Leo Tolstoy
Translated by
Dmitry Fadeyev
It would seem that it is impossible to live without knowing what you are living for, and that the first thing that a human being must clarify to himself is the meaning of his life—all the more so since there had been and are people who know this meaning. And meanwhile, the majority of people who consider themselves educated are proud of the fact that they have reached what seems to them a height from which they can see that life is completely devoid of meaning.
People have two different outlooks on life.
Some say: I see myself as a being born of my parents, just as all other living beings around me, who live in specific conditions that can be researched and studied by me, and I study myself and other beings, both living and inanimate, and the conditions in which they exist, and I organize my life in accordance with my findings. I study questions of origins the same way, and by means of observation and experiment I attain ever more knowledge. Questions of the origins of the universe, its purpose and my purpose within it I leave unanswered as I do not see the possibility of answering them as definitively, clearly and conclusively as I answer the questions about the conditions of the things that exist in the world. Which is why I do not accept answers to these questions—i.e. answers that speak of the existence of God, from whom I originate, and that this God has defined the laws of my life for a certain purpose—because they do not have that clarity and conclusiveness of the answers to the questions of causes and conditions of different living phenomena.
This is what an unbelieving person says, who does not allow the possibility of any kind of knowledge that is different to one that is acquired through observations and reasonings upon these observations, and although he may not be right, his logic is perfectly consistent.
On the other hand, a Christian who acknowledges God says: I recognize myself to be alive only because I perceive myself to be rational, and by perceiving myself to be rational I cannot but recognize that my life and the life of everything that exists must also be rational. And to be rational, it must have a purpose. The purpose of this life must lie outside of me—in the Being for the attainment of whose purpose both I and everything else exists. This Being exists, and during my life I must fulfill his law (his will). Questions about what the Being who demands of me to fulfill his law is, and when this rational life had arisen in me, and how it arises in other beings in time and space, i.e. what is God: is he personal or impersonal, did he create the world and if so how did he do it, and when did my soul first arise in me, at what age, and how does it arise in others, and where does it come from, and where does it go, and where in the body does it reside?—all such questions I must leave unanswered because I know ahead of time that in the sphere of observation and reasoning upon them I will never reach a conclusive answer, because everything will vanish in the infinity of time and space. For this reason I do not accept the answers given by science about the origin of the world and the soul, and in what part of the brain it is located.
In the first case: an unbelieving person recognizes himself only as a living being and, by recognizing himself to be subject only to external senses, he does not recognize the divine source and tries to come to terms with the pointlessness of his existence that disturbs the demands of his reason.
In the second case: a Christian, by recognizing himself only as a rational being, and thereby recognizing only the things that agree with the demands of reason, does not recognize the validity of the data obtained by external experience, and thus considers these data to be fantastical and mistaken.
Both are equally right. But the difference between them—which is significant—is that according to the first worldview, everything in the world is strictly scientific, logical and rational, with the exception of the life of the human being and the universe, which are completely devoid of meaning; which is why, despite all attempts to the contrary, this worldview gives rise to many interesting and amusing considerations, but nothing that is necessary for the direction of one’s life; whereas according to the second worldview, the life of the human being and the universe receive a definite and rational meaning, along with a most direct, simple, and accessible way to apply it to one’s life, which, moreover, does not violate the possibility of scientific studies, and which, in light of this, are put in their proper place.
Life is that which is revealed through our consciousness, and it exists everywhere and always. Our error lies in calling life the very things that conceal it from us.
Life’s true aim is to discover eternal life.
A human being cannot know the ultimate purpose of his life; but he cannot not know how he should live.
A worker at a large factory does not know why he is doing the things he is doing; but if he is a good worker, he knows how his work should be done.
People have two outlooks on life. Some look at life from a sensuous, personal perspective, assuming that the world was created for them and that God was invented to satisfy a human need, and they resent the pointlessness of suffering and the pointlessness of death. Others hold a contrary view on life, one that is spiritual, according to which a human being lives for the world, for God, and which makes it clear that if a human being is suffering and dying, then that is what the life of the world requires and what God wills. According to this latter outlook, our birth, our suffering in life and our suffering in death all have meaning; according to this outlook, the world has been designed rationally and purposefully, whereas according to the former worldview, everything is meaningless and pointless.
And, in accordance with these two outlooks on life, people walk along two different paths to reach the truth, to reach the same goal. According to the first, sensuous outlook, a human being, not wanting to be defeated, is always fighting and everywhere meeting misfortune, disappointment, fatigue, exhaustion and disease, he fills his life with suffering, but in the end he submits to the nature of things, i.e. God’s law and will, submits unconsciously, involuntarily, like a slave on a chain, but with much more effort and much less good. According to the second, divine outlook, a human being consciously walks towards the truth and, like a rational child of the Heavenly Father, the Father of Truth, he walks past all the sufferings, which are the fate of the unconscious slave on a chain. But the joys of life, not artificial joys and goods, but ones that are real and natural and therefore the most precious, are given equally to all, irrespective of their worldview; and just as the people of the first worldview use them, so too they are not denied to the people who hold the second worldview.
— Buka
Every being has organs that guide it towards its place in the world. For a human being this organ is reason.
If reason does not show you your place in the world and your purpose, then know that it is not the bad order of the world that is to blame, nor your reason, but the false direction you have given it.