A Confession by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best way to read e books TXT) 📖
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humanity.” And at the time of my weak-mindedness I was satisfied with that;
but as soon as the question of life presented itself clearly to me, those
theories immediately crumbled away. Not to speak of the unscrupulous
obscurity with which those sciences announce conclusions formed on the study
of a small part of mankind as general conclusions; not to speak of the
mutual contradictions of different adherents of this view as to what are the
ideals of humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theory
consists in the fact that in order to reply to the question facing each man:
“What am I?” or “Why do I live?” or “What must I do?” one has first to
decide the question: “What is the life of the whole?” (which is to him
unknown and of which he is acquainted with one tiny part in one minute
period of time. To understand what he is, one man must first understand all
this mysterious humanity, consisting of people such as himself who do not
understand one another.
I have to confess that there was a time when I believed this. It was the
time when I had my own favourite ideals justifying my own caprices, and I
was trying to devise a theory which would allow one to consider my caprices
as the law of humanity. But as soon as the question of life arose in my soul
in full clearness that reply at once few to dust. And I understood that as
in the experimental sciences there are real sciences, and semi-sciences
which try to give answers to questions beyond their competence, so in this
sphere there is a whole series of most diffused sciences which try to reply
to irrelevant questions. Semi-sciences of that kind, the juridical and the
social-historical, endeavour to solve the questions of a man’s life by
pretending to decide each in its own way, the question of the life of all
humanity.
But as in the sphere of man’s experimental knowledge one who sincerely
inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the reply — “Study in
endless space the mutations, infinite in time and in complexity, of
innumerable atoms, and then you will understand your life” — so also a
sincere man cannot be satisfied with the reply: “Study the whole life of
humanity of which we cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which
we do not even know a small part, and then you will understand your own
life.” And like the experimental semi-sciences, so these other semi-sciences
are the more filled with obscurities, inexactitudes, stupidities, and
contradictions, the further they diverge from the real problems. The problem
of experimental science is the sequence of cause and effect in material
phenomena. It is only necessary for experimental science to introduce the
question of a final cause for it to become nonsensical. The problem of
abstract science is the recognition of the primordial essence of life. It is
only necessary to introduce the investigation of consequential phenomena
(such as social and historical phenomena) and it also becomes nonsensical.
Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and displays the
greatness of the human mind when it does not introduce into its
investigations the question of an ultimate cause. And, on the contrary,
abstract science is only then science and displays the greatness of the
human mind when it puts quite aside questions relating to the consequential
causes of phenomena and regards man solely in relation to an ultimate cause.
Such in this realm of science — forming the pole of the sphere — is
metaphysics or philosophy. That science states the question clearly: “What
am I, and what is the universe? And why do I exist, and why does the
universe exist?” And since it has existed it has always replied in the same
way. Whether the philosopher calls the essence of life existing within me,
and in all that exists, by the name of “idea”, or “substance”, or “spirit”,
or “will”, he says one and the same thing: that this essence exists and that
I am of that same essence; but why it is he does not know, and does not say,
if he is an exact thinker. I ask: “Why should this essence exist? What
results from the fact that it is and will be?” … And philosophy not
merely does not reply, but is itself only asking that question. And if it is
real philosophy all its labour lies merely in trying to put that question
clearly. And if it keeps firmly to its task it cannot reply to the question
otherwise than thus: “What am I, and what is the universe?” “All and
nothing”; and to the question “Why?” by “I do not know”.
So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can never obtain
anything like an answer — and not because, as in the clear experimental
sphere, the reply does not relate to my question, but because here, though
all the mental work is directed just to my question, there is no answer, but
instead of an answer one gets the same question, only in a complex form.
VIIn my search for answers to life’s questions I experienced just what is felt
by a man lost in a forest.
He reaches a glade, climbs a tree, and clearly sees the limitless distance,
but sees that his home is not and cannot be there; then he goes into the
dark wood and sees the darkness, but there also his home is not.
So I wandered n that wood of human knowledge, amid the gleams of
mathematical and experimental science which showed me clear horizons but in
a direction where there could be no home, and also amid the darkness of the
abstract sciences where I was immersed in deeper gloom the further I went,
and where I finally convinced myself that there was, and could be, no exit.
Yielding myself to the bright side of knowledge, I understood that I was
only diverting my gaze from the question. However alluringly clear those
horizons which opened out before me might be, however alluring it might be
to immerse oneself in the limitless expanse of those sciences, I already
understood that the clearer they were the less they met my need and the less
they applied to my question.
“I know,” said I to myself, “what science so persistently tries to discover,
and along that road there is no reply to the question as to the meaning of
my life.” In the abstract sphere I understood that notwithstanding the fact,
or just because of the fact, that the direct aim of science is to reply to
my question, there is no reply but that which I have myself already given:
“What is the meaning of my life?” “There is none.” Or: “What will come of my
life?” “Nothing.” Or: “Why does everything exist that exists, and why do I
exist?” “Because it exists.”
Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an innumerable
quantity of exact replies concerning matters about which I had not asked:
about the chemical constituents of the stars, about the movement of the sun
towards the constellation Hercules, about the origin of species and of man,
about the forms of infinitely minute imponderable particles of ether; but in
this sphere of knowledge the only answer to my question, “What is the
meaning of my life?” was: “You are what you call your ‘life’; you are a
transitory, casual cohesion of particles. The mutual interactions and
changes of these particles produce in you what you call your “life”. That
cohesion will last some time; afterwards the interaction of these particles
will cease and what you call “life” will cease, and so will all your
questions. You are an accidentally united little lump of something. that
little lump ferments. The little lump calls that fermenting its ‘life’. The
lump will disintegrate and there will be an end of the fermenting and of all
the questions.” So answers the clear side of science and cannot answer
otherwise if it strictly follows its principles.
From such a reply one sees that the reply does not answer the question. I
want to know the meaning of my life, but that it is a fragment of the
infinite, far from giving it a meaning destroys its every possible meaning.
The obscure compromises which that side of experimental exact science makes
with abstract science when it says that the meaning of life consists in
development and in cooperation with development, owing to their inexactness
and obscurity cannot be considered as replies.
The other side of science — the abstract side — when it holds strictly to
its principles, replying directly to the question, always replies, and in
all ages has replied, in one and the same way: “The world is something
infinite and incomprehensible part of that incomprehensible ‘all’.” Again I
exclude all those compromises between abstract and experimental sciences
which supply the whole ballast of the semi-sciences called juridical,
political, and historical. In those semi-sciences the conception of
development and progress is again wrongly introduced, only with this
difference, that there it was the development of everything while here it is
the development of the life of mankind. The error is there as before:
development and progress in infinity can have no aim or direction, and, as
far as my question is concerned, no answer is given.
In truly abstract science, namely in genuine philosophy — not in that which
Schopenhauer calls “professorial philosophy” which serves only to classify
all existing phenomena in new philosophic categories and to call them by new
names — where the philosopher does not lose sight of the essential question,
the reply is always one and the same — the reply given by Socrates,
Schopenhauer, Solomon, and buddha.
“We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life”, said Socrates when
preparing for death. “For what do we, who love truth, strive after in life?
To free ourselves from the body, and from all the evil that is caused by the
life of the body! If so, then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to
us?
“The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible
to him.”
And Schopenhauer says:
“Having recognized the inmost essence of the world as will, and all its
phenomena — from the unconscious working of the obscure forces of Nature up
to the completely conscious action of man — as only the objectivity of that
will, we shall in no way avoid the conclusion that together with the
voluntary renunciation and self-destruction of the will all those phenomena
also disappear, that constant striving and effort without aim or rest on all
the stages of objectivity in which and through which the world exists; the
diversity of successive forms will disappear, and together with the form all
the manifestations of will, with its most universal forms, space and time,
and finally its most fundamental form — subject and object. Without will
there is no concept and no world. Before us, certainly, nothing remains. But
what resists this transition into annihilation, our nature, is only that
same wish to live — Wille zum Leben — which forms ourselves as well as our
world. That we are so afraid of annihilation or, what is the same thing,
that we so wish to live, merely means that we are ourselves nothing else but
this desire to live, and know nothing but it. And so what remains after the
complete annihilation of the will, for us who are so full of the will, is,
of course, nothing; but on the other hand, for those in whom the will has
turned and renounced itself, this so
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