The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years / Fifth Edition

by Aylmer Maude

'But my perception of God, of him whom I seek,' asked I of myself, 'where has that perception come from?' And again at this thought the glad waves of life rose within me. All that was around me came to life, and received a meaning. But my joy did not last long. My mind continued its work.

'The conception of God, is not God,' said I to myself. 'The conception, is what takes place within me. The conception of God, is something I can evoke or can refrain from evoking in myself. That is not what I seek. I seek that, without which there can be no life.' And again all around me and within me began to die, and again I wished to kill myself.

But then I turned my gaze upon myself, on what went on within me, and I remembered that I only lived at those times when I believed in God. As it was before, so it was now; I need only be aware of God to live; I need only forget him, or disbelieve in him, and I die.... 'What more do you seek?' exclaimed a voice within me. 'This is he. He is that without which one cannot live. To know God and to live is one and the same thing. God is life. Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.' And more than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me.

And I was saved from suicide.... And strange to say, the strength of life which returned to me was not new, but quite old—the same that had borne me along in my earliest days.

I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief in that Will which produced me, and desires something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim of my life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will. And I returned to the belief that I can find the expression of that Will, in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from me, has produced for its guidance: that is to say, I returned to a belief in God, in moral perfecting, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life....

I turned from the life of our circle: acknowledging that theirs is not life but only a simulacrum of life, and that the conditions of superfluity in which we live deprive us of the possibility of understanding life.... The simple labouring people around me were the Russian people, and I turned to them and to the meaning which they give to life. That meaning, if one can put it into words, was the following. Every man has come into this world by the will of God. And God has so made man that every man can destroy his soul or save it. The aim of man in life is to save his soul; and to save his soul he must live 'godly,' and to live 'godly' he must renounce all the pleasures of life, must labour, humble himself, suffer and be merciful.... The meaning of this was clear and near to my heart. But together with this meaning of the popular faith of our non-sectarian folk among whom I live, much was inseparably bound up that revolted me and seemed to me inexplicable: sacraments, Church services, fasts, and the adoration of relics and icons. The people cannot separate the one from the other, nor could I. And strange as much of it was to me, I accepted everything; and attended the services, knelt morning and evening in prayer, fasted, and prepared to receive the eucharist; and at first my reason did not resist anything. What had formerly seemed to me impossible, did not now evoke in me any resistance....

I told myself that the essence of every faith consists in its giving life a meaning which death does not destroy. Naturally, for a faith to be able to reply to the questions of a king dying in luxury, of an old slave tormented by overwork, and of all sorts of people, young and old, wise and foolish,—its answers must be expressed in all sorts of different ways.... But this argument, justifying in my eyes the queerness of much on the ritual side of religion, did not suffice to allow me, in the one great affair of life—religion—to do things which seemed to me questionable. With all my soul I wished to be in a position to mingle with the people, fulfilling the ritual side of their religion; but I could not do it. I felt that I should lie to myself, and mock at what was sacred to me, were I to do so. At this point, however, our new Russian theological writers came to my rescue.

According to the explanation these theologians gave, the fundamental dogma of our faith is the infallibility of the Church. From the admission of that dogma follows inevitably the truth of all that is professed by the Church. The Church as an assembly of true-believers united by love, and therefore possessed of true knowledge, became the basis of my belief. I told myself that divine truth cannot be accessible to a separate individual; it is revealed only to the whole assembly of people united by love. To attain truth one must not separate; and not to separate, one must love and must endure things one may not agree with.

Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the rites of the Church, you transgress against love; and by transgressing against love you deprive yourself of the possibility of recognising the truth. I did not then see the sophistry contained in this argument. I did not see that union in love may give the greatest love, but certainly cannot give us divine truth expressed in the definite words of the Nicene Creed. I also did not perceive that love cannot make a certain expression of truth an obligatory condition of union. I did not then see these mistakes in the argument, and thanks to it, was able to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding most of them.

When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason, submitted to tradition, united myself with my forefathers: the father, mother and grandparents I loved, and with all those millions of the common people whom I respected. When rising before dawn for the early Church services, I knew I was doing well, if only because I was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental pride, and for the sake of finding the meaning of life. However insignificant these sacrifices might be, I made them for the sake of something good. I fasted, prepared for communion, and observed the fixed hours of prayer at home and in church. During Church service I attended to every word, and gave them a meaning whenever I could.