A Confession

Tags:#media/book Author:: Leo Tolstoy

• Quotes

  • And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life’s questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another just as in a lunatic asylum. pg 7

    • not listening to each other, listening to respond Author:: Leo Tolstoy Full Title:: A Confession Tags:#media/book
• themes::
  • theme 1
• Summary::
  • summary 1

* highlights from 2021-02-08

* I never seriously believed them, but had merely relied on what I was taught and on what was professed by the grown-up people around me, and that reliance was very unstable. ([Location 22](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=22))
* a man lives like everybody else, on the basis of principles not merely having nothing in common with religious doctrine, but generally opposed to it; religious doctrine does not play a part in life, in intercourse with others it is never encountered, and in a man's own life he never has to reckon with it. ([Location 36](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=36))
* Religious doctrine is professed far away from life and independently of it. If it is encountered, it is only as an external phenomenon disconnected from life. ([Location 38](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=38))
* So that, now as formerly, religious doctrine, accepted on trust and supported by external pressure, thaws away gradually under the influence of knowledge and experience of life which conflict with it, and a man very often lives on, imagining that he still holds intact the religious doctrine imparted to him in childhood whereas in fact not a trace of it remains. ([Location 48](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=48))
    * **Note**: Belief may not match actions
* The word only showed that where he thought there was faith, in reality there had long been an empty space, and that therefore the utterance of words and the making of signs of the cross and genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions. ([Location 59](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=59))
* Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith my only real faith that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse to my life was a belief in perfecting myself. ([Location 72](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=72))
* With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged. ([Location 82](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=82))
    * **Note**: All the wrong kinds of incentives
* How often in my writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference, or even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave meaning to my life! And I succeeded in this and was praised. ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=98))
* What do I know, and what can I teach? it was explained in this theory that this need not be known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. ([Location 106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=106))
* This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests. ([Location 110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=110))
* but they were self-confident and self-satisfied as only those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what holiness is. ([Location 120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=120))
* From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what. ([Location 125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=125))
* And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote teaching others. And without noticing that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another just as in a lunatic asylum. ([Location 131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=131))
    * **Note**: Not listening to each other. Listening to respond
* "All that exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=140))
* This theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered himself justified. ([Location 142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=142))
* like all lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=146))
* That faith took with me the common form it assumes with the majority of educated people of our day. It was expressed by the word "progress". It then appeared to me that this word meant something. I did not as yet understand that, being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for me to live, in my answer, "Live in conformity with progress", ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=153))
* When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I. ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=160))
* In reality I was ever revolving round one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach without knowing what to teach. In the higher spheres of literary activity I had realized that one could not teach without knowing what, for I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their ignorance from one another. ([Location 173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=173))
* I knew very well that I could not teach anything needful for I did not know what was needful. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=177))
* My striving after self-perfection, for which I had already substituted a striving for perfection in general, i.e. progress, was now again replaced by the effort simply to secure the best possible conditions for myself and my family. ([Location 192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=192))
* Then these moments of perplexity began to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does it lead to? ([Location 200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=200))
* The questions however began to repeat themselves frequently, and to demand replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always falling on one place they ran together into one black blot. ([Location 204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=204))
* The questions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not answer them it was impossible to live. But there was no answer. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=220))
* I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death complete annihilation. ([Location 234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=234))
* I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it. ([Location 246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=246))
* how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit like an arch-fool seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused. ([Location 258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=258))
* Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! ([Location 263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=263))
    * **Note**: Nihilism
* So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. ([Location 275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=275))
* important and serious air with which science announces its conclusions which have nothing in common with the real questions of human life, that there was something I had not understood. I long was timid before science, and it seemed to me that the lack of conformity between the answers and my questions arose not by the fault of science but from my ignorance, but the matter was for me not a game or an amusement but one of life and death, and I was involuntarily brought to the conviction that my questions were the only legitimate ones, forming the basis of all knowledge, and that I with my questions was not to blame, but science if it pretends to reply to those questions. ([Location 321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=321))
* "What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?" ([Location 329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=329))
* "Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?" ([Location 331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=331))
* the less their applicability to the question of life, the more exact and clear they are, while the more they try to reply to the question of life, the more obscure and unattractive they become. ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=356))
* Not to speak of the unscrupulous obscurity with which those sciences announce conclusions formed on the study of a small part of mankind as general conclusions; not to speak of the mutual contradictions of different adherents of this view as to what are the ideals of humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theory consists in the fact that in order to reply to the question facing each man: "What am I?" or "Why do I live?" or "What must I do?" one has first to decide the question: "What is the life of the whole?" ([Location 374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=374))
* To understand what he is, one man must first understand all this mysterious humanity, consisting of people such as himself who do not understand one another. ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=378))
* And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. ([Location 464](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=464))
* Strange, incredibly incomprehensible as it now seems to me that I could, while reasoning about life, overlook the whole life of mankind that surrounded me on all sides; that I could to such a degree blunder so absurdly as to think that my life, and Solomon's and Schopenhauer's, is the real, normal life, and that the life of the milliards is a circumstance undeserving of attention ([Location 634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=634))
* I instinctively felt that if I wished to live and understand the meaning of life, I must seek this meaning not among those who have lost it and wish to kill themselves, but among those milliards of the past and the present who make life and who support the burden of their own lives and of ours also. ([Location 644](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=644))
* Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not but reject. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason. ([Location 654](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=654))
* I knew I could find nothing along the path of reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there in faith was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet more impossible for me than a denial of life. ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=658))
* By faith it appears that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required ([Location 661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=661))
* And I understood that, however irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no solution. ([Location 692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=692))
* Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give, and to whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the finite existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death. ([Location 706](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=706))
* Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live. ([Location 711](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=711))
* Evidently I might learn much, but nothing of what I needed. ([Location 722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=722))
* Evidently I could learn nothing but what I knew myself, namely that nothing can be known. ([Location 725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=725))
* man's conception of moral goodness and evil are conceptions formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought, they are those conceptions without which neither life nor I should exist; ([Location 744](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=744))
* I saw this because if they had had a meaning which destroyed the fear of loss, suffering, and death, they would not have feared these things. But they, these believers of our circle, just like myself, living in sufficiency and superfluity, tried to increase or preserve them, feared privations, suffering, and death, and just like myself and all of us unbelievers, lived to satisfy their desires, and lived just as badly, if not worse, than the unbelievers. ([Location 772](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=772))
* but the superstitions of the believers among the labouring masses conformed so with their lives that it was impossible to imagine them to oneself without those superstitions, which were a necessary condition of their life. ([Location 792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=792))
* In contrast with what I had seen in our circle, where the whole of life is passed in idleness, amusement, and dissatisfaction, I saw that the whole life of these people was passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life. In contradistinction to the way in which people of our circle oppose fate and complain of it on account of deprivations and sufferings, these people accepted illness and sorrow without any perplexity or opposition, and with a quiet and firm conviction that all is good. ([Location 798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=798))
* All our actions, discussions, science and art, presented itself to me in a new light. I understood that it is all merely self-indulgence, and the to find a meaning in it is impossible; while the life of the whole labouring people, the whole of mankind who produce life, appeared to me in its true significance. I understood that that is life itself, and that the meaning given to that life is true: and I accepted it. ([Location 813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=813))
* he must obtain it not for himself but for all. And when he does that, I have a firm assurance that he is happy and that his life is reasonable. But what had I done during the whole thirty years of my responsible life? Far from producing sustenance for all, I did not even produce it for myself. I lived as a parasite, and on asking myself, what is the use of my life? I got the reply: "No use." If the meaning of human life lies in supporting it, how could I who for thirty years had been engaged not on supporting life but on destroying it in myself and in others how could I obtain any other answer than that my life was senseless and an evil? ([Location 846](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=846))
* That shore was God; that direction was tradition; the oars were the freedom given me to pull for the shore and unite with God. And so the force of life was renewed in me and I again began to live. ([Location 945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=945))
* If that explanation was artificial I did not notice its artificiality: so happy was I at humbling and abasing myself before the priest a simple, timid country clergyman turning all the dirt out of my soul and confessing my vices, so glad was I to merge in thought with the humility of the fathers who wrote the prayers of the office, so glad was I of union with all who have believed and now believe, that I did not notice the artificiality of my explanation. But when I approached the altar gates, and the priest made me say that I believed that what I was about to swallow was truly flesh and blood, I felt a pain in my heart: it was not merely a false note, it was a cruel demand made by someone or other who evidently had never known what faith is. ([Location 1028](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1028))
* How often I envied the peasants their illiteracy and lack of learning! Those statements in the creeds which to me were evident absurdities, for them contained nothing false; they could accept them and could believe in the truth the truth I believed in. Only to me, unhappy man, was it clear that with truth falsehood was interwoven by finest threads, and that I could not accept it in that form. ([Location 1054](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1054))
* And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to produce. ([Location 1074](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1074))
* One says to oneself: it is impossible that it is so simple and that people do not see that if two assertions are mutually contradictory, then neither of them has the sole truth which faith should possess. ([Location 1080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1080))
* I know that the explanation of everything, like the commencement of everything, must be concealed in infinity. But I wish to understand in a way which will bring me to what is inevitably inexplicable. I wish to recognize anything that is inexplicable as being so not because the demands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can understand nothing), but because I recognize the limits of my intellect. I wish to understand in such a way that everything that is inexplicable shall present itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable, and not as being something I am under an arbitrary obligation to believe. ([Location 1137](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1137))
* The immensity below repels and frightens me; the immensity above attracts and strengthens me. I am still supported above the abyss by the last supports that have not yet slipped from under me; I know that I am hanging, but I look only upwards and my fear passes. ([Location 1171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1171))
* imagined the mechanism by means of which I was held; a very natural intelligible, and sure means, though to one awake that mechanism has no sense. I was even surprised in my dream that I had not understood it sooner. It appeared that at my head there was a pillar, and the security of that slender pillar was undoubted though there was nothing to support it. From the pillar a loop hung very ingeniously and yet simply, and if one lay with the middle of one's body in that loop and looked up, there could be no question of falling. This was all clear to me, and I was glad and tranquil. ([Location 1178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00907A04K&location=1178))