This chapter is a summary of Tolstoy's Confession,[54] or 'Introduction to a Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and to an Investigation of the Christian Teachings,' as the Russian title ran, from the first pages of which I have already quoted freely in the preceding chapters. I have kept as much to Tolstoy's words as possible, but having to condense, I have not only omitted much, but have also paraphrased some passages to avoid repetition. The plan I have adopted, since this is a Life and not a theological treatise, has been to cut down to a mere skeleton the abstract argument of Tolstoy's Confession, while giving almost in full what he says about his own experience.
Many men, at the age of puberty, or at any rate while their minds were still maturing, have experienced the change known as 'Conversion.' That is to say, they have more or less suddenly turned round and looked at life from a fresh point of view: what in their nature had been latent or secondary has become dominant and primary, and things temporal and material have become subordinate to things spiritual and eternal.
What is unusual about the story of Tolstoy's conversion is that it came so late in life and so gradually, and that the intellect played so large a part in it.
Some men take to religion at the prompting of the heart, others at the prompting of the brain; and Tolstoy belongs to the latter category, not from lack of heart, but because strong as are his emotions, his intellectual power is stronger still.
His Confession was written in 1879, and in it he says:
Five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: At first I experienced moments of perplexity and arrest of life, as though I did not know how to live or what to do; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed, and I went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What's it for? What does it lead to?
At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known, and that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution, it would not cost me much effort; just at present I had no time for it, but when I wanted to I should be able to find the answer. The questions, however, began to repeat themselves frequently, and more and more insistently to demand replies; and like drops of ink always falling on one place, they ran together into one black blot.
That occurred which happens to every one sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear, to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear more and more often, and merge into one uninterrupted period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already become more important to him than anything else in the world—it is death!
That was what happened to me. I understood that it was no casual indisposition, but something very important, and that if these questions constantly repeated themselves, it would be necessary to answer them. And I tried to do so. The questions seemed such stupid simple childish questions; but as soon as I touched them and tried to solve them, I at once became convinced (1) that they are not childish and stupid, but the most important and the deepest of life's questions; and (2) that, try as I would, I could not solve them. Before occupying myself with my Samára estate, the education of my son, or the writing of a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing, and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management which greatly occupied me at that time, the question would suddenly occur to me: 'Well, you will have 16,000 acres of land in Samára Government and 300 horses, and what next?'... And I was quite disconcerted, and did not know what to think. Or, when considering my plans for the education of my children, I would say to myself: What for? Or when considering how the peasants might be prosperous, I suddenly said to myself, 'But what business is it of mine?' Or when thinking of the fame my works would bring me, I said to myself, 'Very well: you will be more famous than Gógol or Poúshkin or Shakespear or Molière, or than all the writers in the world—and what will it lead to?' And I could find no reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not answer them, it was impossible to live. But there was no answer.
I felt that what I had been standing on had broken down, and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on, no longer existed; and I had nothing left to live on.