Leo Tolstoy “Confession” - a brief analysis. Leo Tolstoy - confession Tolstoy's work confession

Lev Tolstoy

"Confession"

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

I remember that when I was about eleven years old, one boy, long dead, Volodenka M., who studied at the gymnasium, came to us on Sunday and, as the latest news, announced to us the discovery made at 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 my older brothers became interested in this news and called me for advice. I remember we all became very animated and took this news as something very entertaining and very possible.

I also remember that when my eldest brother Dmitry, while at the university, suddenly, with the passion characteristic of his nature, surrendered to faith and began to go to all services, fast, and lead a pure and moral life, then all of us, even the elders, without ceasing They laughed at him and for some reason called him Noah. I remember Musin-Pushkin, who was then a trustee of Kazan University, inviting us to dance with him, mockingly persuaded his refusing brother by saying that David also danced in front of the ark. At that time I sympathized with these jokes of the elders and drew from them the conclusion that it is necessary to study the catechism, it is necessary to go to church, but one should not take all this too seriously. I also remember that I read Voltaire when I was very young, and his ridicule not only did not outrage me, 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 religious doctrine, but for the most part are opposite to it; religious doctrine is not involved in life, and you never have to deal with it in relationships with other people and never have to cope with it in your own life; This creed is professed somewhere out there, far from life and independent of it. If you encounter it, then only as an external phenomenon, not related to life.

From a person’s life, from 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 clearly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. Both now and then, the obvious recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found in people who were stupid, cruel and immoral and who considered themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognized themselves as non-believers.

The schools teach the catechism and send students to church; Officials are required to provide evidence of the existence of the sacrament. But a person of our circle, who no longer studies and is not in public service, and now, and even more so 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, both now and before, a creed, accepted out of trust and supported by external pressure, gradually melts away under the influence of knowledge and life experiences that are contrary to the creed, and a person very often lives for a long time, imagining that the creed that was communicated to him is intact within him since childhood, while there is no trace of him for a long time.

And they said nothing more to each other. And from that day on S. stopped going to prayer and going to church. And now he hasn’t prayed, taken communion or gone to church for thirty years. And not because he knew his brother’s convictions and would have joined them, not because he decided anything in his soul, but only because this word spoken by his brother was like a finger pushing into a wall that was ready to to fall from one's own weight; this word was an indication that where he thought there was faith, there had long been an empty place, and that therefore the words that he spoke, and the crosses, and the bows that he made while standing in prayer, were completely meaningless actions. Realizing their senselessness, he could not continue them.

This was and is the case, I think, with the vast majority of people. I’m talking about people of our education, I’m talking about people who are truthful with 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 non-believers, 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 creed taught to me from childhood disappeared in me just as in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the creed became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen I stopped going to prayer and, on my own impulse, stopped going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I had been told since childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed, 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 I also could not say what his teaching was.

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

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

By surrendering to these passions, I became like a big man, and I felt that they were pleased with me. My good aunt, the purest being with whom I lived, always told me that she would like nothing more for me than for me to have a relationship 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 should 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 these years without horror, disgust and heartache. I killed people in war, challenged them to duels in order to kill them, lost cards, ate up the labors of men, executed them, committed fornication, deceived them. Lies, theft, fornication of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder... There was no crime that I did not commit, and for all this I was praised, my peers considered and still consider me a relatively moral person.

I lived like this 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 the fame and money for which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and show the bad. That's what I did. How many times have I managed to hide in my writings, under the guise of indifference and even slight mockery, those of my aspirations for good, which constituted the meaning of my life. And I achieved this: I was praised.

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 left the second year of university at the age of 18, I no longer believed in anything that I was taught.
Judging by some memories, I never seriously believed, but only had confidence in what I was taught and in what the great ones confessed to me; but this trust was very shaky.
I remember that when I was about eleven years old, one boy, long dead, Volodenka M., who studied at the gymnasium, came to us on Sunday and, as the latest news, announced to us the discovery made at 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 my older brothers became interested in this news and called me for advice. I remember we all became very animated and took this news as something very entertaining and very possible.
I also remember that when my eldest brother Dmitry, while at the university, suddenly, with the passion characteristic of his nature, surrendered to faith and began to go to all services, fast, and lead a pure and moral life, then all of us, even the elders, without ceasing They laughed at him and for some reason called him Noah. I remember Musin-Pushkin, who was then a trustee of Kazan University, inviting us to dance with him, mockingly persuaded his refusing brother by saying that David also danced in front of the ark. At that time I sympathized with these jokes of the elders and drew from them the conclusion that it is necessary to study the catechism, it is necessary to go to church, but one should not take all this too seriously. I also remember that I read Voltaire when I was very young, and his ridicule not only did not outrage me, 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 religious doctrine, but for the most part are opposite to it; religious doctrine is not involved in life, and you never have to deal with it in relationships with other people and never have to cope with it in your own life; This creed is professed somewhere out there, far from life and independent of it. If you encounter it, then only as an external phenomenon, not related to life.
From a person’s life, from 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 clearly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. Both now and then, the obvious recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found in people who were stupid, cruel and immoral and who considered themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognized themselves as non-believers.
The schools teach the catechism and send students to church; Officials are required to provide evidence of the existence of the sacrament. But a person of our circle, who no longer studies and is not in public service, and now, and even more so 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, both now and before, a creed, accepted out of trust and supported by external pressure, gradually melts away under the influence of knowledge and life experiences that are contrary to the creed, and a person very often lives for a long time, imagining that the creed that was communicated to him is intact within him since childhood, while there is no trace of him for a long time.
S., an intelligent and truthful man, told me how he stopped believing. About twenty-six years old, once while camping for the night during a hunt, according to an old habit adopted from childhood, he began to pray in the evening. The older brother, who had been hunting with him, 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 from that day on S. stopped going to prayer and going to church. And now he hasn’t prayed, taken communion or gone to church for thirty years. And not because he knew his brother’s convictions and would have joined them, not because he decided anything in his soul, but only because this word spoken by his brother was like a finger pushing into a wall that was ready to to fall from one's own weight; this word was an indication that where he thought there was faith, there had long been an empty place, and that therefore the words that he spoke, and the crosses, and the bows that he made while standing in prayer, were completely meaningless actions. Realizing their senselessness, he could not continue them.
This was and is the case, I think, with the vast majority of people. I’m talking about people of our education, I’m talking about people who are truthful with 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 non-believers, 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 creed taught to me from childhood disappeared in me just as in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the creed became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen I stopped going to prayer and, on my own impulse, stopped going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I had been told since childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed, 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 I also could not say what his teaching was.
Now, remembering that time, I see clearly that my faith is what, in addition to animal instincts, moved my life - my only true faith at that time was faith in improvement. But what was the improvement and what was its purpose, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and what life pushed me towards; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself that I tried to follow; I improved myself physically, using all sorts of exercises to refine my strength and dexterity and, through all sorts of hardships, accustoming myself to endurance and patience. And I considered all this as improvement. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral improvement, but it was soon replaced by improvement in general, i.e. the desire to be better not before oneself or before God, but the desire to be better before other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by the desire to be stronger than other people, i.e. more famous, 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 people have experienced the same thing. I wanted with all my soul to be good; but I was young, I had passions, and I was alone, completely alone, when I was looking for what was good. Every time I tried to express what constituted my most sincere desires: that I wanted to be morally good, I was 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.
By surrendering to these passions, I became like a big man, and I felt that they were pleased with me. My good aunt, the purest being with whom I lived, always told me that she would like nothing more for me than for me to have a relationship 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 should 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 these years without horror, disgust and heartache. I killed people in war, challenged them to duels in order to kill them, lost cards, ate up the labors of men, executed them, committed fornication, deceived them. Lies, theft, fornication of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder... There was no crime that I did not commit, and for all this I was praised, my peers considered and still consider me a relatively moral person.
I lived like this 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 the fame and money for which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and show the bad. That's what I did. How many times have I managed to hide in my writings, under the guise of indifference and even slight mockery, those of my aspirations for good, which constituted the meaning of my life. And I achieved this: I was praised.
When I was twenty-six years old, I came to St. Petersburg after the war and became friends with writers. They accepted me as one of their own and flattered me. And before I had time to look back, the class writers’ views on the life of those people with whom I became friends were internalized by me and had already 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 view on the life of these people, my fellow writers, was that life in general is developing and that in this development we, people of thought, take the main part, and among people of thought, we - artists, poets - have the main influence. Our calling is to teach people. In order to avoid that natural question being presented to oneself: what do I know and what should I teach? In this theory it was clarified that one does not need to know this, 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 internalize this theory. I - an artist, a poet - wrote, taught, without knowing what. I was paid money for this, I had excellent food, premises, women, society, I had fame. Therefore, 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, without 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 best and most useful teachers, we teach what is needed, while others teach incorrectly. And others said: no, we are real, but you teach incorrectly. 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 selfish goals with the help of this activity of ours. All this made me doubt the truth of our faith.
In addition, having doubted the truth of the literary faith itself, I began to more carefully observe its priests and became convinced that almost all the priests of this faith, writers, were immoral people and, in the majority, bad people, insignificant in character - much lower than the people I I met in my former riotous and military life - but self-confident and self-satisfied, as only completely saintly people or those who do not even know what holiness is can be satisfied. People disgusted me, and I disgusted myself, and I realized that this faith was a deception.
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 artist, poet, teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet, an artist, and could teach everyone, without knowing what I was teaching. That's what I did.
From getting close to these people, I learned a new vice - a painfully developed pride and a 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 (there are, however, thousands of them now), I feel sorry, scared, and funny - exactly the same feeling arises that you experience in a madhouse.
We were all convinced then that we needed to talk and talk, write, print - as quickly as possible, as much as possible, that all this was needed for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, denying, scolding one another, all printed, wrote, teaching others. And, not noticing that we know nothing, that to the simplest question of life: what is good, what is bad, we do not know what to answer, we all, without listening to each other, all spoke at once, sometimes indulging each other and praising each other so that they would 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 all their strength, typed, printed millions of words, and the post office carried them all over Russia, and we still taught more and more, taught and taught, and never had time to teach everything, and everyone was angry that there were not enough of us listening.
It's terribly strange, but now I understand. Our real, sincere reasoning was that we want to receive as much money and praise as possible. To achieve this goal, we did not know how to do anything other than write books and newspapers. That's what we did. But in order for us to do such a useless task and have the 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 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 diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, this should have forced us to change our minds. But we didn't notice this. We were paid money, and the people of our party praised us - therefore, we, each of us, considered ourselves right.
Now it’s clear to me that there was no difference from the madhouse; At that time I only vaguely suspected this, 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 improvement in general that I lived by, because I found the same faith among them. This faith took in me the usual form that it has among most educated people of our time. This faith was expressed by the word “progress”. Then it seemed to me that this word expressed something. I did not yet understand that, tormented, like every living person, by questions about how best to live, I, answering: to live in accordance with progress, am saying exactly the same thing that a man would say, carried in a boat on the waves and in the wind, to the main and only question for him: “Where to stay?” - if he, without answering the question, says: “We are being carried somewhere.”
I didn't notice it then. Only occasionally, not reason, but feeling rebelled against this common superstition in our time, with which people shield themselves from their lack of understanding of life. Thus, when I was in Paris, the sight of the death penalty exposed to me the instability of my superstition of progress. When I saw how the head was separated from the body, both of them were knocking separately in the box, I realized - not with my mind, but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existing and progress could justify this act and that if all people in the world , according to whatever theories, since the creation of the world, they have 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 case of awareness of the insufficiency of the superstition of progress for life 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 either for me or for him during his slow and painful dying. But these were only rare cases of doubt; in essence, I continued to live, professing only faith in progress. “Everything is developing, and I am developing; “But why am I developing along with everyone else, that will be seen.” This is how I should have formulated my faith then.
Returning from abroad, I settled in the village and attended peasant schools. This activity was especially to my heart, because it did not contain the obvious lies that had already hurt my eyes in the work of literary teaching. Here I also 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 carried out incorrectly and that we must treat primitive people, peasant children, completely freely, inviting them to choose the path of progress that they want. In essence, I kept hovering around the same insoluble problem, which was to teach without knowing what. In the highest 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 taught different things and by arguing among themselves they only hid their ignorance from themselves; here, with peasant children, I thought that this difficulty could be circumvented by allowing the children to learn what they wanted. Now it’s funny for me to remember how I wiggled in order to fulfill my lust - to teach, although I knew very well in the depths of my soul that I could not teach anything that was needed, because I myself did not know what was needed. After a year spent in school, I went abroad another time to find out how to do this so that, without knowing anything 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, taking the place of a mediator, began to teach both the uneducated people in schools and educated people in the magazine that I began to publish . Things seemed to be going well, but I felt that I was not entirely mentally healthy and this could not last long. And then, perhaps, I would have come to the despair to which I came at fifty years old, if I had not had one more side of life, which I had not yet experienced and which promised me salvation: it was family life.
Over the course of a year, I was involved in mediation, schools and the magazine, and I was so exhausted, especially because I was confused, the struggle for mediation became so difficult for me, my activity in the schools manifested itself so vaguely, my influence in the magazine, which consisted all in one thing, became so disgusting to me and the same thing - in the desire to teach everyone and hide the fact that I don’t know what to teach, that I was sick more spiritually than physically - I dropped everything and went to the steppe among the Bashkirs to breathe the air, drink kumiss 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. During this time my whole life was focused on my family, my wife, my children, and therefore on concerns about increasing my means of living. The desire for improvement, which had previously been replaced by the desire for improvement in general, for progress, was now replaced directly 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 had already tasted the temptation of writing, the temptation of huge monetary rewards and applause for insignificant work, and I 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 general one.
I wrote, teaching what was the only truth for me: that one must live in such a way that it would be as good as possible for oneself and one’s family.
This is how I lived, but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: moments of bewilderment, a halt in life, began to come over me, as if I did not know how to live, what to do, and I became lost and fell into despondency. But it passed, and I continued to live as before. Then these moments of bewilderment began to repeat more and more often and all in the same form. These stops in life were always expressed by the same questions: Why? Well, what then?
At first it seemed to me that this was so - aimless, inappropriate questions. It seemed to me that all this was known and that if I ever wanted to solve them, it would not cost me any work - that now only I had no time to do this, and when I wanted to, then I would find the answers. But questions began to be repeated more and more often, answers were required more and more urgently, and like dots, all falling into one place, these unanswered questions rallied into one black spot.
What happened is what happens to every person who suffers from a fatal internal disease. 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 inseparable suffering. The suffering grows, and the patient does not have time to look back before he realizes that what he took for an illness is what is most significant to him in the world, that this is death.
The same thing happened to me. I realized that this was not a random ailment, but something very important, and that if all the same questions were repeated, then they needed to 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 I start working on my Samara estate, raising my son, or writing a book, I need to know why I’m going to do this. While I don’t know why, I can’t do anything. Among my thoughts about the farm, which occupied me very much at that time, the question suddenly occurred to me: “Well, okay, you will have 6,000 dessiatines in the Samara province, 300 heads of horses, and then?..” And I was completely taken aback and didn’t knew what to think next. Or, as I began to think about how I would raise my children, I would say to myself, “Why?” Or, talking about how people can achieve prosperity, I suddenly said to myself: “What does it matter to me?” Or, thinking about the fame that my writings would gain for me, I said to myself: “Well, okay, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - well, so what!..” And I didn’t care. could not answer anything. Questions don’t wait, we must answer now; If you don’t answer, you can’t live. But there is no answer.
I felt that what I stood on had given way, that I had nothing to stand on, that what I had lived on 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, not eat, not drink, not sleep; but there was no life, because there were no such desires, the satisfaction of which I would find reasonable. If I wanted something, then I knew in advance that whether I satisfied or did not satisfy my desire, nothing would come of it. If a sorceress came and offered to grant me my wishes, I would not know what to say. If I have not desires, but habits of desires of the past, in drunken moments, then in sober moments I know that this is a deception, that there is nothing to desire. I couldn’t even want to know the truth, because I guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless. It was as if I had lived and lived, walked and walked, and came to an abyss and clearly saw that there was nothing ahead but destruction. 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 the deception of life and happiness and real suffering and real death - complete destruction.
What happened to me was that I, a healthy, happy person, felt that I could no longer live - some irresistible force was drawing me to somehow get rid of it. It’s not that I wanted to kill myself.
The force that pulled me away from life was stronger, more complete, a general desire. It was a force similar to the previous aspiration of life, only in the opposite sense. I tried with all my might to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally as thoughts about improving my life had come before. This thought was so tempting that I had to use cunning against myself so as not to carry it out too hastily. I didn't want to rush just because I wanted to use every effort to unravel! If I don’t unravel, I’ll always make it, I told myself. And then I, a happy man, took the cord out of my room, 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 too easy a way to rid myself of life. I myself didn’t know what I wanted: I was afraid of life, I wanted to get away from it, and at the same time 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: it 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 any difficulty on my part. I was respected by loved ones 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 physically or spiritually healthy, but, on the contrary, I enjoyed strength, both spiritual and physical, which I rarely saw among my peers: physically I could work in the mowing, keeping up with the men; mentally I could work for eight to ten hours at a time without experiencing any consequences from such stress. And in this situation I came to the conclusion that I could not live and, fearing death, had to use tricks against myself so as not to take my life.

(Introduction to an unpublished essay)

I

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 left the second year of university at the age of 18, I no longer believed in anything that I was taught.

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

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

From a person’s life, from 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 clearly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. Both now and then, the obvious recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found among stupid, cruel and immoral people who considered themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognized themselves as non-believers.

S., an intelligent and truthful man, told me how he stopped believing. About twenty-six years old, once while camping for the night during a hunt, according to an old habit adopted from childhood, he began to pray in the evening. The older brother, who had been hunting with him, 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 from that day on S. stopped going to prayer and going to church. And now he hasn’t prayed, taken communion or gone to church for thirty years. And not because he knew his brother’s convictions and would have joined them, not because he decided anything in his soul, but only because this word spoken by his brother was like a finger pushing into a wall that was ready to to fall from one's own weight; this word was an indication that where he thought there was faith, there had long been an empty place, and that therefore the words that he spoke, and the crosses, and the bows that he made while standing in prayer, were completely meaningless actions. Realizing their senselessness, he could not continue them.

The creed taught to me from childhood disappeared in me just as in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the creed became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen I stopped going to prayer and, on my own impulse, stopped going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I had been told since childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed, 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 I also could not say what his teaching was.

Now, remembering that time, I see clearly that my faith is what, in addition to animal instincts, moved my life - my only true faith at that time was faith in improvement. But what was the improvement and what was its purpose, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and what life pushed me towards; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself that I tried to follow; I improved myself physically, using all sorts of exercises to refine my strength and dexterity and, through all sorts of hardships, accustoming myself to endurance and patience. And I considered all this as improvement. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral improvement, but it was soon replaced by improvement in general, that is, the desire to be better not before oneself or before God, but the desire to be better before other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by the desire to be stronger than other people, that is, more famous, more important, richer than others.

II

I cannot remember these years without horror, disgust and heartache. I killed people in war, challenged them to duels in order to kill them, lost at cards, ate up the labors of men, executed them, fornicated, deceived. Lies, theft, fornication of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder... There was no crime that I did not commit, and for all this I was praised, my peers considered and still consider me a relatively moral person.

I lived like this for ten years.

When I was twenty-six years old, I came to St. Petersburg after the war and became friends with writers. They accepted me as one of their own and flattered me. And before I had time to look back, the class writers’ views on the life of those people with whom I became friends were internalized by me and had already 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 view on the life of these people, my fellow writers, was that life in general is developing and that in this development we, people of thought, take the main part, and among people of thought, we - artists, poets - have the main influence. Our calling is to teach people. In order to avoid that natural question being presented to oneself: what do I know and what should I teach? In this theory it was clarified that one does not need to know this, 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 internalize this theory. I - an artist, a poet - wrote, taught, without knowing what. I was paid money for this, I had excellent food, premises, women, society, I had fame. Therefore, 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, without 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 best and most useful teachers, we teach what is needed, while others teach incorrectly. And others said: no, we are real, and you teach incorrectly. And they argued, quarreled, scolded, deceived, cheated against each other. In addition, there were many people among us who did not care about who was right and who was wrong, but simply achieved their selfish goals with the help of this activity of ours. All this made me doubt the truth of our faith.

In addition, having doubted the truth of the literary faith itself, I began to more carefully observe its priests and became convinced that almost all the priests of this faith, writers, were immoral people and, in the majority, bad people, insignificant in character - much lower than the people I I met in my former riotous and military life - but self-confident and self-satisfied, as only completely saintly people or those who do not even know what holiness is can be satisfied. People disgusted me, and I disgusted myself, and I realized that this faith was a deception.

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 artist, poet, teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet, an artist, and could teach everyone, without knowing what I was teaching. That's what I did.

From getting close to these people, I learned a new vice - a painfully developed pride and a crazy confidence that I was called to teach people, without knowing what.

Now, remembering this time, about my mood then and the mood of those people (there are, however, thousands of them now), I feel sorry, and scared, and funny - exactly That the very feeling you experience in a madhouse.

We were all then convinced that we needed to talk and talk, write, print - as quickly as possible, as much as possible, that all this was needed for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, denying, scolding one another, all printed, wrote, teaching others. And, not noticing that we know nothing, that to the simplest question of life: what is good, what is bad, we do not know what to answer, we all, without listening to each other, all spoke at once, sometimes indulging each other and praising each other so that they would indulge me and praise me, sometimes getting irritated and shouting at each other, just like in a madhouse.

Thousands of workers worked day and night with all their strength, typed, printed millions of words, and the post office delivered them all over Russia, and we still taught more and more, taught and taught, and never had time to teach everything, and everyone was angry that there were not enough of us listening.

It's terribly strange, but now I understand. Our real, sincere reasoning was that we want to receive as much money and praise as possible. To achieve this goal, we did not know how to do anything other than write books and newspapers. That's what we did. But in order for us to do such a useless task and have the 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 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 diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, this should have forced us to change our minds. But we didn't notice this. We were paid money, and the people of our party praised us - therefore, we, each of us, considered ourselves right.

Now it’s clear to me that there was no difference from the madhouse; At that time I only vaguely suspected this, and then only, like all crazy people, I called everyone crazy except myself.

III

I didn't notice it then. Only occasionally - not reason, but feeling was indignant against this common superstition in our time, with which people shield themselves from their lack of understanding of life. Thus, when I was in Paris, the sight of the death penalty exposed to me the instability of my superstition of progress. When I saw how the head was separated from the body, both of them were knocking separately in the box, I realized - not with my mind, but with my whole being - that no theories of the rationality of existing things and progress could justify this act and that if all people in in the world, according to whatever theories, since the creation of the world, they have 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 they say and do people, and not progress, but me with my heart. Another case of awareness of the insufficiency of the superstition of progress for life 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 either for me or for him during his slow and painful dying.

But these were only rare cases of doubt; in essence, I continued to live, professing only faith in progress. “Everything is developing, and I am developing; “But why am I developing along with everyone else, that will be seen.” This is how I should have formulated my faith then.

Returning from abroad, I settled in the village and attended peasant schools. This activity was especially to my heart, because it did not contain the obvious lies that had already hurt my eyes in the work of literary teaching. Here I also 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 carried out incorrectly and that we must treat primitive people, peasant children, completely freely, inviting them to choose the path of progress that they want.

In essence, I kept hovering around the same insoluble problem, which was to teach without knowing what. In the highest 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 taught different things and by arguing among themselves they only hid their ignorance from themselves; here, with peasant children, I thought that this difficulty could be circumvented by allowing the children to learn what they wanted. Now it’s funny for me to remember how I wiggled in order to fulfill my lust - to teach, although I knew very well in the depths of my soul that I could not teach anything that was needed, because I myself did not know what was needed. After a year spent in school, I went abroad another time to find out how to do this so that, without knowing anything 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, taking the place of a mediator, began to teach both the uneducated people in schools and educated people in the magazine that I began to publish . Things seemed to be going well, but I felt that I was not entirely mentally healthy and this could not last long. And then, perhaps, I would have come to the despair to which I came at fifty years old, if I had not had one more side of life, which I had not yet experienced and which promised me salvation: it was family life.

Over the course of a year, I was involved in mediation, schools and the magazine, and I was so exhausted, especially because I got confused, the struggle for mediation became so difficult for me, my activity in the schools manifested itself so vaguely, so disgusted did my wobbling in the magazine, which consisted all in one thing, become so disgusting to me and the same thing - in the desire to teach everyone and hide the fact that I don’t know what to teach, that I was sick more spiritually than physically - I left everything and went to the steppe to the Bashkirs - to breathe the air, drink kumiss 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. During this time my whole life was focused on my family, my wife, my children, and therefore on concerns about increasing my means of living. The desire for improvement, which had previously been replaced by the desire for improvement in general, for progress, was now replaced directly 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 had already tasted the temptation of writing, the temptation of huge monetary rewards and applause for insignificant work, and I 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 general one.

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

This is how I lived, but five years ago something very strange began to happen to me: moments of bewilderment, a halt in life, began to come over me, as if I did not know how to live, what to do, and I became lost and fell into despondency. But it passed, and I continued to live as before. Then these moments of bewilderment began to repeat more and more often and all in the same form. These stops in life were always expressed by the same questions: Why? Well, what then?

At first it seemed to me that this was so - aimless, inappropriate questions. It seemed to me that all this was known and that if I ever wanted to solve them, it would not cost me any work - that now only I had no time to do this, and when I wanted to, then I would find the answers. But questions began to be repeated more and more often, answers were required more and more urgently, and like dots, falling all in one place, these unanswered questions rallied into one black spot.

“What happened is what happens to every person who suffers from a fatal internal disease. 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 inseparable suffering. The suffering grows, and the patient does not have time to look back before he realizes that what he took for an illness is what is most significant to him in the world, that this is death.

The same thing happened to me. I realized that this was not a random ailment, but something very important, and that if the same questions were repeated, then they needed to 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 I start working on my Samara estate, raising my son, or writing a book, I need to know why I’m going to do this. While I don’t know why, I can’t do anything. Among my thoughts about the farm, which occupied me very much at that time, the question suddenly occurred to me: “Well, okay, you will have 6,000 dessiatines in the Samara province, 300 heads of horses, and then?..” And I was completely taken aback and didn’t knew what to think next. Or, as I began to think about how I would raise my children, I would say to myself, “Why?” Or, talking about how people can achieve prosperity, I suddenly said to myself: “What does it matter to me?” Or, thinking about the fame that my writings would gain for me, I said to myself: “Well, okay, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what!..”

And I couldn’t answer anything or anything.

IV

My life has stopped. I could breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and I could not not breathe, not eat, not drink, not sleep; but there was no life, because there were no such desires, the satisfaction of which I would find reasonable. If I wanted something, then I knew in advance that whether I satisfied or did not satisfy my desire, nothing would come of it.

If a sorceress came and offered to grant me my wishes, I would not know what to say. If I have not desires, but habits of desires of the past, in drunken moments, then in sober moments I know that this is a deception, that there is nothing to desire. I couldn’t even want to know the truth, because I guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless.

It was as if I had lived and lived, walked and walked, and came to an abyss and clearly saw that there was nothing ahead but destruction. 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 the deception of life and happiness and real suffering and real death - complete destruction.

I was sick of life - some irresistible force was drawing me to somehow get rid of it. It’s not that I wanted to kill myself. The force that pulled me away from life was stronger, more complete, a general desire. It was a force similar to the previous aspiration of life, only in the opposite sense. I tried with all my might to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally as thoughts about improving my life had come before. This thought was so tempting that I had to use cunning against myself so as not to carry it out too hastily. I didn't want to rush just because I wanted to use every effort to unravel! If I don’t unravel, I’ll always make it, I told myself. And then I, a happy man, took the cord out of my room, where I was alone every evening, undressing, so as not to hang myself on the crossbar between the closets, and stopped going hunting with a gun, so as not to be tempted by too easy a way of ridding myself of life. I myself didn’t know what I wanted: I was afraid of life, I wanted 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: it 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 any difficulty on my part. I was respected by loved ones 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 physically or spiritually healthy, but, on the contrary, I enjoyed both spiritual and physical strength, which I rarely saw among my peers: physically I could work in the mowing, keeping up with the men; mentally I could work for eight to ten hours at a time without experiencing any consequences from such stress.

And in this situation I came to the conclusion that I could not live and, fearing death, had to use tricks against myself so as not to take my life.

This state of mind was expressed for me like this: my life is some kind of stupid and evil 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 was playing an evil and stupid joke on me by bringing me into the world, was the most natural form of representation to me.

Involuntarily I imagined that somewhere there was someone who was now amusing himself, looking at me, how I had lived for 30-40 years, lived learning, developing, growing in body and spirit, and how now, having become completely stronger in mind, having reached that peak of life from which all of it opens - how I stand like a fool at this peak, clearly understanding that there is nothing in life, and never was, and never will be. “And he’s funny...”

But whether there is or not this someone who laughs at me, this does not make me any easier. I could not attach any rational meaning to any action or to my entire life. I was only surprised at how I could not understand this at the very beginning. All this has been known to everyone for so long. Not now or tomorrow, illness, death (and have already come) will come to my loved ones, to me, and there will be nothing left but stench and worms. My affairs, whatever they may be, will all be forgotten - sooner, later, and I won’t be there either. So why bother? How can a person not see this and live - that’s what’s amazing! You can only live while you are drunk with life; but once you sober up, you can’t help but see that all this is just a deception, and a stupid deception! That's right, that nothing is even funny or witty, but simply cruel and stupid.

An eastern 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 him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to get out, so as not to die from an enraged beast, not daring to jump to the bottom of the well, so as not to be devoured by a dragon, grabs the branches of a wild bush growing in the crevices of the well and hangs on to it. His hands weaken, and he feels that he will soon have to surrender to the destruction that awaits him on both sides; but he still holds on, and while he holds on, he looks around and sees that two mice, one black, the other white, evenly walking around the trunk of the bush on which he is hanging, are undermining it. The bush is about to break off and break off on its own, and it will fall into the dragon’s mouth. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably die; but while he is hanging, he searches around him and finds drops of honey on the leaves of the 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 that honey that used to console me; but this honey no longer pleases me, and the white and black mouse - day and night - undermine the branch that I hold on to. I see the dragon clearly, and the honey is no longer sweet to me. I see only one thing - the inevitable dragon and mice - and I cannot turn my gaze 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, don’t think, live - I cannot do this, because I have done this for too long before. Now I cannot help but see day and night running and leading me to death. I see this one thing because this one thing is the truth. The rest is all lies.

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

“Family”... - I said to myself; - but family - wife, children; they are people too. They are in the same conditions as I am: they either have to live a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, take care of them, raise them and take care of 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 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 something that can be done, despite the fact that death will come, which will destroy everything - me, and my deeds, and the memory of them ; but I soon saw that this too was a deception. It was clear to me that art is an adornment of life, a lure to life. But life has lost its temptingness for me, how can I tempt others? While I did not live my own life, and someone else’s life carried me on its waves, while I believed that life has meaning, although I do not know how to express it, reflections of life of all kinds in poetry and the arts gave me joy, it was fun for me to watch to life in this mirror of art; but when I began to look for the meaning of life, when I felt the need to live myself, this mirror became either unnecessary, unnecessary and funny, or painful. I could no longer console myself with the fact that I could see in the mirror that my situation was stupid and desperate. It was good for me to rejoice in this when, deep down in my soul, I believed that my life had meaning. Then this play of lights and shadows - comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, terrible in life - amused me. But when I knew that life was meaningless and terrible, playing 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 eroding my support.

But this is not enough. If I just understood that life has no meaning, I could calmly know this, I could know that this is my destiny. But I couldn't rest on this. If I were like a man living in a forest from which he knows there is no way out, I could live; but I was like a man lost in the forest, who was overcome by horror because he was lost, and he rushes about, wanting to get out on the road, knows that every step confuses him even more, and cannot help but rush 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 worse than the situation itself, but I could not drive it away and could not patiently await the end. No matter how convincing the reasoning was that a vessel in the heart would rupture or something would burst and it would all be over, 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 strongly attracted me to suicide.

V

“But maybe I looked through something and didn’t understand something? - I told myself several times. “It cannot be that this state of despair is characteristic of people.” And I looked for explanations to my questions in all the knowledge that people acquired. And I searched painfully and for a long time, and not out of idle curiosity, I did not search sluggishly, but I searched painfully, stubbornly, days and nights - I searched as a perishing man seeks salvation - and I found nothing.

I searched in all knowledge and not only did not find it, but I became convinced that all those who, just like me, searched in knowledge, also found nothing. And not only did they not find it, but they clearly recognized that the very thing that brought 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 learning, as well as the fact that, due to their connections with the world of scientists, the 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 of nothing else answers the questions of life, as well as the fact that it answers. For a long time it seemed to me, looking at the importance and seriousness of the tone of science, which affirmed its positions that had nothing to do with the issues of human life, that I did not understand something. For a long time I was timid in the face of knowledge, and it seemed to me that the inconsistency of the answers to my questions was not due to the fault of knowledge, but from my ignorance; but for me the matter was not a joke, not amusement, but the matter of my whole life, and I, willy-nilly, was led to the conviction that my questions were only legitimate questions, serving as the basis of all knowledge, and that it was not I who was to blame for my questions, but science, if it has the pretension to answer these questions.

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

Expressed differently, the question would be: “Why should I live, why should I desire anything, why should I do anything?” Another way to express the question is: “Is there such a meaning in my life that would not be destroyed by the inevitable death that awaits 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 one nor the other pole there are answers to the questions of life.

One series of knowledge does not seem to recognize the question, but clearly and accurately answers its own independently posed questions: this is a series of experienced knowledge, and at its extreme point is mathematics; another series of knowledge acknowledges the question, but does not answer it: this is a series of speculative knowledge, and at its extreme point - metaphysics.

From early youth I was interested in speculative knowledge, but then mathematical and natural sciences attracted me, and until I clearly posed my question to myself, until this question grew within me, urgently demanding resolution, until then I was satisfied with those fake answers to question that knowledge gives.

Then, in the experimental area, I told myself: “Everything develops, differentiates, moves towards complication and improvement, and there are laws governing this progress. You are part of the whole. Having known, as far as possible, the whole and having known 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. This was the very time when I myself became more complex 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 within myself, it was natural for me to think that this was the law of the whole world, in which I would find a solution to my questions. of my life. But the time came when growth in me stopped - I felt that I was not developing, but was 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 that I accepted as a law what I found in myself at a certain time in my life. I took a stricter approach to the definition of this law; and it became clear to me that there cannot be laws of endless development; It became clear that to say: in infinite space and time everything develops, improves, becomes more complex, differentiates - this means saying nothing. All these are words without meaning, for 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 the accuracy and clarity of this knowledge is inversely proportional to its applicability to issues of life: the less applicable it is to issues of life, the more accurate and clear it is, the more it tries 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 provide solutions to the questions of life - to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology - then you will encounter an astonishing poverty of thought, the greatest ambiguity, an unjustified pretension to solve inappropriate questions and the constant contradictions of one thinker with others and even with yourself. If you turn to a branch of knowledge that is not concerned with resolving life’s questions, but answers its own scientific, specialized questions, you will admire the power of the human mind, but you know in advance that there are no answers to life’s questions. This knowledge directly ignores the question of life. They say: “We have no idea what you are and why you live; answers and we don’t do that; 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 relationship of numbers and quantities, if you need to know the laws of your mind, then we have clear, precise and undoubted 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 are modified in infinite complexity, and when you understand the laws of these modifications, then you will understand why you live.

Then, in the realm of speculative thought, I told myself: “All humanity lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles, ideals, guiding him. These ideals are expressed in religions, sciences, arts, and forms of statehood. These ideals are becoming higher and higher, and humanity is moving towards the highest good. I am a part of humanity, and therefore my calling is to promote the consciousness and implementation of the ideals of humanity.” And during my dementia I 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 presents conclusions drawn from the study of a small part of humanity as general conclusions, not to mention the mutual inconsistency of different supporters of this view about what the ideals of humanity consist of - strangeness, to say the least - the stupidity of this view lies in the fact that in order to answer the question facing every person: “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 humanity 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. It was at that time when I had my favorite ideals that justified my whims, and I tried to come up with a theory according to which I could look at my whims as the law of humanity. But as soon as the question of life arose in my soul in all its clarity, this answer immediately scattered into dust. And I realized that just as in 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 range 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 supposedly, each in their 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 infinite in time and complexity changes of infinite particles, and then you will understand your life, in the same way a sincere person cannot be satisfied with the answer: study the life of all humanity, 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 experimental half-sciences, these half-sciences are the more full of ambiguities, inaccuracies, stupidities and contradictions, the further they deviate from their tasks. The task of experimental science is the causal sequence of material phenomena. As soon as experimental science introduces the question of the final cause, the result is nonsense. The task of speculative science is the consciousness of the causeless essence of life. Once you introduce the study of causal phenomena as social and historical phenomena, the result is nonsense.

Experimental science only gives positive knowledge and reveals 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 reveals the greatness of the human mind when it completely eliminates questions about the sequence of causal phenomena and considers man only in relation to the final cause. Such is the science in this area, which constitutes the pole of this hemisphere - metaphysics, or speculative philosophy. This science clearly poses the question: what am I and the whole world? and why me and why the whole world? And since she has been there, she always answers the same way. Whether the philosopher calls the essence of life that is in me and in everything that exists by ideas, substance, spirit, or will, the philosopher says one thing, that this essence exists and that I there is the same essence; but why it is, he does not know, and does not answer, if he is an accurate thinker. I ask: Why should this entity exist? What will come 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 all its work consists only in clearly posing this question. And if she firmly adheres to her task, then she cannot answer the question otherwise: “What am I and the whole world?” - “everything and nothing”; and to the question: “why does the world exist and why do I exist?” - "Don't know".

So, no matter how I twist those speculative answers of philosophy, I will never get anything resembling an answer - and not because, as in the area of clear, experimental, the answer does not relate to my question, but because here, although all mental work is aimed specifically at my question, there is no answer, and instead of an answer, the same question is obtained, only in a complicated form.

VI

In my search 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 a clearing, climbed a tree and clearly saw boundless spaces, but saw that there was no house there and could not be there; he went into the thicket, into the darkness, and saw darkness, and there was no home either.

So I wandered in this forest of human knowledge between the 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 further I moved , and finally became convinced that there was no way out and could not be.

By surrendering to the bright side of knowledge, I realized that I was only averting my eyes from the question. No matter how tempting and clear the horizons that opened up to me were, no matter how tempting it was to plunge into the infinity of this knowledge, I already understood that they, this knowledge, were all the clearer the less I needed them, the less they answered the question.

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

By asking one side of human knowledge, I received countless accurate 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 shapes of infinitesimal atoms, about the vibrations of infinitesimals. 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 cohesion of particles. The mutual influence and 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 randomly formed lump of something. The lump is flying. This little lump calls debate its life. The lump will jump out and the debate and all questions will end. This is how the clear side of knowledge answers and cannot say anything else if it only strictly follows its fundamentals.

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 all possible meaning.

The same unclear 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 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 centuries the answer is and has been the same: 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 experimental knowledge that constitute the entire ballast of semi-sciences, the so-called legal, political, historical. The concepts of development and improvement are again incorrectly introduced into these sciences, with the only difference being that there it is the development of everything, and here it is the lives of people. The incorrectness is the same: development, improvement in the infinite cannot have either a goal or direction and in relation to my question does not answer anything.

Where speculative knowledge is precise, precisely in true philosophy, not in that which Schopenhauer called professorial philosophy, which serves only to distribute all existing phenomena into new philosophical graphs and call them by new names - where the philosopher does not miss out of sight, the 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 free oneself from the body and from all the evil that flows from the life of the body. If so, then how can we not rejoice when death comes to us?

“A sage seeks death all his life, and therefore death is not scary to him.”

“Having recognized the inner essence of the world as will,” says Schopenhauer, “and in all phenomena, from the unconscious striving of the dark forces of nature to the fully conscious activity of man, recognizing only the objectivity of this will, we cannot in any way escape the consequence that, together with free negation, self-destruction will, all those phenomena will disappear, that constant striving and attraction without purpose and rest at all levels of objectivity, in which and through which the world consists, the variety of successive forms will disappear, along with the form, all its phenomena will disappear with their general forms, space and time, and finally, its last basic form is subject and object. No will, no idea, no peace. What remains before us, of course, is nothing. But what resists this transition into nothingness, our nature is, after all, only this very will to exist (Wille zum Leben), which constitutes us ourselves, like our world. That we are so afraid of insignificance, or, what is the same thing, that we want to live so much, only means that we ourselves are nothing other than this desire for life, and we know nothing other than it. Therefore, what remains after the complete destruction of the will for us, who are still full of will, is, of course, nothing; but also, on the contrary, for those in whom the will has turned and renounced itself, for them this world of ours is so real, with all its suns and milky ways, there is nothing."

“Vanity of vanities,” says Solomon, “vanity of vanities—all is vanity!” What profit does a man get from all the labors he toils under the sun? Generations pass away and generations come, but the earth remains forever. What has been is what will be; and what has been done will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. There is something about which they say: “look, this is new”; but this was already in the centuries that were before us. There is no memory of the past; and those who come after will have no memory of what will happen. I, Ecclesiastes, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to explore and test with wisdom everything that is done under heaven: God gave this difficult task to the sons of men so that they would practice in it. I saw all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit... I spoke in my heart like this: behold, I have become exalted, I have acquired more wisdom than all those who were before me over Jerusalem, and my heart has seen much wisdom. and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and stupidity; I learned that this too is a languor of the spirit. Because in much wisdom there is much sorrow; and whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow.

“I said in my heart: let me test you with joy and enjoy good things; but this too is vanity. I said about laughter: stupidity, but about fun: what does it do? I decided in my heart to delight my body with wine and, while my heart was guided by wisdom, to adhere to foolishness until I saw what was good for the sons of men, what they should do under heaven in the few days of their lives. I undertook great things: I built houses for myself, planted vineyards for myself. He built gardens and groves for himself and planted all kinds of fruitful trees in them; made himself reservoirs to irrigate groves of trees from them; I acquired servants and maidservants, and I had household members; I also had more large and small livestock than all those who were in Jerusalem before me; he collected for himself silver, and gold, and treasures from kings and regions; He brought in singers and singers and the delights of the sons of men - various musical instruments. And I became great and rich more than all those who were in Jerusalem before me; and my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired, I did not refuse them, I did not forbid them, there was no joy in my heart. And I looked back at all my works that my hands had done, and at the labor that I labored in doing them, and behold, everything was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit from them under the sun. And I turned around to look at wisdom, and madness, and stupidity. But I learned that one fate befalls them all. And I said in my heart: 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 a wise man will not be remembered forever, just like a fool; in the coming days everything will be forgotten, and, alas, the wise man dies along with the fool! And I hated life, because the things that were done under the sun became disgusting to me, for everything was vanity and vexation of spirit. And I hated all my labor with which I worked 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 anxiety; even at night his heart does not know peace. And this is vanity. It is not in man’s power to eat and drink and to delight his soul from his labor...

“There is one thing for everything and everyone: one fate for the righteous and the wicked, the good and the evil, the pure and the unclean, the one who sacrifices and the one who does not; both the virtuous and the sinner; both the one who swears and the one who fears an oath. This is what is bad in everything that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for everyone, and the heart of the sons of men is filled with evil, and madness is in their hearts, in their lives; and after that they go to the dead. Whoever is among the living still has hope, since a living dog is better off than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and there is no longer any reward for them, because the memory of them is consigned to oblivion; and their love, and their hatred, and their jealousy have already disappeared, 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.

Here's what Indian wisdom says:

Sakia-Muni, a young happy prince, from whom illness, old age, and death were hidden, goes on a walk and sees a terrible old man, toothless and slobbering. The prince, from whom old age had been hidden until now, is surprised and asks the driver what it is and why this man came to such a pitiful, disgusting, ugly state? And when he finds out 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 about it. And he locks himself alone and thinks about it. And, probably, he comes up with some kind of consolation for himself, because again he goes out for a walk, cheerful and happy. But this time he meets a sick person. He sees an exhausted, blue-faced, shaking man with clouded eyes. The prince, from whom the illnesses were hidden, stops and asks what it is. And when he finds out that this is a disease to which all people are susceptible, and that he himself, a healthy and happy prince, may get sick the same way tomorrow, he again does not have the spirit to have fun, orders him to return and again seeks peace and, probably, finds it because he is going for a walk for the third time; but the third time he sees an even new sight; he sees that they are carrying something. - "What is this?" Dead man. - “What does dead mean?” - asks the prince. He is told that to become dead means to become what this man became. - The Tsarevich approaches the dead man, opens it and looks at him. - “What will happen to him next?” asks the prince. They tell him that he will be buried in the ground. - "For what?" - Because he will probably never be alive again, but only stench and worms will come from him. - “And this is the lot of all people? And will the same happen to me? Will they bury me, and I will stink, and I will be eaten by worms?” - Yes. - "Back! I don’t go for a walk, and I’ll never go again.”

And Sakia-Muni could not find consolation in life, and he decided that life was the greatest evil, and he used all the strength of his soul to free himself from it and free others. And to free it so that even after death life does not somehow resume, in order to destroy life completely, at the root. All Indian wisdom says this.

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 a lie. And therefore the destruction of this life of the body is good, and we should desire it,” says Socrates.

“Life is something that should not be - evil, and the transition into nothingness is the only good of life,” says Schopenhauer.

“Everything in the world - stupidity and wisdom, wealth and poverty, joy and sorrow - all is vanity and trifles. The person will die and there will be nothing left. And that's stupid," says Solomon.

“You cannot live with the consciousness of the inevitability of suffering, weakening, old age and death - you must free yourself from life, from every possibility of life,” says the Buddha.

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

So my wandering in knowledge not only did not lead me out of my despair, but only intensified it. One knowledge did not answer the questions of life, but another knowledge answered, directly confirming my despair and indicating that what I came to was not the fruit of my delusion, a painful 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 no point in deceiving yourself. Everything is vanity. Happy is he who was not born; death is better than life; we need to get rid of it.

VII

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 like me, how they live around me and how they relate to this question, which led me to despair.

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

I have 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 - mostly women, or very young, or very stupid people - have not yet understood the question of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, and Buddha. They do not see the dragon waiting for them, nor the mice eating away at the bushes they are holding on to and licking drops of honey. But they lick these drops of honey only for a time: something will draw their attention to the dragon and mice, and that’s the end of their licking. I have nothing to learn from them; you cannot 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 exist, not to look at the dragon or the mice, but to lick the honey in the best possible way, especially if there is a lot of it on the bush. Solomon expresses this solution this way:

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

“Go therefore, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with gladness of heart... Enjoy life with a woman whom you love, all the days of your vain life, all your vain days, because this is your share in life and in your labors, which you work under the sun... Whatever your hand can do, do it, because that in the grave where you are going there is no work, no reflection, no knowledge, no wisdom.”

This second conclusion is shared by most people in our circle. The conditions in which they find themselves mean that they have more goods than evils, and moral stupidity gives them the opportunity to forget that the benefits of their position are accidental, that everyone cannot have 1000 women and palaces, like Solomon, that for every person with 1000 wives are 1000 people without wives, and for every palace there are 1000 people who build it by the sweat of their brow, and that the accident that today made me Solomon, tomorrow can 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 will not today or tomorrow destroy all these pleasures. The fact that some of these people claim that the dullness of their thoughts and imagination is a 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, as no living person can, take my eyes off the mice and the dragon once he saw them.

The third way out is the way out of strength and energy. It consists in realizing that life is evil and nonsense, and destroying it. This is what rare, strong and consistent people do. Realizing the stupidity of the joke that was played on them, and realizing that the blessings of the dead are greater than the blessings of the living and that it is best not to exist, they do so and end this stupid joke right away, 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 life, when the strength of the soul is in its prime, and few habits that degrade the human mind have yet been acquired. I saw that this was the most worthy way out, and I wanted to do it.

The fourth way out is the way out of weakness. It consists in understanding the evil and meaninglessness of life, and continuing to drag it out, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. People of this type know that death is better than life, but, not having the strength to act rationally - 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.

This is how people of my type save themselves from a terrible contradiction in four ways. No matter how much I strained my mental attention, I did not see any other way out than these four. There is only one way out: not to understand that life is meaninglessness, vanity and evil and that it is better not to live. I could not help but know this and, once I 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 that. I, like Sakia-Muni, could not go hunting when I knew that there was old age, suffering, death. My imagination was too vivid. Moreover, I could not rejoice at the momentary chance that threw pleasure for a moment into my lot. The third way out: having realized that life is evil and stupidity, stop, kill yourself. I understood this, but for some reason I 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 yet live, wash, dress, dine, talk and even write books. It was disgusting and 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 awareness of the injustice of my thoughts. No matter how convincing and undoubted the course of my thoughts and the thoughts of the wise, which led us to the recognition of the meaninglessness 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, admitted that life is unreasonable. If there is no higher reason (and there is none, and nothing can prove it), then reason is the creator of life for me. If there were no reason, there would be no life for me. How does this mind deny life, while it itself is the creator of life? Or, on the other hand: if there were no life, there would be no my mind - therefore, mind 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 senseless evil, that’s certain, I told myself. - But I lived, I still live, and all of humanity lived and lives. How so? Why does it live when it may not live? Well, am I the only one with Schopenhauer so smart that I understood the meaninglessness and evil of life?

Reasoning about the vanity of life is not so tricky, and all the simplest people have been doing it for a long time, but they lived and live. Well, they all live and never even 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 incredibly cleverly arranged, only my position is stupid. And these fools - huge masses of ordinary people - know nothing about how everything organic and inorganic works in the world, but they live, and it seems to them that their lives are very intelligently arranged!

And it occurred to me: what if I don’t know something else? This is exactly what ignorance does. Ignorance always says this. 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 lived and lives as if understanding the meaning of its life, for without understanding it, it could not live, but I say that all this life is meaningless, and I cannot live.

No one is stopping Schopenhauer and me from denying life. But then kill yourself and you won’t reason. If you don't like life, kill yourself. But if you live, you cannot understand the meaning of life, so stop it, and don’t spin around in this life, telling and describing that you don’t understand life. You came to a cheerful company, everyone was having a great time, everyone knew what they were doing, but you were bored and disgusted, so leave.

After all, what are we, convinced of the necessity of suicide and not daring to commit it, if not the weakest, most inconsistent and, to put it simply, stupid people, running around with our stupidity like a fool with a white bag?

After all, our wisdom, no matter how undoubtedly true it is, has not given us knowledge of the meaning of our life. Yet humanity, making life, millions, do not doubt the meaning of life.

In fact, since long, long ago, since there has been life, about which I know something, people have lived, knowing that reasoning about the futility of life, which showed me its meaninglessness, and yet they lived, giving it some kind of meaning. then the meaning. Since any life of people began, 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 instruments 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, raised, and raised thanks to them. They dug up iron, taught us to cut down forests, tamed cows and horses, taught us to sow, taught us to live together, streamlined our lives; they taught me to think and speak. And I, their product, fed by them, watered by them, taught by them, thinking by their thoughts and words, proved to them that they are nonsense! “Something is wrong here,” I told myself. “I made a mistake somewhere.” But I couldn’t find what the mistake was.

Lev Tolstoy

Confession

(Introduction to an unpublished essay)

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

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 religious doctrine, but for the most part are opposite to it; religious doctrine is not involved in life, and you never have to deal with it in relationships with other people, and you never have to deal with it yourself in your own life; This creed is professed somewhere out there, far from life and independent of it. If you encounter it, then only as an external phenomenon, not related to life.

From a person’s life, from 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 clearly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. Both now and then, the obvious recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found among stupid, cruel and immoral people who considered themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognized themselves as non-believers.

The creed taught to me from childhood disappeared in me just as in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the creed became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen I stopped going to prayer and, on my own impulse, stopped going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I had been told since childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed, 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 I also could not say what his teaching was.

Now, remembering that time, I see clearly that my faith - what, in addition to animal instincts, moved my life - my only true faith at that time was faith in improvement. But what was the improvement and what was its purpose, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and that life pushed me towards; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself that I tried to follow; I improved myself physically, using all sorts of exercises to refine my strength and dexterity and, through all sorts of hardships, accustoming myself to endurance and patience. And I considered all this as improvement. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral improvement, but it was soon replaced by improvement in general, that is, the desire to be better not before oneself or before God, but the desire to be better before other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by the desire to be stronger than other people, that is, more famous, more important, richer than others.

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

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 religious doctrine, but for the most part are opposite to it; religious doctrine is not involved in life, and you never have to deal with it in relationships with other people, and you never have to deal with it yourself in your own life; This creed is professed somewhere out there, far from life and independent of it. If you encounter it, then only as an external phenomenon, not related to life.

From a person’s life, from 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 clearly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, it is not in favor of the former. Both now and then, the obvious recognition and confession of Orthodoxy was mostly found among stupid, cruel and immoral people who considered themselves very important. Intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good nature and morality were mostly found in people who recognized themselves as non-believers.

The creed taught to me from childhood disappeared in me just as in others, with the only difference being that since I began to read and think a lot very early, my renunciation of the creed became conscious very early. From the age of sixteen I stopped going to prayer and, on my own impulse, stopped going to church and fasting. I stopped believing in what I had been told since childhood, but I believed in something. What I believed, 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 I also could not say what his teaching was.

Now, remembering that time, I see clearly that my faith - what, in addition to animal instincts, moved my life - my only true faith at that time was faith in improvement. But what was the improvement and what was its purpose, I could not say. I tried to improve myself mentally - I learned everything I could and that life pushed me towards; I tried to improve my will - I made up rules for myself that I tried to follow; I improved myself physically, using all sorts of exercises to refine my strength and dexterity and, through all sorts of hardships, accustoming myself to endurance and patience. And I considered all this as improvement. The beginning of everything was, of course, moral improvement, but it was soon replaced by improvement in general, that is, the desire to be better not before oneself or before God, but the desire to be better before other people. And very soon this desire to be better in front of people was replaced by the desire to be stronger than other people, that is, more famous, more important, richer than others.

II

I lived like this for ten years.

The view on the life of these people, my fellow writers, was that life in general is developing and that in this development we, people of thought, take the main part, and among people of thought, we - artists and poets - have the main influence. Our calling is to teach people. In order to avoid that natural question being presented to oneself: what do I know and what should I teach? In this theory it was clarified that one does not need to know this, 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 internalize this theory. I - an artist, a poet - wrote, taught, without knowing what. I was paid money for this, I had excellent food, premises, women, society, I had fame. Therefore, 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, without 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 best and most useful teachers, we teach what is needed, while others teach incorrectly. And others said: no, we are real, but you teach incorrectly. 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 selfish goals with the help of this activity of ours. All this made me doubt the truth of our faith.

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

From getting close to these people, I learned a new vice - a painfully developed pride and a 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 (there are, however, thousands of them now), I feel sorry, scared, and funny - exactly the same feeling arises that you experience in a madhouse.

We were all convinced then that we needed to talk and talk, write, print - as quickly as possible, as much as possible, that all this was needed for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, denying, scolding one another, all printed, wrote, teaching others. And, not noticing that we know nothing, that to the simplest question of life: what is good, what is bad, we do not know what to answer, we all, without listening to each other, all spoke at once, sometimes indulging each other and praising each other so that they would indulge me and praise me, sometimes getting irritated and shouting at each other, just like in a madhouse.

Thousands of workers worked day and night with all their strength, typed, printed millions of words, and the post office carried them all over Russia, and we still taught more and more, taught and taught, and never had time to teach everything, and everyone was angry that there were not enough of us listening.

It's terribly strange, but now I understand. Our real, sincere reasoning was that we want to receive as much money and praise as possible. To achieve this goal, we did not know how to do anything other than write books and newspapers. That's what we did. But in order for us to do such a useless task and have the 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 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 diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, this should have forced us to change our minds. But we didn't notice this. We were paid money, and the people of our party praised us - therefore, we, each of us, considered ourselves right.

Now it’s clear to me that there was no difference from the madhouse; At that time I only vaguely suspected this, and then only, like all crazy people, I called everyone crazy except myself.

III

I didn't notice it then. Only occasionally, not reason, but feeling rebelled against this common superstition in our time, with which people shield themselves from their lack of understanding of life. Thus, when I was in Paris, the sight of the death penalty exposed to me the instability of my superstition of progress. When I saw how the head was separated from the body and both were knocking separately in the box, I realized - not with my mind, but with my whole being - that no theories of the rationality of existing things and progress could justify this act and that if all the people in the world, according to whatever theories, since the creation of the world, they have 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 case of awareness of the insufficiency of the superstition of progress for life 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 either for me or for him during his slow and painful dying.

In essence, I kept hovering around the same insoluble problem, which was to teach without knowing what. In the highest 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 taught different things and by arguing among themselves they only hid their ignorance from themselves; here, with peasant children, I thought that this difficulty could be circumvented by allowing the children to learn what they wanted. Now it’s funny for me to remember how I hesitated in order to fulfill my lust - to teach, although I knew very well in the depths of my soul that I could not teach anything that was needed, because I myself did not know what was needed. After a year spent in school, I went abroad another time to find out how to do this so that, without knowing anything myself, I could teach others.

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

So another fifteen years passed.

Despite the fact that I considered writing a trifle, during these fifteen years I still continued to write. I had already tasted the temptation of writing, the temptation of huge monetary rewards and applause for insignificant work, and I 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 general one.

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

At first it seemed to me that this was so - aimless, inappropriate questions. It seemed to me that all this was known and that if I ever wanted to solve them, it would not cost me any work - that now only I had no time to do this, and when I wanted to, then I would find the answers. But questions began to be repeated more and more often, answers were required more and more urgently, and like dots, all falling into one place, these unanswered questions rallied into one black spot.

What happened is what happens to every person who suffers from a fatal internal disease. 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 inseparable suffering. The suffering grows, and the patient does not have time to look back before he realizes that what he took for an illness is what is most significant to him in the world, that this is death.

The same thing happened to me. I realized that this was not a random ailment, but something very important, and that if all the same questions were repeated, then they needed to 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 I start working on my Samara estate, raising my son, or writing a book, I need to know why I’m going to do this. Until I know why, I can’t do anything. Among my thoughts about the farm, which occupied me very much at that time, the question suddenly occurred to me: “Well, okay, you will have 6,000 dessiatines in the Samara province, 300 heads of horses, and then?..” And I was completely taken aback and didn’t knew what to think next. Or, as I began to think about how I would raise my children, I would say to myself, “Why?” Or, talking about how people can achieve prosperity, I suddenly said to myself: “What does it matter to me?” Or, thinking about the fame that my writings would gain for me, I said to myself: “Well, okay, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what!”

And I couldn’t answer anything or anything.