out that in order to understand the meaning of life, I must renounce the mind, the very one that needs meaning.

A contradiction emerged from which there were only two ways out: either what I called reasonable was not as reasonable as I thought; or what seemed unreasonable to me was not as unreasonable as I thought. And I began to check the course of reasoning of my reasonable knowledge.

Checking the course of reasoning of reasonable knowledge, I found it absolutely correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was inevitable; but I saw an error. The mistake was that I was thinking inconsistently with the question I had posed. The question was: why should I live, i.e. what will come out of the real, not annihilating from my illusory, annihilating life, what is the meaning of my finite existence in this infinite world? And to answer this question, I studied life.

Solutions to all possible questions of life obviously could not satisfy me, because my question, no matter how simple it seems at first, includes the requirement to explain the finite by the infinite and vice versa.

I asked: what is the timeless, non-causal, extra-spatial meaning of my life? And I answered the question: what is the temporal, causal and spatial significance of my life? It turned out that after a long labor of thought I answered: none.

In my reasoning, I constantly equated, and could not do otherwise, the finite with the finite and the infinite with the infinite, and therefore it turned out for me that it should have come out: force is force, matter is matter, will is will, infinity is infinity , nothing is nothing, and nothing could go further.

There was something similar to what happens in mathematics, when, thinking about solving an equation, you solve an identity. The line of thought is correct, but the result is the answer: a equals a, or x=x, or 0=0. The same thing happened with my reasoning in relation to the question of the meaning of my life. The answers given by all science to this question are only identities.

Indeed, strictly rational knowledge, that knowledge which, as Descartes did, begins with a complete doubt of everything, casts aside all knowledge admitted to faith and builds everything anew on the laws of reason and experience - and cannot give any other answer to the question of life, like the one I got, the answer is vague. It only seemed to me at first that knowledge gave a positive answer - Schopenhauer's answer: life has no meaning, it is evil. But, having analyzed the case, I realized that the answer was not positive, that my feeling only expressed it in this way. The answer is strictly expressed, as it is expressed by the Brahmins, and by Solomon, and by Schopenhauer, there is only an indefinite answer, or identity: 0=0, life, which seems to me nothing, is nothing. So philosophical knowledge does not deny anything, but only answers that this question cannot be solved by it, that for it the solution remains indeterminate.

Having understood this, I realized that it was impossible to look for an answer to my question in rational knowledge and that the answer given by rational knowledge is only an indication that the answer can be obtained only if the question is posed differently, only when the reasoning will be the question of the relation of the finite to the infinite is introduced. I also realized that, however unreasonable and ugly the answers given by faith, they have the advantage of introducing into each answer the relation of the finite to the infinite, without which there can be no answer.

No matter how I put the question: how can I live? - Answer: according to the law of God. What will come out of my real life? - Eternal torment or eternal bliss. What is the meaning that is not destroyed by death? Connection with the infinite God, paradise.

So, in addition to rational knowledge, which had previously seemed to me the only one, I was inevitably led to the recognition that all living mankind has some other kind of knowledge, unreasonable - faith, which makes it possible to live.

All the irrationality of faith remained for me the same as before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind answers to the questions of life and, consequently, the opportunity to live.

Reasonable knowledge led me to admit that life was meaningless, my life stopped, and I wanted to destroy myself. Looking back at people, at all of humanity, I saw that people live and claim to know the meaning of life. I looked back at myself: I lived as long as I knew the meaning of life. Faith gave meaning to life and the possibility of life both to other people and to me.

Looking further back at the people of other countries, at my contemporaries and those who have become obsolete, I saw the same thing. Where there is life, there is faith, since there is humanity, it makes it possible to live, and the main features of faith are always and everywhere the same.

Whatever answers and to whom whatever faith may give, every answer of faith to the finite existence of man gives the meaning of the infinite, a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation and death. This means that in one faith one can find the meaning and possibility of life. And I realized that faith in its most essential meaning is not only “denunciation of invisible things”, etc., is not revelation (this is only a description of one of the signs of faith), is not only a person’s relationship to God (it is necessary to define faith , and then God, and not through God to determine faith), is not only agreement with what was said to a person, as faith is most often understood, - faith is knowledge of the meaning of human life, as a result of which a person does not destroy himself, but lives. Faith is the power of life. If a person lives, then he believes in something. If he did not believe that one had to live for something, then he would not live. If he does not see and does not understand the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in this finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. You cannot live without faith.

And I remembered the whole course of my inner work and was horrified. Now it was clear to me that in order for a person to live, he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life, in which the finite would be equated with the infinite. I had such an explanation, but it was unnecessary to me, as long as I believed in the finite, and I began to test it with my mind. And in front of the light of reason, all the previous explanation shattered into dust. But the time came when I stopped believing in the finite. And then I began to build on reasonable grounds from what I knew, such an explanation that would give the meaning of life; but nothing was built. Together with the best minds of mankind, I came to the conclusion that 0 equals 0, and I was very surprised that I got such a solution, when nothing else could come out.

What did I do when I was looking for an answer in the knowledge of the experienced? I wanted to know why I live, and for this I studied everything that is outside of me. It is clear that I could learn a lot, but nothing that I need.

What did I do when I was looking for an answer in philosophical knowledge? I studied the thoughts of those beings who were in the same position as me, who did not have an answer to the question: why do I live. It is clear that I could not learn anything other than that I myself knew that it was impossible to know anything.

What is me? part of the infinite. After all, the whole task lies in these two words.

Has humanity made this question for itself only since yesterday? And really no one before me asked himself this question - such a simple question, asking on the tongue of every smart child?

After all, this question has been raised since the time people have been; and since there have been people, it has been understood that to solve this question it is equally insufficient to equate the finite with the finite and the infinite with the infinite, and since there have been people, the relations of the finite with the infinite have been found and expressed.

All these concepts, in which the finite is equated with the infinite and the meaning of life is obtained, the concepts of God, freedom, goodness, we subject to logical research. And these concepts do not withstand the scrutiny of reason.

If it weren't so terrible, it would be funny with what pride and complacency we, like children, take apart a watch, take out a spring, make a toy out of it, and then are surprised that the clock stops running.

It is necessary and expensive to resolve the contradiction between the finite and the infinite and to answer the question of life in such a way that life is possible. And this is the only solution that we find everywhere, always and among all peoples - a solution taken out of time in which the lives of people are lost for us, a solution so difficult that we cannot do anything of the kind - this is the solution we thoughtlessly we destroy in order to raise again the question that is inherent in everyone and to which we have no answer.

The concepts of the infinite God, the divinity of the soul, the connection of human affairs with God, the concepts of moral good and evil are concepts developed in the historical distance of human life hidden from our eyes, the essence of those concepts without which there would be no life and myself, and I, having thrown aside all this work of all mankind, I want to do everything myself in a new way and in my own way.

I did not think so then, but the germs of these thoughts were already in me. I understood, firstly, that my position with Schopenhauer and Solomon, despite our wisdom, is stupid: we understand that life is evil, and yet we live. This is obviously stupid, because if life is stupid - and I love everything reasonable so much - then life must be destroyed, and there will be no one to deny it. Secondly, I understood that all our reasoning revolves in a vicious circle, like a wheel that does not cling to a gear. No matter how much and no matter how well we argue, we cannot get an answer to the question, and 0 will always be equal to 0, and therefore our path is probably erroneous. Thirdly, I began to understand that the answers given by faith contain the deepest wisdom of mankind, and that I had no right to deny them on the basis of reason, and that, most importantly, these answers alone answer the question of life.

I understood that, but that didn't make it any easier for me.

I was now ready to accept any faith, so long as it did not demand from me a direct denial of reason, which would be a lie. And I studied both Buddhism and Mohammedanism from books, and most of all Christianity both from books and living people who surrounded me.

Naturally, I turned first of all to the believing people of my circle, to learned people, to Orthodox theologians, to the elder monks, to Orthodox theologians of a new shade, and even to the so-called new Christians, who profess salvation by faith in the atonement. And I seized on these believers and interrogated them about how they believe and what they see the meaning of life.

Despite the fact that I made all kinds of concessions, avoided all disputes, I could not accept the faith of these people, I saw that what they presented as faith was not an explanation, but a obscuration of the meaning of life, and that they themselves affirmed their faith not in order to answer the question of life that led me to faith, but for some other purposes alien to me.

I remember the painful feeling of horror of returning to the former despair after hope, which I experienced many, many times in my dealings with these people.

The more, in more detail they expounded their beliefs to me, the more clearly I saw their error and the loss of my hope to find in their faith an explanation of the meaning of life.

It was not that in the exposition of their doctrine they mixed many more unnecessary and unreasonable things with the Christian truths that were always close to me - it was not this that repelled me; but I was repulsed by the fact that the life of these people was the same as mine, with the only difference that it did not correspond to the very principles that they expounded in their dogma. I clearly felt that they were deceiving themselves and that they, like me, have no other meaning in life than to live while they live, and to take everything that a hand can take. I saw this by the fact that if they had that sense in which the fear of deprivation, suffering and death is destroyed, then they would not be afraid of them. And they, these believers of our circle, just like me, lived in abundance, tried to increase or maintain it, were afraid of deprivation, suffering, death, and just like me and all of us, unbelievers, lived, satisfying lusts, lived just as badly, if not worse, than unbelievers.

No reasoning could convince me of the truth of their faith. Only such actions, which would show that they have a meaning of life such that fearful poverty, illness, death are not terrible for them, could convince me. And I have not seen such actions between these diverse believers of our circle. I have seen such actions, on the contrary, between the most unbelieving people of our circle, but never between the so-called believers of our circle.

And I realized that the faith of these people is not the faith that I was looking for, that their faith is not faith, but only one of the Epicurean consolations in life. I realized that this faith is suitable, perhaps not for consolation, but for some distraction for the repentant Solomon on his deathbed, but it cannot be suitable for the vast majority of humanity, which is called not to make fun, using the labors of others, but to create life.

In order for all of humanity to live, in order for it to continue life, giving it meaning, they, these billions, must have a different, real knowledge of faith. After all, it wasn’t that Solomon and Schopenhauer and I didn’t kill ourselves, it wasn’t that that convinced me of the existence of faith, but the fact that these billions lived and still live, and they carried us with the Solomons on their waves of life.

And I began to get close to believers from poor, simple, unlearned people, with wanderers, monks, schismatics, peasants. The creed of these people from the people was also Christian, like the creed of the pseudo-believers from our circle. A lot of superstitions were also mixed with Christian truths, but the difference was that the superstitions of the believers of our circle were completely unnecessary to them, did not fit with their life, were only a kind of Epicurean fun; the superstitions of the believers among the working people were connected with their lives to such an extent that it was impossible to imagine their life without these superstitions - they were a necessary condition of this life. The whole life of believers in our circle was a contradiction to their faith, and the whole life of believers and workers was a confirmation of the meaning of life, which gave knowledge of faith. And I began to look into the lives and beliefs of these people, and the more I looked, the more I became convinced that they have real faith, that their faith is necessary for them and alone gives them the meaning and possibility of life. Contrary to what I saw in our circle, where life without faith is possible and where out of a thousand hardly one recognizes himself as a believer, among them there is hardly one non-believer in thousands. In contrast to what I saw in our circle, where the whole life is spent in idleness, fun and dissatisfaction with life, I saw that the whole life of these people was spent in hard work and they were less dissatisfied with life than the rich. In contrast to the fact that people of our circle resisted and were indignant at fate for hardships and sufferings, these people accepted illnesses and sorrows without any bewilderment, resistance, but with a calm and firm conviction that all this should be and cannot be otherwise, that all this is good. In contrast to the fact that the smarter we are, the less we understand the meaning of life and see some kind of evil mockery in the fact that we suffer and die, these people live, suffer and approach death with calmness, most often with joy. In contrast to the fact that a calm death, a death without horror and despair, is the rarest exception in our circle, a restless, rebellious and joyless death is the rarest exception among the people. And there are many such people, deprived of everything that for Solomon and me is the only good of life, and experiencing the greatest happiness at the same time. I looked around wider. I peered into the life of past and present huge masses of people. And I saw those who understood the meaning of life, who knew how to live and die, not two, three, ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions. And all of them, infinitely different in their disposition, mind, education, position, all equally and completely opposite to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, calmly worked, endured hardships and suffering, lived and died, seeing in this not vanity, but good.

And I loved these people. The more I delved into their lives of living people and the lives of the same dead people about whom I read and heard, the more I loved them, and the easier it became for me to live. I lived like this for two years, and a revolution happened to me, which had been preparing in me for a long time and the makings of which had always been in me. It happened to me that the life of our circle - the rich, the scientists - not only disgusted me, but lost all meaning. All our actions, reasoning, science, art - all this appeared to me as pampering. I realized that it is impossible to look for meaning in this. The actions of the working people, who create life, appeared to me as a single real deed. And I realized that the meaning given to this life is the truth, and I accepted it.

What if an executioner who spends his life in torture and cutting off heads, or a dead drunkard, or a madman who has sat down for life in dark room who littered this room of his and imagined that he would perish if he left it - what if they asked themselves: what is life? Obviously, to the question: what is life, they could not get any other answer than the one that life is the greatest evil; and the madman's answer would be perfectly correct, but only for him. What, how am I as crazy? What, like all of us, rich, learned people, are just as crazy? And I realized that we really are so crazy. I must have been so crazy.

The life of the world is accomplished according to someone's will - someone is doing his own business with this life of the whole world and our lives. In order to have hope of understanding the meaning of this will, we must first of all fulfill it - to do what they want from us. And if I do not do what they want from me, then I will never understand what they want from me, much less what they want from all of us and from the whole world.

If a naked, hungry beggar was taken from a crossroads, brought to a covered place of a fine establishment, fed, watered and forced to move some kind of stick up and down, then it is obvious that before dismantling why he was taken, why move the stick, is the device reasonable? of the whole establishment, the beggar must first of all move the stick. If he moves the stick, then he will understand that this stick is moving the pump, that the pump is pumping water, that the water is flowing through the beds; then they will lead him out of the covered well and put him to another work, and he will gather fruits and enter into the joy of his master, and, moving from a lower work to a higher one, understanding more and more the structure of the whole institution and participating in it, he will never even think to ask Why is he here, and certainly will not reproach the owner.

So those who do his will do not reproach the owner, simple people, workers, unlearned, those whom we consider to be cattle; but here we are, wise men, we eat everything that is the master’s, but we don’t do what the master wants us to do, and instead of doing it, we sat in a circle and argued: “Why move the stick? It's stupid, after all." That's what they thought. We thought of the fact that the owner is stupid or he is not, and we are smart, we just feel that we are no good, and we need to get rid of ourselves somehow.

At the same time, the following happened to me. Throughout this year, when I asked myself almost every minute whether I should end up with a noose or a bullet, all this time, next to those trains of thoughts and observations of which I spoke, my heart was languishing with a painful feeling. I cannot call this feeling otherwise than the search for God.

I say that this search for God was not reasoning, but a feeling, because this search did not follow from my train of thought - it was even directly opposite to them - but it flowed from the heart. It was a feeling of fear, orphanhood, loneliness among everything alien and hope for someone's help.

In spite of the fact that I was fully convinced of the impossibility of proving the existence of God (Kant proved to me, and I fully understood him, that it was impossible to prove this), I nevertheless sought God, hoped that I would find him, and appealed to old habit of pleading for what I was looking for and did not find. Either I tested in my mind the arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer about the impossibility of proving the existence of God, or I began to refute them. Reason, I told myself, is not the same category of thinking as space and time. If I am, then there is a reason, and a reason for reasons. And this cause of everything is that which is called God; and I dwelled on this thought and tried with all my being to recognize the presence of this cause. And as soon as I realized that there was a power in whose power I was, I immediately felt the possibility of life. But I asked myself: “What is this cause, this force? How should I think about her, how should I feel about what I call God? And only answers familiar to me came to my mind: "He is a creator, a provider." These answers did not satisfy me, and I felt that what I needed for life was disappearing in me. I was horrified and began to pray to the one I was looking for to help me. And the more I prayed, the more obvious it became to me that he did not hear me and that there was no one to turn to. And with despair in my heart that there is no and no God, I said: “Lord, have mercy, save me! Lord, teach me, my God!” But no one had mercy on me, and I felt that my life was coming to a standstill.

But again and again, from various other angles, I came to the same recognition that I could not, without any reason, reason and meaning, come into the world, that I could not be such a chick that had fallen out of the nest, as I felt myself. Let me, a fallen chick, lie on my back, eat in tall grass, but I eat because I know that my mother endured me in herself, hatched, warmed, fed, loved. Where is she, this mother? If they abandoned me, then who abandoned me? I cannot hide from myself that someone gave birth to me lovingly. Who is this someone? God again.

He knows and sees my quest, despair, struggle. “He is,” I said to myself. And as soon as I acknowledged this for a moment, life immediately arose within me, and I felt both the possibility and the joy of being. But again, from recognizing the existence of God, I moved on to finding a relationship with Him, and again I imagined that God, our creator, in three persons, who sent the Son-Redeemer. And again this God separate from the world, from me, like an ice floe, melted, melted before my eyes, and again there was nothing left, and again the source of life dried up, I fell into despair and felt that I had nothing else to do but to kill myself. And worst of all, I felt like I couldn't do that either.

Not two, not three times, but dozens, hundreds of times I came to these positions - now joy and revival, then again despair and consciousness of the impossibility of life.

I remember it was early spring I was alone in the forest, listening to the sounds of the forest. I listened and thought about the same thing, as I have constantly thought about the same thing these last three years. I was looking for God again.

“Well, there is no God,” I said to myself, “there is no one who would not be my idea, but the reality is the same as my whole life; there's no such thing. And nothing, no miracles can prove this, because miracles will be my idea, and even an unreasonable one.

“But my concept of God, of the one I am looking for? I asked myself. Where did this concept come from? And again, at this thought, joyful waves of life rose up in me. Everything around me came to life, made sense. But my joy did not last long. The mind continued its work.

“The concept of God is not God,” I said to myself. - The concept is what happens in me, the concept of God is what I can arouse and I can not arouse in myself. This is not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something without which there could be no life. And again everything began to die around me and in me, and again I wanted to kill myself.

But then I looked back at myself, at what was going on in me; and I remembered all those hundreds of deaths and resurrections that had taken place in me. I remembered that I lived only when I believed in God. As it was before, so it is now, I said to myself: as soon as I know about God, I live; it is worth forgetting, not believing in him, and I die.

What are these resurrections and deaths? After all, I do not live when I lose faith in the existence of God, because I would have killed myself long ago if I had not had a vague hope of finding him. After all, I live, truly live only when I feel it and seek it. So what else am I looking for? cried a voice within me. - So here he is. He is something you cannot live without. Knowing God and living are one and the same. God is life.

"Live in search of God, and then there will be no life without God." And stronger than ever everything was illuminated in me and around me, and this light no longer left me.

And I saved myself from suicide. When and how this revolution took place in me, I could not say. How imperceptibly, gradually, the force of life was destroyed in me, and I came to the impossibility of living, to the cessation of life, to the need for suicide, just as gradually, imperceptibly, this force of life returned to me. And it is strange that the force of life that returned to me was not new, but the oldest, the same that attracted me at the first stages of my life.

I returned in everything to the very old, childish and youthful. I returned to faith in that will that produced me and wants something from me; I returned to the fact that the main and only goal of my life is to be better, i.e. live more in accordance with this will; I returned to the fact that I can find the expression of this will in what, in the distance hiding from me, all mankind has worked out for its guidance, i.e. I returned to faith in God, in moral perfection and in a tradition that conveyed the meaning of life. The only difference was that then all this was accepted unconsciously, but now I knew that without it I could not live.

It seems that this is what happened to me: I don’t remember when they put me in a boat, pushed me away from some unknown shore, showed me the direction to the other shore, gave oars into inexperienced hands and left me alone. I worked as best I could, with oars and swam; but the farther I swam to the middle, the faster became the current that carried me away from the goal, and the more and more often I met swimmers like me, carried away by the current. There were lone swimmers who continued rowing; there were swimmers who abandoned their oars; there were big boats, huge ships full of people; some fought with the current, others gave themselves to it. And the further I swam, the more, looking at the direction downstream, along the stream of all those floating, I forgot the direction given to me. In the very middle of the stream, in the cramped boats and ships rushing down, I already completely lost my direction and abandoned the oars. From all sides, with joy and jubilation, swimmers rushed downstream on sails and oars around me, assuring me and each other that there could be no other direction. And I believed them and swam with them. And I was carried far, so far that I heard the noise of the rapids in which I was to crash, and saw the boats crashed in them. And I came to my senses. For a long time I could not understand what had happened to me. I saw in front of me one destruction, to which I fled and which I was afraid of, I did not see salvation anywhere and did not know what to do. But, looking back, I saw countless boats that, without ceasing, stubbornly interrupted the current, remembered the shore, the oars and the direction, and began to row back upstream and towards the shore.

The shore was God, the direction was tradition, the oars were the freedom given to me to paddle to the shore to unite with God. So, the power of life was renewed in me, and I began to live again.

My attitude to faith now and then was completely different. Previously, life itself seemed to me full of meaning, and faith seemed to be an arbitrary assertion of some completely unnecessary, unreasonable and unrelated propositions to me. I then asked myself what meaning these provisions had, and, convinced that they did not have it, I threw them aside. Now, on the contrary, I knew for sure that my life did not and could not have any meaning, and the positions of faith not only did not seem unnecessary to me, but I was led by undoubted experience to the conviction that only these positions of faith give meaning to life. Previously, I looked at them as completely unnecessary gibberish, but now, if I did not understand them, I knew that they made sense, and told myself that I had to learn to understand them.

I made the following argument. I said to myself: the knowledge of faith follows, like all mankind with its mind, from a mysterious beginning. This beginning is God, the beginning of both the human body and its mind. Just as my body came to me successively from God, so did my mind and my comprehension of life come to me, and therefore all those stages of development of this comprehension of life cannot be false. Whatever people truly believe must be true; it can be expressed in various ways, but it cannot be a lie, and therefore if it seems to me a lie, it only means that I do not understand it. In addition, I said to myself: the essence of any faith is that it gives life a meaning that is not destroyed by death. Naturally, in order for faith to be able to answer the question of a king dying in luxury, an old slave tormented by work, an unintelligent child, a wise old man, a half-witted old woman, a young happy woman, a young man restless with passions, all people under the most diverse conditions of life and education, - naturally, if there is one answer that answers the eternal one question of life: “why do I live, what will come out of my life?” - then this answer, although one in its essence, must be infinitely diverse in its manifestations; and the more united, the truer, the deeper this answer, the more naturally strange and ugly it must appear in its attempts at expression, according to the education and position of each. But these reasonings, which justify for me the strangeness of the ritual side of faith, were still insufficient for me myself, in that only work of life for me, in faith, to allow myself to do things that I would doubt. I wished with all the strength of my soul to be able to merge with the people, fulfilling the ritual side of their faith; but I couldn't do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what is sacred to me, if I did. But then new, our Russian theological writings came to my aid.

According to the explanation of these theologians, the fundamental dogma of faith is the infallible church. From the recognition of this dogma follows, as a necessary consequence, the truth of everything professed by the Church. The Church, as an assembly of believers united by love and therefore having true knowledge, has become the foundation of my faith. I told myself that divine truth cannot be accessible to one person, it is revealed only to the whole set of people united by love. In order to comprehend the truth, one must not be divided; and in order not to be divided, one must love and reconcile with what one does not agree with. Truth will be revealed to love, and therefore, if you do not obey the rites of the church, you violate love; and by violating love, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to know the truth. I did not then see the sophistry contained in this reasoning. I did not then see that unity in love can give the greatest love, but I did not see the theological truth expressed in certain words in the Nicene Creed, nor did I see that love could in no way make a certain expression of truth obligatory for unity. At that time I did not see the error of this reasoning, and thanks to it I was able to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church, without understanding most of them. At that time I tried with all the strength of my soul to avoid any reasoning, contradictions and tried to explain, as rationally as possible, those church positions that I came across.

Performing the rites of the church, I humbled my mind and subordinated myself to the tradition that all mankind had. I united with my ancestors, with my loved ones - father, mother, grandfathers, grandmothers. They and all the former ones believed and lived, and produced me. I connected with all the millions of people I respect from the people. Moreover, these actions themselves did not have anything bad in them (I considered indulgence to lusts to be bad). Getting up early for the church service, I knew that I was doing well only because in order to humble my pride of mind, to draw closer to my ancestors and contemporaries, so that, in the name of searching for the meaning of life, I would sacrifice my bodily peace. It was the same during fasting, during the daily reading of prayers with bows, the same when observing all fasts. No matter how insignificant these sacrifices were, they were sacrifices in the name of good. I used to eat, fast, observe temporary prayers at home and in church. In listening to church services, I delved into every word and gave them meaning when I could. At mass, the most important words for me were: “Let us love one another and with one mind...” Further words: “We confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as one” - I skipped because I could not understand them.

It was so necessary for me then to believe in order to live, that I unconsciously concealed from myself the contradictions and ambiguities of the dogma. But this comprehension of rituals had a limit. If the litany became clearer and clearer to me in its main words, if I somehow explained to myself the words: “and our Lady Holy Mother of God and all the saints, remembering ourselves, and each other, and our whole belly to Christ our God, "- if I explained the frequent repetition of prayers for the king and his relatives by the fact that they are more subject to temptation than others, and therefore require prayers more , then prayers for subjugation under the noses of the enemy and adversary, if I explained them by the fact that the enemy is evil - these and other prayers, like the cherubic one and the whole sacrament of the proskomedia or “chosen governor”, etc., almost two-thirds of all services , - either had no explanations at all, or I felt that, in giving them explanations, I was lying and thereby completely destroying my relationship with God, completely losing any possibility of faith.

I experienced the same when celebrating major holidays. Remember the Sabbath day, i.e. to dedicate one day to turning to God, it was clear to me. But main holiday there was a memory of the event of the resurrection, the reality of which I could not imagine and understand. And this Sunday was the name of the weekly celebrated day. And in these days the sacrament of the Eucharist was celebrated, which was completely incomprehensible to me. The rest of all twelve holidays, except for Christmas, were memories of miracles, about what I tried not to think about, so as not to deny it: Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, Intercession, etc. When celebrating these holidays, feeling that importance is being attributed to the very thing that for me is of the opposite importance, I either invented explanations that calmed me, or closed my eyes so as not to see that which tempts me.

This happened to me most strongly when participating in the most common sacraments, considered the most important: baptism and communion. Here, not only did I come across not only incomprehensible, but quite understandable actions: these actions seemed seductive to me, and I was put in a dilemma - either to lie or to reject.

I will never forget the painful feeling I experienced on the day when I took communion for the first time after many years. Services, confession, rules - all this was clear to me and produced in me a joyful consciousness that the meaning of life was being revealed to me. I explained communion itself to myself as an action performed in remembrance of Christ and signifying cleansing from sin and full acceptance of the teachings of Christ. If this explanation was artificial, then I did not notice its artificiality. It was so joyful for me, humbled and humbled before my confessor, a simple timid priest, to turn out all the dirt of my soul, repenting of my vices, it was so joyful to merge in my thoughts with the aspirations of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the rules, it was so joyful to unite with all those who believed and believed that I did not feel the artificiality of my explanation. But when I approached the royal doors and the priest made me repeat what I believe, that what I will swallow is the true body and blood, it cut me to the heart; it's not much of a false note, it's a cruel demand from someone who obviously never knew what faith is.

But now I allow myself to say that this was a cruel demand, at the same time I did not even think of it - I was only inexpressibly hurt. I was no longer in the position in which I was in my youth, thinking that everything in life is clear; After all, I came to faith because, apart from faith, I did not find anything, probably nothing, except death, therefore it was impossible to discard this faith, and I submitted. And I found in my soul a feeling that helped me bear it. It was a feeling of self-humiliation and humility. I resigned myself, swallowed this blood and body without sacrilege, with a desire to believe, but the blow had already been dealt. And, knowing in advance what awaited me, I could no longer go another time.

I continued to perform the rites of the church in the same way and still believed that there was truth in the creed that I followed, and something happened to me that is now clear to me, but then it seemed strange.

I listened to the conversation of an illiterate peasant wanderer about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and the knowledge of faith was revealed to me. I approached the people, listening to their judgments about life, about faith, and I understood the truth more and more. The same thing happened to me when reading the Chetia Menaia and the Prologues; it became my favorite reading. Excluding miracles, looking at them as a plot expressing a thought, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life. There were the lives of Macarius the Great, Joasaph the Tsarevich (the story of Buddha), there were the words of John Chrysostom, the words about a traveler in a well, about a monk who found gold, about Peter the publican; there is the history of the martyrs, all declaring one thing, that death does not exclude life; there is the history of the illiterate, stupid and ignorant of the teachings of the church who were saved.

But as soon as I came into contact with learned believers or took their books, some kind of self-doubt, discontent, bitterness of the dispute arose in me, and I felt that the more I delve into their speeches, the more I move away from the truth and go to abyss.

How many times have I envied the peasants for their ignorance and ignorance. From those positions of faith, from which obvious nonsense came out for me, nothing false came out for them; they could accept them and could believe in the truth, in the truth in which I also believed. Only for me, the unfortunate one, it was clear that the truth was intertwined with lies with the thinnest threads and that I could not accept it in this form.

So I lived for about three years, and at first, when, like a catechumen, I only gradually became familiar with the truth, only guided by my instincts I went where it seemed to me brighter, these collisions amazed me less. When I did not understand something, I said to myself: "I am guilty, I am bad." But the more I began to be imbued with those truths that I studied, the more they became the basis of life, the harder, more striking these collisions became and the sharper became the line that exists between what I do not understand, because I do not know how to understand, and that which cannot be understood otherwise than by lying to oneself.

Despite these doubts and sufferings, I still adhered to Orthodoxy. But questions of life arose that needed to be resolved, and here the resolution of these questions by the Church, contrary to the very foundations of the faith by which I lived, finally forced me to renounce the possibility of communion with Orthodoxy. These questions were, firstly, the attitude of the Orthodox Church to other churches - to Catholicism and to the so-called schismatics. At this time, due to my interest in faith, I became close to believers of different confessions: Catholics, Protestants, Old Believers, Molokans, etc. And I met many of them people of moral high and true believers. I wanted to be the brother of these people. And what? - That teaching that promised me to unite everyone by one faith and love, this very teaching, in the person of its best representatives, told me that these are all people who are in a lie, that what gives them the strength of life is the temptation of the devil and that we are alone in possession of a single possible truth. And I saw that everyone who does not profess the same faith as us is considered heretics by the Orthodox, just as Catholics and others consider Orthodoxy heresy; I saw that to everyone who does not profess their faith by external symbols and words in the same way as Orthodoxy - Orthodoxy, although it tries to hide it, is hostile, as it should be, firstly, because the statement that that you are in a lie, and I am in the truth, is the most cruel word that one person can say to another, and, secondly, because a person who loves his children and brothers cannot but be hostile to people who want to convert him children and brothers into a false faith. And this hostility intensifies with greater knowledge of the dogma. And to me, who posited truth in the unity of love, it involuntarily struck me that the doctrine itself destroys what it should produce.

This temptation is so obvious, to such a degree to us, educated people who lived in countries where different faiths are confessed, and who have seen that contemptuous, self-confident, unshakable denial with which the Catholic treats the Orthodox and the Protestant, the Orthodox towards the Catholic and the Protestant and the Protestant to both, and the same attitude of the Old Believer, Pashkovite, Sheker and all faiths, that the very evidence of temptation at first puzzles. You say to yourself: yes, it cannot be so simple, and yet people would not see that if two statements deny each other, then neither in one nor in the other there is that single truth, which faith should be. . There is something here. There is some explanation - and I thought there was, and I looked for this explanation, and read everything I could on this subject, and consulted with everyone I could. And he did not receive any explanation, except for the same one, according to which the Sumy hussars believe that the first regiment in the world is the Sumy hussar, and the yellow lancers believe that the first regiment in the world is the yellow lancers. The clerics of all the various denominations, the best representatives of them, have told me nothing but that they believe that they are in the truth and those are in error, and that all they can do is pray for them. I went to the archimandrites, hierarchs, elders, schemniks and asked, and no one made any attempt to explain this temptation to me. Only one of them explained everything to me, but he explained it in such a way that I didn’t ask anyone else.

I said that for every unbeliever who turns to faith (and our entire young generation is subject to this conversion), this question is the first: why is the truth not in Lutheranism, not in Catholicism, but in Orthodoxy? He is taught in the gymnasium, and it is impossible for him not to know - as the peasant does not know this - that a Protestant, a Catholic just as accurately affirms the one truth of his faith. The historical evidence, which each confession bends in its own direction, is insufficient. Is it not possible, - I said, - to understand the teaching higher, so that differences would disappear from the height of the teaching, as they disappear for a true believer? Is it not possible to go further along the path we are following with the Old Believers? They argued that the cross, hallelujah and walking around the altar are different for us. We said: you believe in the Nicene Creed, in the seven sacraments, and we believe. Let's stick to this, but otherwise do as you like. We united with them by placing the essential in faith above the inessential. Now, with Catholics, is it impossible to say: you believe in this and that, in the main thing, but in relation to the filioque and the pope, do as you like. Is it not possible to say the same to the Protestants, uniting with them on the main thing? My interlocutor agreed with my thought, but told me that such concessions would lead to reproaches against the spiritual authorities for deviating from the faith of their ancestors, and would cause a split, and the calling of the spiritual authorities would be to observe in all purity the Greek-Russian Orthodox faith transmitted to it. from ancestors.

And I understood everything. I am looking for faith, the strength of life, and they are looking for the best means of fulfilling certain human duties before people. And, performing these human deeds, they perform them in a human way. No matter how much they talk about their regret for the lost brothers, about prayers for them, offered up at the throne of the Most High, violence is needed to fulfill human deeds, and it has always been applied, is being applied and will be applied. If two confessions consider themselves to be in the truth, and each other in a lie, then, wishing to attract the brethren to the truth, they will preach their doctrine. And if a false doctrine is preached to the inexperienced sons of a church that is in truth, then this church cannot but burn the books and remove the person who offends her sons. What to do with that burning fire of false, according to Orthodoxy, faith, a sectarian who, in the most important matter of life, in faith, seduces the sons of the church? What to do with him, how not to cut off his head or lock him up? Under Alexei Mikhailovich, they were burned at the stake, i.e. in time they applied capital punishment; in our time, they also apply the highest measure - they lock them in solitary confinement. And I paid attention to what was being done in the name of religion, and was horrified, and almost completely renounced Orthodoxy.

The second attitude of the church to vital questions was its attitude to war and executions.

At this time there was a war in Russia. And the Russians began to kill their brothers in the name of Christian love. It was impossible not to think about it. It was impossible not to see that murder is evil, contrary to the very first foundations of any faith, it was impossible. And at the same time, in the churches they prayed for the success of our weapons, and the teachers of the faith recognized this murder as a deed arising from faith. And not only these murders in the war, but during those troubles that followed the war, I saw members of the church, its teachers, monks, hermits, who approved of the murder of erring helpless youths. And I paid attention to everything that is done by people who profess Christianity, and I was horrified.

And I ceased to doubt, and was fully convinced that in the knowledge of the faith to which I joined, not everything is true. Before I would say that all creed is false; but now it was impossible to say that. All the people had the knowledge of the truth, it was certain, because otherwise they would not have lived. In addition, this knowledge of the truth was already available to me, I already lived it and felt all its truth; but in this knowledge there was also a lie. And of this I could not doubt. And everything that used to repulse me, now vividly appeared before me. Although I saw that in the whole people there was less of that admixture of lies that repelled me than in the representatives of the church, I still saw that in the beliefs of the people, the lie was mixed with the truth.

But where did the lie come from and where did the truth come from? Both falsehood and truth are transmitted by what is called the church. Both falsehood and truth are contained in tradition, in the so-called Sacred Tradition and Scripture.

And, willy-nilly, I was led to the study, the study of this scripture and tradition - the study, which I have been so afraid of until now.

And I turned to the study of the very theology that I had once dismissed with such contempt as unnecessary. Then it seemed to me a series of unnecessary nonsense, then the phenomena of life surrounded me on all sides, which seemed to me clear and full of meaning; now I would be glad to throw away that which does not fit into a healthy head, but there is nowhere to go. On this doctrine is based, or at least inextricably linked with it, that single knowledge of the meaning of life, which was revealed to me. As wild as it seems to me in my old hard mind, this is the only hope of salvation. It is necessary to consider it carefully, carefully, in order to understand it, not even to understand it, as I understand the position of science. I am not looking for this and I cannot look for it, knowing the peculiarity of the knowledge of faith. I will not seek an explanation for everything. I know that the explanation of everything must be hidden, as the beginning of everything, in infinity. But I want to understand in such a way that I can be led to the inevitable inexplicable: I want everything that is inexplicable to be so, not because the demands of my mind are wrong (they are correct, and outside of them I cannot understand anything), but because, that I see the limits of my mind. I want to understand in such a way that every inexplicable situation appears to me as a necessity of reason, and not as an obligation to believe.

That there is truth in teaching, this is beyond doubt to me; but it is also certain that there is a lie in it, and I must find the truth and the lie and separate one from the other. And so I got down to it. What I found false in this teaching, what I found true, and what conclusions I came to, form the following parts of a work, which, if it is worth it and anyone needs it, will probably be printed sometime and somewhere.

This was written by me three years ago. These parts will be printed.

Now, revisiting this and returning to that train of thought and to those feelings that were in me when I experienced all this, I had a dream the other day. This dream expressed for me in a concise way everything that I experienced and described, and therefore I think that for those who understood me, the description of this dream will refresh, clarify and gather into one everything that is so long told on these pages. . Here is the dream:

I see myself lying on the bed. And I'm neither good nor bad, I'm lying on my back. But I'm starting to think about whether it's good for me to lie down; and something, it seems to me, is awkward to the legs: whether it is short, whether it is uneven, but something is awkward; I move my legs and at the same time begin to think about how and on what I am lying, which had not occurred to me until then. And as I watch my bed, I see that I am lying on braided rope straps attached to the sides of the bed. My feet lie on one such support, my shins on the other, my legs are uncomfortable. For some reason I know that these helpers can be moved. And with the movement of my legs I push away the extreme help under my feet. I think that it will be quieter. But I pushed her too far away, I want to grab her with my legs, but with this movement another support slips out from under the shins, and my legs hang down. I move my whole body to cope, quite sure that I will now settle down; but with this movement, other supports slip out and move under me, and I see that things are completely spoiled: the whole lower part of my body descends and hangs, my legs do not reach the ground. I keep only the top of my back, and I feel not only awkward, but for some reason creepy. Here only I ask myself something that had never occurred to me before. I ask myself: where am I and what am I lying on? And I begin to look around and, first of all, I look down, to where my body hung down and where, I feel that I must fall now. I look down and can't believe my eyes. Not that I am at a height like the height of the highest tower or mountain, but I am at such a height that I could never imagine.

I can't even make out if I see anything down there, in that bottomless abyss over which I hang and where it pulls me. My heart is clenched and I am horrified. It's terrible to look at. If I look there, I feel that I am about to slip off the last restraints and perish. I don't watch, but it's even worse not to watch, because I'm thinking about what will happen to me now that I've broken my last hold. And I feel that from horror I lose the last power and slowly slide down the back lower and lower. Another moment and I'll be gone. And then the thought comes to me: this can't be true. This is a dream. Wake up. I'm trying to wake up and I can't. What to do, what to do? I ask myself and look up. Above, too, the abyss. I look into this abyss of the sky and try to forget about the abyss below, and, indeed, I forget. The infinity below repels and terrifies me; the infinity above attracts and affirms me. I also hang on the last harness that has not yet jumped out from under me over the abyss; I know that I am hanging, but I only look up, and my fear passes. As happens in a dream, a voice says: "Notice this, this is it!" - and I look farther and farther into infinity above and feel that I calm down, remember everything that happened, and remember how it all happened: how I moved my legs, how I hung, how horrified I was and how I was saved from the horror by that that began to look up. And I ask myself: well, now what, I hang all the same? And I do not so much look back as I feel with my whole body that fulcrum on which I hold. And I see that I no longer hang and fall, but hold on tight. I ask myself how I am holding on, I feel around, I look around and I see that under me, under the middle of my body, there is one help, and that, looking up, I am lying on it in the most stable balance, which she alone held before. And then, as happens in a dream, the mechanism by which I hold on seems to me very natural, understandable and undoubted, despite the fact that in reality this mechanism does not make any sense. In my sleep, I even wonder how I did not understand this before. It turns out that I have a pillar in my head, and the firmness of this pillar is not subject to any doubt, despite the fact that there is nothing to stand on this thin pillar. Then a loop was drawn from the post somehow very cunningly and simply together, and if you lie on this loop with the middle of your body and look up, then there can’t even be a question about falling. All this was clear to me, and I was glad and calm. And as if someone says to me: look, remember.

I was baptized and raised in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it from childhood, and throughout my adolescence and youth. But when I graduated from the second year of university at the age of 18, I no longer believed in anything that I was taught.
Judging by some reminiscences, I never really believed seriously, but only had confidence in what I was taught and in what the big ones confessed to me; but this trust was very shaky.
I remember that when I was eleven years old, one boy, long dead, Volodenka M., who studied at the gymnasium, came to us on Sunday, as the latest novelty, he announced to us the discovery made in the gymnasium. The discovery was that there is no God and that everything we are taught is just fiction (this was in 1838). I remember how the older brothers became interested in this news, and called me for advice. We all, I remember, were very animated and accepted this news as something very entertaining and very possible.
I also remember that when my older brother Dmitry, while at the university, suddenly, with the passion characteristic of his nature, gave himself up to faith and began to go to all services, fast, lead a pure and moral life, then we all, and even the elders, did not stop ridiculed him and for some reason called him Noah. I remember Musin-Pushkin, who was then a trustee of Kazan University, who invited us to dance at his place, mockingly persuaded his brother who refused by saying that David also danced in front of the ark. At that time I sympathized with these jokes of the elders and deduced from them the conclusion that it was necessary to learn the catechism, it was necessary to go to church, but all this should not be taken too seriously. I also remember that I read Voltaire very young, and his ridicule not only did not revolt, but greatly amused me.
My falling away from the faith happened in me just as it happened and is happening now in people of our educational background. It seems to me that in most cases it happens like this: people live the way everyone else lives, and they all live on the basis of principles that not only have nothing in common with dogma, but for the most part are opposite to it; dogma does not participate in life, and in relations with other people one never has to deal with it and in one's own life one never has to cope with it; this dogma is confessed somewhere out there, far from life and independently of it. If you come across it, then only as an external, not connected with life, phenomenon.
From the life of a person, from his deeds, both now and then, it is impossible to know whether he is a believer or not. If there is a difference between those who openly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. As now, so then, a clear recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found in stupid, cruel and immoral people who consider themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, directness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognize themselves as unbelievers.
The schools teach the catechism and send pupils to the church; officials are required to testify in being at the sacrament. But a person of our circle, who no longer studies and is not in the public service, and now, but even more in the old days, could live for decades without ever remembering that he lives among Christians and is himself considered to profess the Christian Orthodox faith.
So, just as now, just as before, the dogma, accepted by trust and supported by external pressure, gradually melts away under the influence of knowledge and experiences of life that are contrary to the dogma, and a person very often lives for a long time, imagining that the dogma that was communicated to him is whole in him. since childhood, while there is no trace of him for a long time.
S., a smart and truthful man, told me how he stopped believing. He was twenty-six years old already, once at a lodging for the night during a hunt, according to an old habit adopted from childhood, he stood in the evening for prayer. The older brother, who was with him on the hunt, lay on the hay and looked at him. When S. finished and began to lie down, his brother said to him: “Are you still doing this?”
And they said nothing more to each other. And S. ceased from that day to pray and go to church. And now for thirty years he has not prayed, has not received communion, and has not gone to church. And not because he knew the convictions of his brother and would join them, not because he decided something in his soul, but only because this word, spoken by his brother, was like a push with a finger into a wall that was ready fall from their own weight; this word was an indication that where he thought that there was faith, there had long been an empty place, and that because the words that he says, and the crosses, and bows that he makes while standing at prayer, are completely meaningless actions. Realizing their senselessness, he could not continue them.
It has been and is, I think, with the vast majority of people. I'm talking about people of our education, I'm talking about people who are true to themselves, and not about those who make the very object of faith a means to achieve any temporary goals. (These people are the most fundamental unbelievers, because if faith for them is a means to achieve some worldly goals, then this is probably not faith.) These people of our education are in the position that the light of knowledge and life has melted an artificial building, and they have either already noticed it and made room, or they haven't noticed it yet.
The doctrine communicated to me from childhood disappeared in me just as it did in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the doctrine became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen, I stopped standing up for prayer and stopped, on my own impulse, going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I was told from childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed in, I could never say. I also believed in God, or rather I did not deny God, but which God I could not say; I did not deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching was, I could not say either.
Now, remembering that time, I see clearly that my faith - that which, apart from animal instincts, moved my life - my only true faith at that time was faith in perfection. But what was the perfection and what was the purpose of it, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and what life led me to; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself, which I tried to follow; improved himself physically, by all sorts of exercises, refining strength and dexterity, and by all sorts of hardships accustoming himself to endurance and patience. And all this I considered perfection. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral perfection, but soon it was replaced by perfection in general, i.e. a desire to be better not in front of oneself or before God, but a desire to be better in front of other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by a desire to be stronger than other people, i.e. more glorious, more important, richer than others.

II

Someday I will tell the story of my life - both touching and instructive in these ten years of my youth. I think many, many have experienced the same. I wished with all my heart to be good; but I was young, I had passions, and I was alone, completely alone, when I was looking for the good. Whenever I tried to express what constituted my most sincere desires: that I want to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I indulged in vile passions, I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition, lust for power, greed, lust, pride, anger, revenge - all this was respected.
Surrendering to these passions, I became like a big man, and I felt that I was satisfied. My good aunt, the purest being with whom I lived, always told me that she would want nothing more for me than that I have an affair with a married woman: “Rein ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut"; she wished me another happiness - that I be an adjutant, and best of all with the sovereign; and the greatest happiness is that I marry a very rich girl and that, as a result of this marriage, I have as many slaves as possible.
I cannot remember those years without horror, disgust and heartache. I killed people in war, challenged them to duels to kill, lost cards, ate the labors of peasants, executed them, fornicated, deceived. Lies, theft, fornications of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder ... There were no crimes that I would not have committed, and for all this I was praised, my peers considered and still consider me a relatively moral person.
So I lived for ten years.
At this time I began to write out of vanity, greed and pride. In my writings I did the same thing as in life. In order to have fame and money, for which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and show the bad. I did. How many times have I managed to hide in my writings, under the guise of indifference and even slight mockery, those my strivings for goodness, which constituted the meaning of my life. And I achieved this: I was praised.
At the age of twenty-six I came to Petersburg after the war and made friends with writers. They accepted me as one of their own, flattered me. And before I had time to look back, the class writers' views on the life of those people with whom I made friends became assimilated by me and completely erased in me all my previous attempts to become better. These views, under the licentiousness of my life, substituted a theory that justified it.
The outlook on the life of these people, my writing comrades, was that life in general goes on developing and that we, people of thought, take the main part in this development, and of the people of thought, we, artists, poets, have the main influence. Our mission is to teach people. In order not to present that natural question to oneself: what do I know and what should I teach, - in this theory it was found out that this is not necessary to know, but that the artist and poet unconsciously teaches. I was considered a wonderful artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to assimilate this theory. I am an artist, a poet - I wrote, taught, without knowing what. I was paid money for this, I had excellent food, premises, women, society, I had fame. So what I taught was very good.
This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was faith, and I was one of its priests. Being her priest was very profitable and pleasant. And I lived in this faith for quite a long time, not doubting its truth. But in the second and especially in the third year of such a life, I began to doubt the infallibility of this faith and began to investigate it. The first reason for doubt was that I began to notice that the priests of this faith did not all agree with each other. Some said: we are the most good and useful teachers, we teach what is needed, while others teach wrong. And others said: no, we are real, and you teach wrong. And they argued, quarreled, scolded, deceived, cheated against each other. In addition, there were many people among them who did not care about who was right and who was wrong, but simply achieved their own selfish goals with the help of our activities. All this made me doubt the truth of our faith.
In addition, having doubted the truth of the writer’s faith itself, I began to observe its priests more carefully and became convinced that almost all the priests of this faith, the writers, were immoral people and, in the majority, bad people, insignificant in character - much lower than those people whom I I met in my former wild and military life - but self-confident and self-satisfied, as soon as completely holy people or those who do not even know what holiness can be satisfied. People got sick of me, and I got sick of myself, and I realized that this faith is a deceit.
But the strange thing is that although I soon understood all this lie of faith and renounced it, I did not renounce the rank given to me by these people, the rank of an artist, poet, teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet, an artist, and could teach everyone without knowing what I was teaching. I did.
From rapprochement with these people, I took out a new vice - a painfully developed pride and crazy confidence that I was called to teach people without knowing what.
Now, remembering this time, my mood then and the mood of those people (however, there are thousands of them now), I feel sorry, scared, and funny - exactly the same feeling arises that you experience in a lunatic asylum.
We were all then convinced that we needed to speak and speak, write, print - as soon as possible, as much as possible, that all this was necessary for the good of mankind. And thousands of us, denying, scolding each other, all printed, wrote, instructing others. And, not noticing that we don’t know anything, what is the simplest question of life: what’s good, what’s bad, we don’t know what to answer, we all, not listening to each other, all spoke at once, sometimes indulging each other and praising each other so that they indulge me and praise me, sometimes getting irritated and shouting over each other, just like in a madhouse.
Thousands of workers worked day and night with their last strength, typed, printed millions of words, and the mail delivered them all over Russia, but we still taught more and more, taught and taught, and did not have time to teach everything, and everyone was angry that we were few are listening.
Terribly strange, but now I understand. Our real, sincere reasoning was that we want to get as much money and praise as possible. To achieve this goal, we knew how to do nothing but write books and newspapers. We did it. But in order for us to do such a useless thing and have confidence that we are very important people, we also needed reasoning that would justify our activities. And so we came up with the following: everything that exists is reasonable. Everything that exists, everything develops. Everything develops through enlightenment. Enlightenment is measured by the distribution of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and we are respected for writing books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and good people. This reasoning would be very good if we all agreed; but since for every thought expressed by one, there was always a thought, diametrically opposed, expressed by others, this should have made us think again. But we didn't notice it. We were paid money, and the people of our party praised us, so we, each of us, considered ourselves right.
Now it is clear to me that there was no difference with the madhouse; then I only vaguely suspected it, and then only, like all crazy people, I called everyone crazy, except myself.

III

So I lived, indulging in this madness for another six years, until my marriage. At this time, I went abroad. Life in Europe and my rapprochement with advanced and learned European people confirmed me even more in the faith of perfection in general, which I lived, because I found the same faith among them. This faith has assumed in me the usual form which it has in the majority of educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress". Then it seemed to me that this word expresses something. I did not yet understand that, tormented, like any living person, with questions about how I should live better, I, answering: live in accordance with progress, say exactly the same thing that a person will say, carried in a boat through the waves and the wind, to the main and only question for him: "Where to hold on?" - if he, without answering the question, says: "We are being carried somewhere."
Then I did not notice it. Only occasionally, not reason, but feeling, revolted against this superstition common in our time, by which people screen their misunderstanding of life from themselves. Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of the death penalty revealed to me the fragility of my superstition of progress. When I saw how the head separated from the body, and both of them pounded apart in a box, I understood - not with my mind, but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of the existing and progress can justify this act and that if all people in the world , according to whatever theories, from the creation of the world, they found that this is necessary - I know that this is not necessary, that it is bad and that therefore the judge of what is good and necessary is not what people say and do , and not progress, but me with my heart. Another instance of a consciousness of insufficiency for a life of superstition of progress was the death of my brother. An intelligent, kind, serious man, he fell ill young, suffered for more than a year and died painfully, not understanding why he lived, and even less understanding why he was dying. No theories could answer these questions for me or for him during his slow and painful death. But these were only rare cases of doubt, but in essence I continued to live, professing only faith in progress. “Everything develops, and I develop; and why am I developing together with everyone, it will be seen. That is how I should have formulated my faith then.
Returning from abroad, I settled in the countryside and ended up taking classes in peasant schools. This occupation was especially to my heart, because it did not contain that lie, which had become obvious to me, which had already hurt my eyes in the activity of literary teaching. Here, too, I acted in the name of progress, but I was already critical of progress itself. I told myself that progress in some of my phenomena was being made incorrectly, and that one must treat primitive people, peasant children, quite freely, suggesting that they choose the path of progress that they want. In essence, however, I revolved around the same unsolvable problem, which is to teach without knowing what. In the higher spheres of literary activity, it was clear to me that it was impossible to teach without knowing what to teach, because I saw that everyone teaches in different ways and, by disputes among themselves, only hide their ignorance from themselves; here, with peasant children, I thought that this difficulty could be circumvented by leaving the children to learn what they wanted. Now it’s funny for me to remember how I hung around to fulfill my lust - to teach, although I knew very well in the depths of my soul that I can’t teach anything that is necessary, because I myself don’t know what is needed. After a year spent in school, I went abroad another time to find out there how to do it so that, knowing nothing myself, I could teach others.
And it seemed to me that I had learned this abroad, and, armed with all this wisdom, I returned to Russia in the year of the liberation of the peasants and, having taken the place of an intermediary, began to teach both the uneducated people in schools and educated people in a magazine that I began to publish. . Things seemed to be going well, but I felt that I was not quite mentally healthy and could not continue for long. And then, perhaps, I would have come to that despair to which I came at the age of fifty, if I had not had another side of life that I had not yet experienced and promised me salvation: it was family life.
For a year I was engaged in mediation, schools and the magazine, and I became so exhausted, especially because I got confused, the struggle for mediation became so difficult for me, my activity in the schools was so vaguely manifested, my influence in the magazine, which consisted all in one, became so disgusting to me. and the same - in the desire to teach everyone and hide what I don’t know what to teach, that I fell ill more spiritually than physically - I left everything and went to the steppe to the Bashkirs to breathe air, drink koumiss and live an animal life.
When I returned from there, I got married. The new conditions of a happy family life have completely distracted me from any search for the general meaning of life. My whole life was concentrated during this time in the family, in my wife, in children, and therefore in worries about increasing the means of subsistence. The desire for improvement, which had already been replaced by the desire for improvement in general, for progress, was now directly replaced by the desire to ensure that my family and I were as good as possible.
So another fifteen years passed.
Despite the fact that I considered writing a trifle, during these fifteen years I still continued to write. I have already tasted the temptation of writing, the temptation of huge monetary rewards and applause for insignificant work, and indulged in it as a means to improve my financial situation and drown out in my soul any questions about the meaning of my life and the common one.
I wrote, teaching what was the only truth for me, that one must live in such a way that oneself and one's family would be as good as possible.
So I lived, but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: at first they began to find minutes of bewilderment, of a stoppage of life, as if I did not know how to live, what to do, and I was lost and fell into despondency. But it passed, and I continued to live as before. Then these moments of bewilderment began to be repeated more and more often and all in the same form. These stops of life were always expressed by the same questions: Why? Well, and then?
At first it seemed to me that this is so - pointless, irrelevant questions. It seemed to me that all this was known, and that if I ever wanted to deal with their resolution, it would not cost me any trouble - that now only I had no time to deal with it, and when I wanted to, then I would find answers. But questions began to be repeated more and more often, answers were urgently needed, and like dots, falling all in one place, these questions merged without answers into one black spot.
What happened to everyone who falls ill with a deadly internal disease has happened. At first, insignificant signs of malaise appear, to which the patient does not pay attention, then these signs are repeated more and more often and merge into one suffering that is inseparable in time. Suffering grows, and the patient does not have time to look back, as he already realizes that what he took for an indisposition is what is most significant for him in the world, that this is death.
The same happened to me. I realized that this is not an accidental ailment, but something very important, and that if the same questions are repeated, then they must be answered. And I tried to answer. The questions seemed so stupid, simple, childish questions. But as soon as I touched them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately convinced, firstly, that these were not childish and stupid questions, but the most important and profound questions in life, and, secondly, that I I cannot and cannot, no matter how much I think, resolve them. Before you take up the Samara estate, raise your son, write a book, you need to know why I will do this. Until I know why, I can't do anything. Among my thoughts about the economy, which greatly occupied me at that time, the question suddenly occurred to me: “Well, you will have 6,000 acres in the Samara province, 300 heads of horses, and then? ..” And I was completely taken aback and did not knew what to think next. Or, starting to think about how I would raise children, I said to myself: “Why?” Or, discussing how the people can achieve prosperity, I suddenly said to myself: “But what does it matter to me?” Or, thinking about the glory that my writings will gain me, I said to myself: “Well, you will be more glorious than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what! ..” could not answer anything. Questions do not wait, we must now answer; If you don't answer, you can't live. And there is no answer.
I felt that what I stood on had given way, that there was nothing for me to stand on, that what I had lived for was no longer there, that I had nothing to live on.

IV

My life has stopped. I could breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and could not help but breathe, eat, drink, sleep; but there was no life, because there were no such desires, the satisfaction of which I would find reasonable. If I desired something, then I knew in advance that, whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. If a sorceress came and asked me to grant my wishes, I wouldn't know what to say. If I have not desires, but habits of former desires, in drunken moments, then in sober moments I know that this is a deception, that there is nothing to desire. I could not even desire to know the truth, because I guessed what it consisted of. The truth was that life is nonsense. It was as if I lived and lived, walked and walked, and came to the abyss and clearly saw that there was nothing ahead but death. And you can’t stop, and you can’t go back, and you can’t close your eyes so as not to see that there is nothing ahead, except for the deceit of life and happiness and real suffering and real death - complete annihilation.
What happened to me was that I, a healthy, happy person, felt that I could no longer live - some irresistible force impelled me to somehow get rid of it. You can't say that I wanted to kill myself.
The force that pulled me away from life was stronger, fuller, the general desire. It was a force similar to the former striving of life, only in reverse. I tried with all my might to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally as thoughts of better life had come before. This thought was so seductive that I had to use cunning against myself in order not to carry it out too hastily. I didn't want to rush just because I wanted to do my best to unravel! If I don't unravel, I'll always make it, I told myself. And then I, a happy man, took out of my room a cord, where I was alone every evening, undressing, so as not to hang myself on the crossbar between the scales, and stopped going hunting with a gun, so as not to be tempted by a too easy way to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted: I was afraid of life, I longed to get away from it, and meanwhile I still hoped for something from it.
And this happened to me at a time when on all sides I had what is considered perfect happiness: this was when I was not fifty years old. I had a kind, loving and beloved wife, good children, a large estate, which grew and increased without difficulty on my part. I was respected by relatives and acquaintances, more than ever before I was praised by strangers and could consider that I had fame, without much self-delusion. At the same time, not only was I not bodily or spiritually unhealthy, but, on the contrary, I used strength both spiritual and bodily, which I rarely met in my peers: bodily I could work on the mowing, keeping up with the peasants; Mentally, I could work for eight to ten hours straight without experiencing any consequences from such stress. And in this position I came to the point that I could not live and, fearing death, I had to use tricks against myself so as not to take my own life.

Lev Tolstoy

"Confession"

Judging by some reminiscences, I never really believed seriously, but only had confidence in what I was taught and in what the big ones confessed to me; but this trust was very shaky.