happeneth even to me, and why was I then more wise
November 9th, 2021

then I said in

my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of

the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is

in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise

man? as the fool. Therefore I hated life; because the work that is

wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and

vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken

under the sun: seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall

be after me.... For what hath man of all his labour, and of the

vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For

all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, even in the

night his heart taketh no rest. this is also vanity. Man is not

blessed with security that he should eat and drink and cheer his

soul from his own labour.... All things come alike to all: there is

one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to

the evil; to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth

and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner;

and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil

in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event unto

all; yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and

madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go

to the dead. For him that is among the living there is hope: for

a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that

they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they

any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. also their

love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither

have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done

under the sun."

 So said Solomon, or whoever wrote those words.  [Footnote:

tolstoy's version differs slightly in a few places from our own

Authorized or Revised version. I have followed his text, for in a

letter to Fet, quoted on p. 18, vol. ii, of my "Life of Tolstoy,"

he says that "The Authorized English version [of Ecclesiastes] is

bad." -- A.M.]

 And this is what the Indian wisdom tells:

 Sakya Muni, a young, happy prince, from whom the existence of

sickness, old age, and death had been hidden, went out to drive and

saw a terrible old man, toothless and slobbering. the prince, from

whom till then old age had been concealed, was amazed, and asked

his driver what it was, and how that man had come to such a

wretched and disgusting condition, and when he learnt that this was

the common fate of all men, that the same thing inevitably awaited

him -- the young prince -- he could not continue his drive, but

gave orders to go home, that he might consider this fact. So he

shut himself up alone and considered it. and he probably devised

some consolation for himself, for he subsequently again went out to

drive, feeling merry and happy. But this time he saw a sick man.

He saw an emaciated, livid, trembling man with dim eyes. The

prince, from whom sickness had been concealed, stopped and asked

what this was. And when he learnt that this was sickness, to which

all men are liable, and that he himself -- a healthy and happy

prince -- might himself fall ill tomorrow, he again was in no mood

to enjoy himself but gave orders to drive home, and again sought

some solace, and probably found it, for he drove out a third time

for pleasure. But this third time he saw another new sight: he saw

men carrying something. 'What is that?' 'A dead man.' 'What does

dead mean?' asked the prince. He was told that to become dead

means to become like that man. The prince approached the corpse,

uncovered it, and looked at it. 'What will happen to him now?'

asked the prince. He was told that the corpse would be buried in

the ground. 'Why?' 'Because he will certainly not return to life,

and will only produce a stench and worms.' 'And is that the fate

of all men? Will the same thing happen to me? Will they bury me,

and shall I cause a stench and be eaten by worms?' 'Yes.' 'Home!

I shall not drive out for pleasure, and never will so drive out

again!'

 And Sakya Muni could find no consolation in life, and decided

that life is the greatest of evils; and he devoted all the strength

of his soul to free himself from it, and to free others; and to do

this so that, even after death, life shall not be renewed any more

but be completely destroyed at its very roots. So speaks all the

wisdom of India.

 These are the direct replies that human wisdom gives when it

replies to life's question.

 "The life of the body is an evil and a lie.  Therefore the

destruction of the life of the body is a blessing, and we should

desire it," says Socrates.

 "Life is that which should not be -- an evil; and the passage

into Nothingness is the only good in life," says Schopenhauer.

 "All that is in the world -- folly and wisdom and riches and

poverty and mirth and grief -- is vanity and emptiness. Man dies

and nothing is left of him. And that is stupid," says Solomon.

 "To life in the consciousness of the inevitability of

suffering, of becoming enfeebled, of old age and of death, is

impossible -- we must free ourselves from life, from all possible

life," says Buddha.

 And what these strong minds said has been said and thought and

felt by millions upon millions of people like them. And I have

thought it and felt it.

 So my wandering among the sciences, far from freeing me from

my despair, only strengthened it. One kind of knowledge did not

reply to life's question, the other kind replied directly

confirming my despair, indicating not that the result at which I

had arrived was the fruit of error or of a diseased state of my

mind, but on the contrary that I had thought correctly, and that my

thoughts coincided with the conclusions of the most powerful of

human minds.

 It is no good deceiving oneself. It is all -- vanity!  Happy

is he who has not been born: death is better than life, and one

must free oneself from life.

                           VII



 Not finding an explanation in science I began to seek for it

in life, hoping to find it among the people around me. And I began

to observe how the people around me -- people like myself -- lived,

and what their attitude was to this question which had brought me

to despair.

 And this is what I found among people who were in the same

position as myself as regards education and manner of life.

 I found that for people of my circle there were four ways out

of the terrible position in which we are all placed.

 The first was that of ignorance. It consists in not knowing,

not understanding, that life is an evil and an absurdity. People

of this sort -- chiefly women, or very young or very dull people --

have not yet understood that question of life which presented

itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, and Buddha. They see neither the

dragon that awaits them nor the mice gnawing the shrub by which

they are hanging, and they lick the drops of honey. but they lick

those drops of honey only for a while: something will turn their

attention to the dragon and the mice, and there will be an end to

their licking. From them I had nothing to learn -- one cannot

cease to know what one does know.

 The second way out is epicureanism.  It consists, while

knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the

advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and

licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of

it within reach. Solomon expresses this way out thus: "Then I

commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun,

than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: and that this should

accompany him in his labour the days of his life, which God giveth

him under the sun.

 "Therefore eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a

merry heart.... Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all

the days of the life of thy vanity...for this is thy portion in

life and in thy labours which thou takest under the sun....

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there

is not work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave,

whither thou goest."

 That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle

make life possible for themselves. Their circumstances furnish

them with more of welfare than of hardship, and their moral

dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of

their position is accidental, and that not everyone can have a

thousand wives and palaces like Solomon, that for everyone who has

a thousand wives there are a thousand without a wife, and that for

each palace there are a thousand people who have to build it in the

sweat of their brows; and that the accident that has today made me

a Solomon may tomorrow make me a Solomon's slave. The dullness of

these people's imagination enables them to forget the things that

gave Buddha no peace -- the inevitability of sickness, old age, and

death, which today or tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures.

 So think and feel the majority of people of our day and our

manner of life. The fact that some of these people declare the

dullness of their thoughts and imaginations to be a philosophy,

which they call Positive, does not remove them, in my opinion, from

the ranks of those who, to avoid seeing the question, lick the

honey. I could not imitate these people; not having their dullness

of imagination I could not artificially produce it in myself. I

could not tear my eyes from the mice and the dragon, as no vital

man can after he has once seen them.

 The third escape is that of strength and energy.  It consists

in destroying life, when one has understood that it is an evil and

an absurdity. A few exceptionally strong and consistent people act

so. Having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been

played on them, and having understood that it is better to be dead

than to be alive, and that it is best of all not to exist, they act

accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are

means: a rope round one's neck, water, a knife to stick into one's

heart, or the trains on the railways; and the number of those of

our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for

the most part they act so at the best time of their life, when the

strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to

the mind have as yet been acquired.

 I saw that this was the worthiest way of escape and I wished

to adopt it.

 The fourth way out is that of weakness.  It consists in seeing

the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in

advance that nothing can come of it. People of this kind know that

death is better than life, but not having the strength to act

rationally -- to end the deception quickly and kill themselves --

they seem to wait for something. This is the escape of weakness,

for if I know what is best and it is within my power, why not yield

to what is best? ... I found myself in that category.

 So people of my class evade the terrible contradiction in four

ways. Strain my attention as I would, I saw no way except those

four. One way was not to understand that life is senseless,

vanity, and an evil, and that it is better not to live. I could

not help knowing this, and when I once knew it could not shut my

eyes to it. the second way was to use life such as it is without

thinking of the future. And I could not do that. I, like Sakya

Muni, could not ride out hunting when I knew that old age,

suffering, and death exist. My imagination was too vivid. Nor

could I rejoice in the momentary accidents that for an instant

threw pleasure to my lot. The third way, having under stood that

life is evil and stupid, was to end it by killing oneself. I

understood that, but somehow still did not kill myself. The fourth

way was to live like Solomon and Schopenhauer -- knowing that life

is a stupid joke played upon us, and still to go on living, washing

oneself, dressing, dining, talking, and even writing books. This

was to me repulsive and tormenting, but I remained in that

position.

 I see now that if I did not kill myself it was due to some dim

consciousness of the invalidity of my thoughts. However convincing

and indubitable appeared to me the sequence of my thoughts and of

those of the wise that have brought us to the admission of the

senselessness of life, there remained in me a vague doubt of the

justice of my conclusion.

 It was like this:  I, my reason, have acknowledged that life

is senseless. If there is nothing higher than reason (and there is

not: nothing can prove that there is), then reason is the creator

of life for me. If reason did not exist there would be for me no

life. How can reason deny life when it is the creator of life? Or

to put it the other way: were there no life, my reason would not

exist; therefore reason is life's son. Life is all. Reason is its

fruit yet reason rejects life itself! I felt that there was

something wrong here.

 Life is a senseless evil, that is certain, said I to myself. 

Yet I have lived and am still living, and all mankind lived and

lives. How is that? Why does it live, when it is possible not to

live? Is it that only I and Schopenhauer are wise enough to

understand the senselessness and evil of life?

 The reasoning showing the vanity of life is not so difficult,

and has long been familiar to the very simplest folk; yet they have

lived and still live. How is it they all live and never think of

doubting the reasonableness of life?

 My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, has shown

me that everything on earth -- organic and inorganic -- is all most

cleverly arranged -- only my own position is stupid. and those

fools -- the enormous masses of people -- know nothing about how

everything organic and inorganic in the world is arranged; but they

live, and it seems to them that their life is very wisely arranged!

...

 And it struck me:  "But what if there is something I do not

yet know? Ignorance behaves just in that way. Ignorance always

says just what I am saying. When it does not know something, it

says that what it does not know is stupid. Indeed, it appears that

there is a whole humanity that lived and lives as if it understood

the meaning of its life, for without understanding it could not

live; but I say that all this life is senseless and that I cannot

live.

 "Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide.  well then,

kill yourself, and you won't discuss. If life displeases you, kill

yourself! You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life --

then finish it, and do not fool about in life, saying and writing

that you do not understand it. You have come into good company

where people are contented and know what they are doing; if you

find it dull and repulsive -- go away!"

 Indeed, what are we who are convinced of the necessity of

suicide yet do not decide to commit it, but the weakest, most

inconsistent, and to put it plainly, the stupidest of men, fussing

about with our own stupidity as a fool fusses about with a painted

hussy? For our wisdom, however indubitable it may be, has not

given us the knowledge of the meaning of our life. But all mankind

who sustain life -- millions of them -- do not doubt the meaning of

life.

 Indeed, from the most distant time of which I know anything,

when life began, people have lived knowing the argument about the

vanity of life which has shown me its senselessness, and yet they

lived attributing some meaning to it.

 From the time when any life began among men they had that

meaning of life, and they led that life which has descended to me.

All that is in me and around me, all, corporeal and incorporeal, is

the fruit of their knowledge of life. Those very instruments of

thought with which I consider this life and condemn it were all

devised not be me but by them. I myself was born, taught, and

brought up thanks to them. They dug out the iron, taught us to cut

down the forests, tamed the cows and horses, taught us to sow corn

and to live together, organized our life, and taught me to think

and speak. And I, their product, fed, supplied with drink, taught

by them, thinking with their thoughts and words, have argued that

they are an absurdity! "There is something wrong," said I to

myself. "I have blundered somewhere." But it was a long time

before I could find out where the mistake was.

                          VIII



 All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less

systematically, I could not then have expressed. I then only felt

that however logically inevitable were my conclusions concerning

the vanity of life, confirmed as they were by the greatest

thinkers, there was something not right about them. Whether it was

in the reasoning itself or in the statement of the question I did

not know -- I only felt that the conclusion was rationally

convincing, but that that was insufficient. All these conclusions

could not so convince me as to make me do what followed from my

reasoning, that is to say, kill myself. And I should have told an

untruth had I, without killing myself, said that reason had brought

me to the point I had reached. Reason worked, but something else

was also working which I can only call a consciousness of life. A

force was working which compelled me to turn my attention to this

and not to that; and it was this force which extricated me from my

desperate situation and turned my mind in quite another direction.

This force compelled me to turn my attention to the fact that I and

a few hundred similar people are not the whole of mankind, and that

I did not yet know the life of mankind.

 Looking at the narrow circle of my equals, I saw only people

who had not understood the question, or who had understood it and

drowned it in life's intoxication, or had understood it and ended

their lives, or had understood it and yet from weakness were living

out their desperate life. And I saw no others. It seemed to me

that that narrow circle of rich, learned, and leisured people to

which I belonged formed the whole of humanity, and that those

milliards of others who have lived and are living were cattle of

some sort -- not real people.

 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 -- strange

as this now is to me, I see that so it was. In the delusion of my

pride of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable that I and

Solomon and Schopenhauer had stated the question so truly and

exactly that nothing else was possible -- so indubitable did it

seem that all those milliards consisted of men who had not yet

arrived at an apprehension of all the profundity of the question --

that I sought for the meaning of my life without it once occurring

to me to ask: "But what meaning is and has been given to their

lives by all the milliards of common folk who live and have lived

in the world?"

 I long lived in this state of lunacy, which, in fact if not in

words, is particularly characteristic of us very liberal and

learned people. But thanks either to the strange physical

affection I have for the real labouring people, which compelled me

to understand them and to see that they are not so stupid as we

suppose, or thanks to the sincerity of my conviction that I could

know nothing beyond the fact that the best I could do was to hang

myself, at any rate 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. And I

considered the enormous masses of those simple, unlearned, and poor

people who have lived and are living and I saw something quite

different. I saw that, with rare exceptions, all those milliards

who have lived and are living do not fit into my divisions, and

that I could not class them as not understanding the question, for

they themselves state it and reply to it with extraordinary

clearness. Nor could I consider them epicureans, for their life

consists more of privations and sufferings than of enjoyments.

Still less could I consider them as irrationally dragging on a

meaningless existence, for every act of their life, as well as

death itself, is explained by them. To kill themselves they

consider the greatest evil. It appeared that all mankind had a

knowledge, unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of

life. It appeared that reasonable knowledge does not give the

meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed to

life by milliards of people, by all humanity, rests on some

despised pseudo-knowledge.

 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.

 My position was terrible.  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. From rational

knowledge it appeared that life is an evil, people know this and it

is in their power to end life; yet they lived and still live, and

I myself live, though I have long known that life is senseless and

an evil. 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.

                           IX



 A contradiction arose from which there were two exits.  Either

that which I called reason was not so rational as I supposed, or

that which seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I

supposed. And I began to verify the line of argument of my

rational knowledge.

 Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found

it quite correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was

inevitable; but I noticed a mistake. The mistake lay in this, that

my reasoning was not in accord with the question I had put. The

question was: "Why should I live, that is to say, what real,

permanent result will come out of my illusory transitory life --

what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?" And

to reply to that question I had studied life.

 The solution of all the possible questions of life could

evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first

appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in

terms of the infinite, and vice versa.

 I asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause,

and space?" And I replied to quite another question: "What is the

meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?" With the

result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached

was: "None."

 In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do

otherwise) the finite with the finite, and the infinite with the

infinite; but for that reason I reached the inevitable result:

force is force, matter is matter, will is will, the infinite is the

infinite, nothing is nothing -- and that was all that could result.

 It was something like what happens in mathematics, when

thinking to solve an equation, we find we are working on an

identity. the line of reasoning is correct, but results in the

answer that a equals a, or x equals x, or o equals o. the same

thing happened with my reasoning in relation to the question of the

meaning of my life. The replies given by all science to that

question only result in -- identity.

 And really, strictly scientific knowledge -- that knowledge

which begins, as Descartes's did, with complete doubt about

everything -- rejects all knowledge admitted on faith and builds

everything afresh on the laws of reason and experience, and cannot

give any other reply to the question of life than that which I

obtained: an indefinite reply. Only at first had it seemed to me

that knowledge had given a positive reply -- the reply of

Schopenhauer: that life has no meaning and is an evil. But on

examining the matter I understood that the reply is not positive,

it was only my feeling that so expressed it. Strictly expressed,

as it is by the Brahmins and by Solomon and Schopenhauer, the reply

is merely indefinite, or an identity: o equals o, life is nothing.

So that philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but only replies that

the question cannot be solved by it -- that for it the solution

remains indefinite.

 Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible

to seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that

the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a

reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question

and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite is

included in the question. 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.

 In whatever way I stated the question, that relation appeared

in the answer. How am I to live? -- According to the law of God.

What real result will come of my life? -- Eternal torment or

eternal bliss. What meaning has life that death does not destroy?

-- Union with the eternal God: heaven.

 So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the

only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all

live humanity has another irrational knowledge -- faith which makes

it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as

it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives

mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it

makes life possible. Reasonable knowledge had brought me to

acknowledge that life is senseless -- my life had come to a halt

and I wished to destroy myself. Looking around on the whole of

mankind I saw that people live and declare that they know the

meaning of life. I looked at myself -- I had lived as long as I

knew a meaning of life and had made life possible.

 Looking again at people of other lands, at my contemporaries

and at their predecessors, I saw the same thing. Where there is

life, there since man began faith has made life possible for him,

and the chief outline of that faith is everywhere and always

identical.

 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. This means that

only in faith can we find for life a meaning and a possibility.

What, then, is this faith? And I understood that faith is not

merely "the evidence of things not seen", etc., and is not a

revelation (that defines only one of the indications of faith, is

not the relation of man to God (one has first to define faith and

then God, and not define faith through God); it not only agreement

with what has been told one (as faith is most usually supposed to

be), but faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in

consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. 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.

 And I recalled the whole course of my mental labour and was

horrified. It was now clear to me that for man to be able to live

he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of

the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

Such an explanation I had had; but as long as I believed in the

finite I did not need the explanation, and I began to verify it by

reason. And in the light of reason the whole of my former

explanation flew to atoms. But a time came when I ceased to

believe in the finite. And then I began to build up on rational

foundations, out of what I knew, an explanation which would give a

meaning to life; but nothing could I build. Together with the best

human intellects I reached the result that o equals o, and was much

astonished at that conclusion, though nothing else could have

resulted.

 What was I doing when I sought an answer in the experimental

sciences? I wished to know why I live, and for this purpose

studied all that is outside me. Evidently I might learn much, but

nothing of what I needed.

 What was I doing when I sought an answer in philosophical

knowledge? I was studying the thoughts of those who had found

themselves in the same position as I, lacking a reply to the

question "why do I live?" Evidently I could learn nothing but what

I knew myself, namely that nothing can be known.

 What am I? -- A part of the infinite.  In those few words lies

the whole problem.

 Is it possible that humanity has only put that question to

itself since yesterday? And can no one before me have set himself

that question -- a question so simple, and one that springs to the

tongue of every wise child?

 Surely that question has been asked since man began; and

naturally for the solution of that question since man began it has

been equally insufficient to compare the finite with the finite and

the infinite with the infinite, and since man began the relation of

the finite to the infinite has been sought out and expressed.

 All these conceptions in which the finite has been adjusted to

the infinite and a meaning found for life -- the conception of God,

of will, of goodness -- we submit to logical examination. And all

those conceptions fail to stand reason's criticism.

 Were it not so terrible it would be ludicrous with what pride

and self-satisfaction we, like children, pull the watch to pieces,

take out the spring, make a toy of it, and are then surprised that

the watch does not go.

 A solution of the contradiction between the finite and the

infinite, and such a reply to the question of life as will make it

possible to live, is necessary and precious. And that is the only

solution which we find everywhere, always, and among all peoples:

a solution descending from times in which we lose sight of the life

of man, a solution so difficult that we can compose nothing like it

-- and this solution we light-heartedly destroy in order again to

set the same question, which is natural to everyone and to which we

have no answer.

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