57.Tolstoy -- "My Confession"

Selectionsfrom
"My Confession"
by
Leo
Nikolayevitch
Tolstoy

(1828 - 1910)
 
Found in
"Stefan Zweig
Presents
the
Living Thoughts
of Tolstoy",
Fawcett Publications,
1960,
pages  35 - 42
 
[Translated by
Nathan Haskell Dole,
published by
T. Y. Crowell Company,
New York, 1899]
 
"Tolstoy's Way
to His Inner Self"
 
I was christened and educated
in the Orthodox Christian Faith;
I was taught it in my childhood,
and in my boyhood and youth.
 
Nevertheless, when,
at eighteen years of age,
I left the university
in the second year,
I had discarded all belief
in anything I had been taught.
 
The belief instilled
from childhood in me,
as in so many others,
gradually disappeared,
but with this difference;
that as from fifteen years of age
I had begun to read
philosophical works,
I became very early
conscious
of my own disbelief.
 
From the age of sixteen
I ceased to pray,
and ceased,
from conviction,
to attend the services
of the church
and to fast.
 
I no longer accepted
the faith of my childhood,
but I believed in
something,
though
I could not exactly explain
in what.
 
I believed in a God, --
or rather,
I did not deny
the existence of a God, --
but what kind of God
I could not have told;
I denied neither Christ
nor His teaching,
but in what that teaching
consisted
I could not have said.
 
Now, when I think
over that time,
I see clearly
that all the faith I had,
the only belief which,
apart from mere
animal instinct,
swayed my life,
was a belief
in the possibility
of perfection,
though what it was
in itself,
or what would be
its results,
I could not have said.

I tried to reach

intellectual perfection;
my studies
were extended
in every direction
of which my life
afforded me a chance;
I strove
to strengthen my will,
forming for myself
rules
which
I forced myself to follow;
I did my best
to develop
my physical powers
by every exercise
calculated
to give strength
and agility;
and by way
of accustoming myself
to patient endurance;
I subjected myself
to many voluntary hardships
and
trials of privation.
 
All this I looked on
as necessary to obtain
the perfection
at which I aimed.
 
At first, of course,
moral perfection
seemed to me the main end,
but I soon found myself
contemplating in its stead
an ideal
of general perfectibility;
in other words,
I wished to be better,
not in my own eyes
nor in God's,
but in the sight
of other men.
 
And very soon
this striving to be better
in the sight of men feeling
again changed
into another --
the desire to have
more power than others,
to secure for myself
a greater share of fame,
of social distinction,
and of wealth ...
 
At some future time
I may relate
the story of my life,
and dwell in detail
on the
pathetic
and
instructive
incidents of my youth.
 
I think that many and many
have had
the same experiences
as I did.
 
I desired
with all my soul
to be good;
but I was young,
I had passions,
and I was alone,
wholly alone,
in my search
after goodness.
 
Every time I tried
to express the longings
of my heart
to be morally good,
I was met
with contempt
and ridicule,
but
as soon as I
gave way to low passions,
I was praised
and
encouraged.
 
Ambition,
love of power,
love of gain,
lechery,
pride,
anger,
vengeance,
were held
in high esteem.
 
As I gave way
to these passions,
I became
like my elders,
and I felt that they
were satisfied with me.
 
A kind-hearted
aunt of mine,
a really good woman
with whom I lived,
used to say to me
that
there was one thing
above all others
which she wished for me --
an intrigue
with
a married woman:
"Rien ne forme
un jeune homme,
comme une liaison
avec une femme
comme il faut."
 
[Roughly rendered:
Nothing trains
a young man
like his connection
with a woman
-- it's essential.]
 
Another of her wishes
for my happiness
was that I should
become an adjutant,
and, if possible,
to the Emperor;
the greatest piece
of good fortune of all
she thought would be
that I should find
a very wealthy bride,
who would bring me
as her dowry
as many slaves as could be.
 
I cannot now recall
those years
without a painful feeling
of horror
and loathing.
 
I put men to death
in war,
I fought duels
to slay others,
I lost at cards,
wasted my substance
wrung from the sweat
of peasants,
punished the latter cruelly,
rioted
with loose women,
and
deceived men.
 
Lying,
robbery,
adultery of all kinds,
drunkenness,
violence,
murder ...
 
There was not one crime
which I did not commit,
and yet I was
not the less
considered
by my equals
a
comparatively moral man.
 
Such was my life
during ten years.
 
During that time
I began to write,
out of vanity,
love of gain,
and
pride.
 
I followed as a writer
the same path
which I had chosen
as a man.
 
In order to obtain
the fame
and the money
for which I wrote,
I was obliged
to hide
what was good
and
to say
what was evil.
 
Thus I did.
 
How often
while writing
have I
cudgeled my brains
to
conceal
under the mask
of indifference
or
pleasantry
those yearnings
for something better
which formed
the real thought of my life.
 
I succeeded in this also,
and was praised.
 
At twenty-six years of age,
on the close of the war,
I came to Petersburg
and made the acquaintance
of the authors of the day.
 
I met with a hearty reception
and much flattery.
 
Before I had time
to look around,
the prejudices
and views of life
common
to the writers
of the class
with which I was
associated
became my own,
and
completely put an end
to all my former struggles
after
a better life.
 
These views,
under the influence
of the dissipation
of my life,
supplied a theory
which
justified it.
 

The view of life

taken by these
my fellow-writers
was that
life
is
a development,
and
the principal part
in that development
is played
by ourselves,
the thinkers,
while
among the thinkers
the chief influence
is again due to us,
the artists,
the poets.
 
Our vocation
is to teach men.
 
In order to
avoid answering
the
very natural question,
"What do I know,
and
what can I teach?"
the theory in question
is made to contain
the formula
that
it is not necessary
to know this,
but that
the artist
and
the poet
teach unconsciously.
 
I was myself
considered
a marvelous
artist and poet,
and I therefore
very naturally
adopted this theory.
 
I,
an artist and poet,
wrote and taught
I knew not what.
 
For doing this
I received money;
I kept a splendid table,
had excellent lodgings,
women,
society;
I had fame.
 
Naturally
what I taught
was very good.
 
When I now
think over that time,
and remember
my own state of mind
and that of these men
(a state of mind
common enough
among thousands still),
it seems to me
pitiful,
terrible,
and
ridiculous;
it excites the feelings
which overcome us
as we pass through
a madhouse.
 
We were all
then convinced
that it behooved us
to speak,
to write,
and to print
as fast as we could,
as much as we could,
and that
on this
depended the welfare
of the human race.
 
And thousands of us
wrote,
printed,
and
taught,
and
all the while
confuted and abused
one another.
 
Quite unconscious
that we ourselves
knew nothing,
and that
to the simplest
of all problems in life --
what is right
and
what is wrong --
we
had no answer,
we all went on
talking together
without one
to listen,
at times
abetting and praising
one another
on condition
that we
were abetted and praised
in turn,
and again
turning upon one another
in wrath --
in short,
we reproduced the scenes
in a madhouse.
 
Thousands of laborers
worked
day and night,
to the limit
of their strength,
setting up the type
and
printing millions of words
to be spread by the post
all over Russia,
and still
we continued to teach,
unable
to teach enough,
angrily
complaining the while
that
we were not much
listened to.
 
A strange state
of things
indeed,
but now
it is
comprehensible
to me.
 
The real motive
that inspired
all our reasoning
was
the desire for money
and praise,
to obtain which
we knew of
no other means
than writing books
and newspapers,
and so we did.
 
But in order
to hold fast
to the conviction that
while thus
uselessly employed
we were
very important men,
it was necessary
to justify
our occupation
to ourselves
by another theory,
and
the following
was
the one we adopted:
 
Whatever is,
is
right;
everything
that is,
is due
to development;
development
comes
from
civilization;
the measure of
civilization
is
the diffusion of books
and newspapers;
we are paid and honored
for
the books and newspapers
which
we write,
and
we are
therefore
the
most useful
and
best
of men!
 
This reasoning
might have been
conclusive
had we all been
agreed;
but,
as for every opinion
expressed
by one of us
there instantly appeared
from another
one
diametrically opposite,
we had
to hesitate
before
accepting it.
 
But we
did not notice this;
we received money,
and were praised
by those of our party,
consequently we --
each one of us --
considered
that
we were in the right.
 
It is now clear to me
that between
ourselves
and
the inhabitants
of a madhouse
there was
no difference:
at the time
I only vaguely
suspected this,
and,
like all madmen,
thought
all were mad
except myself ...
 
I lived
in this senseless manner
another six years,
up to the time
of my marriage.
 
During this time
I went abroad.
 
My life in Europe,
and
my acquaintance
with many
eminent
and
learned foreigners,
confirmed
my belief
in the doctrine
of
general perfectibility,
as
I found
the same theory
prevailed
among them.
 
This belief
took the form
which is
common
among most
of
the cultivated men
of our day.
 
This belief
was expressed
in the word
"progress."
 
It then
appeared to me
this word had
a real meaning.
 
I did not as yet
understand that,
tormented
like every other man
by the question,
"How was I
to live better?"
when I answered
that
I must live
for progress,
I was
only
repeating the answer
of a man
carried away in a boat
by the waves and the wind,
who
to the one
important question
for him,
"Where
are we to steer?"
should answer,
"We are
being carried
somewhere."
 
I did not see this
then;
only at rare intervals
my feelings,
and
not my reason,
were roused
against
the common superstition
of our age,
which leads men
to ignore
their own ignorance
of life.
 
Thus,
during my stay in Paris,
the sight
of a public execution
revealed to me
the weakness
of
my superstitious belief
in progress.
 
When I saw
the head
divided from
the body,
and
heard the sound
with which
they fell separately
into the box,
I understood,
not with my reason,
but
with my whole being,
that
no theory
of the wisdom
of all established things,
nor of progress,
could justify
such an act;
and that
if all the men in the world
from the day of creation,
by whatever theory,
had found
this thing
necessary,
I knew it was not
necessary,
it
was
a bad thing,
and
that
therefore
I must judge
of
what was right
and necessary,
not
by what men
said and did,
not
by progress,
but
what I felt
to be true
in my heart.
 
+++