* ' > 
 
 ■ 
 
COUNT TOLSTOI'S WORKS. 
 
 ANNA KAR^NINA $1.75 
 
 CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, AND YOUTH . 1.50 
 
 IVAN ILYITCH 1.25 
 
 MY RELIGION 1.00 
 
 MY CONFESSION 1.00 
 
 WHAT TO DO? 1.25 
 
 THE INVADERS 1.25 
 
 A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR. (In Press.) 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 
 
 PUBLISHERS. 
 13 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 
 
MY CONFESSION 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING 
 
 BY 
 
 COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOI 
 
 GTransIateo from tfje ftuggtan 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 No. 13 Astor Placb 
 
'V ** **$•>*-? 
 
 Copyright, 1887, 
 By Thomas Y. Croweix & Co. 
 
Bff/as- 
 
 iiij 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGK 
 
 I. — Youthful beliefs — Precocious scepticism — Athe- 
 
 ism at college — Demetry Tolstoi's mysticism — 
 How one ceases to believe — Orthodoxy not a 
 security for virtue — History of S. — Faith in 
 perfection 1 
 
 II. — Youthful passions — The author begins to write 
 
 — Theories of creative artists regarding life — 
 That they are superior beings and that their voca- 
 tion is the instruction of mankind — The author 
 refuses to believe this — The true desire of the 
 apostles of culture is to receive as much money 
 and as much praise as possible 9 
 
 III. — The author travels — His faith in perfection 
 increased by his contact with European civiliza- 
 tion — This faith shattered by witnessing the 
 execution of a criminal at Paris — Death of the 
 author's brother — The author establishes peasant 
 schools — New travels abroad — Judicial service, 
 teaching, journalism — Mental disease — Depart- 
 ure for the Steppes — Marriage — The influence 
 of family life — The author continues to write — 
 A crisis — Life has no joys if we do not know its 
 meaning — Morally speaking, the author feels 
 himself incapable of life 11 
 
 v 
 
 629 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 IV. — Life an absurdity — Suicide contemplated — 
 Meanwhile the author lives in luxury and his 
 physical health is perfect — Life an ugly practical 
 joke played' by some unknown power — There is 
 nothing, there never was anything, there never 
 will be anything in life — An Oriental fable — The 
 impossibility of not thinking — The terrors of un- 
 certainty — Immediate death far preferable ... 26 
 
 V. — Looking for the secret of life — Exact sciences — 
 
 Theoretical sciences — Cessation of development 
 — Science ignores the question of life — The 
 search after theories — The emptiness of philos- 
 ophy 36 
 
 VI. — Man astray — What is the meaning of life? — - 
 Socrates — Schopenhauer — Solomon — Buddha — 
 Death worth more than life — Life should be 
 surrendered 48 
 
 VII. — Four methods — Ignorance — Epicureanism — 
 Suicide — Acquiescence — Do not realize that life 
 is absurd — Get what you can out of life and 
 never think of the future — Understand that life 
 is an evil and kill yourself — Know that life is 
 unprofitable and still live — The author asks him- 
 self if he has ignored any essential fact or if there 
 
 is any error in his reasoning 62 
 
 VIII. — Where is the mistake ? — The author has con- 
 sidered only the artificial life of his own class — 
 He believed that the life of the masses was of no 
 consequence — And yet the masses formulate the 
 question of life and solve it with astonishing 
 clearness — But their solution is founded on a 
 faith which the author no longer possesses — A 
 terrible dilemma 72 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 IX. — The author's mistake — He has tried to solve, 
 not the question of life, but the question of his 
 own life — In faith alone is the possibility of life 
 — Without faith, life is impossible — In the solu- 
 tions offered by faith there is profound human 
 wisdom 78 
 
 X. — The author studies religions — He mingles with 
 
 believers and theologians — The author is alarmed 
 and again in despair — The lives of these men do 
 not correspond with their professions — The faith 
 of these people is not the faith for which. the 
 author seeks — He mingles with the common peo- 
 ple, with fanatics and sectarians — He finds a true 
 faith — He believes that he has grasped the mean- 
 ing of life 88 
 
 XI. — Everything clear — The insanity of the race — 
 What has the author done for thirty years ? — 
 To understand the will of the Regulator of the 
 universe one must carry out that w r ill — The wise 
 
 and the simple 96 
 
 XII. — The life of a parasite and the true life — Seek- 
 ing after God — If God, Cause of all causes, ex- 
 ists, life is possible — The problem unsolved — 
 The bird falls from the nest — And yet lives — 
 Aspirations of life — Despair — Man adrift and 
 God the shore 102 
 
 XIII. — The life of the world a travesty of life — To 
 understand life we must apply to those who pro- 
 duce life and give it a meaning— The author 
 accepts all rites inspired by faith — Reasons for 
 this — The arguments of theologians — Reserva- 
 tions in the author's faith 112 
 
Vlli CONTENTS. 
 
 XIV. — Ritual not understood — The author adheres 
 to ceremonial — Religious ideas of the people — 
 Reading the lives of saints and martyrs .... 120 
 
 XY. — The author envies the simple beliefs of the 
 people — Orthodoxy — New problems — The Or- 
 thodox Church and other churches — Men of dif- 
 ferent faiths treat one another as heretics — The 
 author tries to conciliate different Christian com- 
 munities — Reply of a Russian priest — The author 
 renounces Orthodoxy — The Orthodox Church and 
 its indorsement of war 126 
 
 XVI. — There are falsehoods in faith — The author 
 searches the Scriptures — The fruits of his studies 
 to form a book: M y Eelig ion 135 
 
 Conclusion 138 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 Preface 145 
 
 Introduction 165 
 
 I. —The Son of God 167 
 
 Man, the Son of God, powerless in the flesh, is 
 free in the spirit. (Our Father.) 
 
 II 170 
 
 And therefore man must work, not for the 
 flesh, but according to the spirit. ( Which art in 
 heaven,) 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 III H3 
 
 From the spirit of the Father hath proceeded 
 the life of all men. {Hallowed be thy name.) 
 
 IY. — The Kingdom of God 176 
 
 And, therefore, the will of the Father is that all 
 men should have life and happiness. {Thy king- 
 dom come. ) 
 
 V. — The True Life 180 
 
 The fulfilment of the will of the Father gives a 
 true life. ( Thy will be done. ) 
 
 VI. — A False Life 186 
 
 And therefore, in order to attain to a true life, 
 a man on earth must abstain from the false life 
 of the flesh, and live in the spirit. ( On earth as 
 in heaven. ) 
 
 VII. — I AND THE FATHEK ARE ONE 195 
 
 The true food of life is fulfilment of the will of 
 the Father, and union with Him. ( Give us this 
 day our daily bread.) 
 
 VIII. — Life not in Time 203 
 
 Therefore a man really lives when he thinks 
 only of fulfilling the will of the Father in the 
 present, and leaves all thought of the past and of 
 the future. {Give us now our daily bread, and 
 forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that 
 trespass against us. ) 
 
 IX. — Temptations 209 
 
 The delusions of the individual and temporal 
 life hide from men the true life, which alone is 
 real, in union with the Father. {Lead us not into 
 temptation.) 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 X. — The Struggle against Temptation . . . 218 
 
 Therefore to get rid of evil, we must, every 
 hour of our life, be in unity with the Father. 
 (Lead us not into temptation.) 
 
 XI. — The Farewell Discourse 227 
 
 Personal life is a deception of the flesh, an evil. 
 True life is the life which is common to all men. 
 {But deliver us from the evil one. ) 
 
 XII. — The Victory op the Spirit over the 
 Flesh .233 
 
 Therefore, for the man who lives not a personal 
 life, but in the common life which is through the 
 will of the Father, there is no evil. The death of 
 the body is union with the Father. ( Thine be the 
 kingdom, the power, and the glory.) 
 
 The Conclusion. To understand Life is to 
 do Good 241 
 
 The good tidings of Jesus Christ is the revela- 
 tion of the understanding of life. 
 
MY CONFESSION. 
 
MY CONFESSION. 
 
 I was christened and educated in the faith of 
 the Orthodox Greek Church ; I was taught it 
 in my childhood, and I learned it in ray youth. 
 Nevertheless, at eighteen years of age, when I 
 quitted the university, I had discarded all 
 belief in anything that I had been taught. 
 To judge by what I can now remember, I 
 could never have had a very serious belief; it 
 must have been a kind of trust in this teach- 
 ing, based on one in my teachers and elders, 
 and, moreover, a trust not very firmly 
 grounded. 
 
 I remember once in my twelfth year, a boy, 
 
 now long since dead, Vladimir M , a pupil 
 
 in a gymnasium, spent a Sunday with us, and 
 
 brought us the news of the last discovery in the 
 
 gymnasium, namely, that there was no God, 
 
 1 
 
2 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 and that all we were taught on the subject was 
 a mere invention (this was in 1838). I remem- 
 ber well how interested my elder brothers were 
 in this news ; I was admitted to their delibera- 
 tions, and w T e all eagerly accepted the theory 
 as something particularly attractive and possi- 
 bly quite true. I remember, also, that when 
 my elder brother, Demetry, then at the univer- 
 sity, with the impulsiveness natural to his 
 character, gave himself up to a passionate faith, 
 began to attend the church services regularly, 
 to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life, we all 
 of us, and some older than ourselves, never 
 ceased to hold him up to ridicule, and for some 
 incomprehensible reason gave him the nick- 
 name of Noah. I remember that Moussin- 
 Poushkin, the then curator of the University 
 of Kazan, having invited us to a ball, tried to 
 persuade my brother, who had refused the 
 invitation, by the jeering argument that even 
 David danced before the Ark. 
 
 I sympathized then with these jokes of my 
 elders, and drew from them this conclusion, 
 that I was bound to learn my catechism, and 
 go to church, but that it was not necessary to 
 
MY CONFESSION: 3 
 
 think of my religious duties more seriously. 
 I also remember that I real Voltaire when I 
 was very young, and that his tone of mockery 
 amused without disgusting me. The gradual 
 estrangement from all belief went on in me, as 
 it does, and always has done, in those of the 
 same social position and culture. This falling / 
 off, as it seems to me, for the most part goes on 
 as follows : — people live as others live, and 
 their lives are guided, not by the principles of 
 the faith which is taught them, but by their 
 very opposite ; belief has no influence on life, 
 nor on the relations between men — it is rele- 
 gated to some other sphere where life is not ; 
 if the two ever come into contact at all, belief 
 is only one of the outward phenomena, and not 
 one of the constituent parts of life. 
 
 By a man's life, by his acts, it was then, as it 
 is now, impossible to know whether he was a 
 believer or not. If there be a difference be- 
 tween one who openly professes the doctrines 
 of the Orthodox Church, and one who denies 
 them, the difference is to the advantage of the 
 former. The open profession of the Orthodox 
 doctrines is mostly found among persons of 
 
4 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 dull intellects, of stern character, and who 
 think much of their own importance. Intel- 
 ligence, honesty, frankness, a good heart, and 
 moral conduct are oftener met witli among 1 
 those who are disbelievers. The school-boy is 
 taught his catechism and sent to church; from 
 the grown man is required a certificate of his 
 having taken the holy communion. A man, 
 however, belonging to our class, neither goes 
 to school nor is bound by the regulations affect- 
 ing those in the public service, and may now 
 live through long years — still more was this 
 the case formerly — without being once re- 
 minded of the fact that he lives among Chris- 
 tians, and calls himself a member of the 
 Orthodox Church. 
 
 Thus it happens that now, as formerly, the 
 influence of early religious teaching, accepted 
 merely on trust and upheld by authority, grad- 
 ually fades away under the knowledge and 
 practical experience of later life, which is 
 opposed to all its principles, and that a man 
 often believes for years that his early faith is 
 still intact, while all the time not a particle of 
 it remains in him. 
 
MY CONFESSION. 5 
 
 A certain S , a clever and veracious 
 
 man, once related to me how he came to cease 
 to believe. 
 
 Twenty-six years ago, being on a hunting 
 party, before he lay down to rest, according to 
 a habit of his from childhood, he knelt down 
 to pray. His elder brother, who was of the 
 party, lay on some straw and watched him. 
 
 When S had finished, and was preparing 
 
 to. lie down, his brother said to him, " Ah, you 
 still keep that up?" Nothing more passed 
 
 between them, but from that day S ceased 
 
 to pray and to go to church. For thirty years 
 
 S has not said a prayer, has not taken the 
 
 communion, has not been in a church, not 
 because he shared the convictions of his 
 brother, or even knew them, not because he 
 had come to any conclusions of his own, but 
 because his brother's words were like the push 
 of a finger against a wall ready to tumble over 
 with its own weight ; they proved to him that 
 what he had taken for belief was an empty 
 form, and that consequently every word he 
 uttered, every sign of the cross he made, every 
 time he bowed his head during his prayers, his 
 
6 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 act was an unmeaning one. When lie once 
 admitted to himself that such acts had no 
 meaning in them, he could not but discontinue 
 them. Thus it has been, and is, I believe, with 
 the large majority of men. 
 
 I speak of men of our class, of men who are 
 true to themselves, and not of those who make 
 of religion a means of obtaining some temporal 
 advantage. (These men are truly absolute un- 
 believers, for if faith be to them a means of 
 obtaining any worldly end, it is most certainly 
 no faith at all.) Such men of our own class are 
 in the following position : the knowledge and 
 experience of active life has shattered the arti- 
 ficially constructed building of belief within, 
 and they have either observed that and cleared 
 away the superincumbent ruins, or they have 
 remained unconscious of the destruction 
 worked. 
 
 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 was conscious of my own disbelief. From 
 the age of sixteen I ceased to pray, and ceased, 
 
MY CONFESSION. 7 
 
 from conviction, to attend the services of the 
 church and to fast. I no longer accepted the 
 faith of my childhood, but I had a vague belief 
 in something, though I do not think I could 
 exactly explain in what. I believed in a God, 
 or rather, I did not deny the existence of God, 
 but anything relating to the nature of that 
 godhead I could not have described ; 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 a possibility of perfec- 
 tion, though what it was in itself, or what 
 would be its results, I was unable to sa}^. I 
 endeavored to reach perfection in intellect- 
 ual attainments: 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 physi- 
 cal powers by every exercise calculated to give 
 strength and agility, and by way of accustom- 
 ing myself to patient endurance I subjected 
 
8 MY CONFESSION, 
 
 myself to many voluntary hardships and trials 
 of privation. All this I looked upon as neces- 
 sary 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 con- 
 templating in its stead an ideal of general per- 
 fectibility ; in other words, I wished to be 
 better, not in my own eyes nor in those of 
 God, but in the sight of other men. This 
 feeling again soon ended in another, the desire 
 to have more power than others, to secure for 
 myself a greater share of fame, of social 
 distinction, and of wealth. 
 
II. 
 
 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. Many 
 others must have passed through the same as I 
 did. I honestly desired to make myself a good 
 and virtuous man ; but I was young, I had 
 passions, and I stood alone, altogether alone, 
 in my search after virtue. Every time I tried y 
 to express the longings of my heart for a truly 
 virtuous life, I was met with contempt and 
 derisive laughter, but directly I gave way to 
 the lowest of my passions, I was praised and 
 encouraged. I found ambition, love of power, 
 love of gain, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance, 
 held in high esteem. I gave way to these 
 passions, and becoming like unto my elders, I 
 felt that the place which I filled in the world 
 satisfied those around me. My kind-hearted 
 aunt, a really good woman, used to say to me, 
 that there was one thing above all others which 
 9 
 
10 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 she wished for me — an intrigue with a married 
 woman: "Rien ne forme un jeune homme, 
 corarae une liaison avec une femme comrae il 
 faut." Another of her wishes for my happi- 
 ness was that I should become an adjutant, 
 and, if possible, to the Emperor ; the greatest 
 happiness of all for me she thought would be 
 that I should find a wealthy bride, who would 
 bring me as her dowry an enormous number of 
 slaves. 
 
 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 sub- 
 stance 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, 
 and murder, all committed by me, not one 
 crime omitted, 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 
 
MY CONFESSION-. 11 
 
 a man. In order to obtain the fame and the 
 money for which I wrote, I was obliged to 
 hide what was good and bow down before 
 what was evil. How often while writing 
 have I cudgelled my brains to conceal under 
 the mask of indifference or pleasantry those 
 yearnings for something better which formed 
 the real problem of my life ! I succeeded ill 
 my object, and was praised. At twenty-six 
 years of age, on the close of the war, I came 
 to St. 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 preju- 
 dices and views of life common to the writers 
 of the class with which I 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 
 into which I plunged, issued in a theory of 
 life 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 
 
12 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 thinkers, while among the thinkers the chief 
 influence is again due to ourselves, the poets. 
 Our vocation is to teach mankind. 
 
 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 such is not required 
 to be known, but that the thinker and the 
 poet teach unconsciously. I was myself con- 
 sidered a marvellous litterateur and poet, and 
 I therefore very naturally adopted this theory. 
 Meanwhile, thinker and poet though I was, I 
 wrote and taught I knew not what. For doing 
 this I received large sums of money ; I kept a 
 splendid table, had an excellent lodging, asso- 
 ciated with loose women, and received my 
 friends handsomely ; moreover, I had fame. 
 It would seem, then, that what I taught must 
 have been good; the faith in poetry and the 
 development of life was a true faith, and I was 
 one of its high priests, a post of great impor- 
 tance, and of profit. I long remained in this 
 belief, and never once doubted its truth. 
 
 In the second, however, and especially in 
 the third year of this way of life, I began to 
 
MY CONFESSION. 13 
 
 doubt the infallibility of the doctrine, and to 
 examine it more closely. The first doubtful 
 fact which attracted my attention was that 
 the apostles of this belief did not agree among 
 themselves. Some proclaimed that they alone 
 were good and useful teachers, and all others 
 worthless ; while those opposed to them said 
 the same of themselves. They disputed, quar- 
 relled, abused, deceived, and cheated one 
 another. 
 
 Moreover, there were many among us who, 
 quite indifferent to right or wrong, only cared 
 for their own private interests. All this forced 
 on me doubts as to the truth of our belief. 
 Again, when I doubted this faith in the influ- 
 ence of literary men, I began to examine more 
 closely into the character and conduct of its 
 chief professors, and I convinced myself that 
 these writers were men who led immoral lives, 
 most of them worthless and insignificant indi- 
 viduals, and far beneath the moral level of 
 those with whom I had associated during my 
 former dissipated and military career; these 
 men, however, had none the less an amount of 
 self-confidence only to be expected in those who 
 
J 
 
 14 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 are conscious of being saints, or in those for 
 whom holiness is an empty name. 
 
 I grew disgusted with mankind and with my- 
 self, and I understood that this belief which I 
 had accepted was a delusion. The strangest 
 tiling in all this was that, though I soon saw 
 the falseness of this belief and renounced it, I 
 did not renounce the position I had gained by 
 it ; I still called myself a thinker, a poet, and a 
 teacher. I was simple enough to imagine that 
 I, the poet and thinker, was able to teach other 
 men without knowing myself what it was that I 
 attempted to teach. I had only gained a new 
 vice by my companionship with these men ; it 
 had developed pride in me to a morbid extreme, 
 and my self-confidence in teaching what I did 
 not know amounted almost to insanity. 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 ridic- 
 ulous ; 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 
 
MY CONFESSION. 15 
 
 as we could, and that on this depended the wel- 
 fare of the human race. Hundreds of us wrote, 
 printed, and taught, and all the while confuted 
 and abused each other. Quite unconscious that 
 we ourselves knew nothing, 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 each other in wrath — in 
 short, we reproduced the scenes in a madhouse. 
 Hundreds of exhausted laborers worked day 
 and night, putting up the type and printing 
 millions of pages 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 listened to. A 
 strange state of things indeed, but now it is 
 clear enough. 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. In 
 order, however, while thus uselessly employed, 
 to hold fast to the conviction that we were 
 
16 MY COXFESSIOK. 
 
 really of importance to society, it was neces- 
 sary 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, and the latter 
 again to civilization ; the measure of civilization 
 is the figure to which the publication of books 
 and newspapers reaches ; we are paid and 
 honored for the books and newspapers which 
 we write, and we are therefore the most useful 
 and best of all citizens. 
 
 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 op- 
 posite, we had to hesitate before accepting it. 
 But this we passed over ; we received money, 
 and were praised by those who agreed with us, 
 consequently we were in the right. It is now 
 clear to me that between ourselves and the in- 
 habitants of a madhouse there was no differ- 
 ence : at the time I only vaguely suspected 
 this, and, like all madmen, thought all were 
 mad except myself. 
 
III. 
 
 I lived in this senseless manner another six 
 years, up to the time of my marriage. During 
 the interval I had been abroad. My life in ^/ 
 Europe, and my acquaintance with many emi- 
 nent 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 com- 
 mon among most cultivated men of the day. 
 It may be summed up in the word " prog- 
 ress." It then appeared to me this word 
 had a real meaning. I did not under- 
 stand that, tormented like other men by the 
 question, " How was I to better my life ? " 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, saying, "We 
 are being carried somewhere." 
 
 This I then did not see ; it was only at rare 
 17 
 
18 my confession: 
 
 intervals that 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. 
 j 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 ray reason, but 
 with my whole being, that no theory of the 
 wisdom of all established things, nor of prog- 
 ress, 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 neces- 
 sary, it was not so ; 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. 
 
 Another instance of the insufficiency of this 
 superstition of progress as a rule for life was 
 the death of my brother. He fell ill while still 
 young, suffered much during a whole year, and 
 died in great pain. He was a man of good 
 
MY CONFESSIOy. 19 
 
 abilities, of a kind heart, and of a serious 
 temper, but he died without understanding why 
 he had lived, or what his death meant for him. 
 No theories could give an answer to these 
 questions, either to him or to me, during the 
 whole period of his long and painful lingering. 
 Then occasions for doubt, however, were few 
 and far between ; on the whole, I continued to 
 live in the profession of the faith of progress. 
 "Everything develops, and I myself develop 
 as well ; and why this is so will one day be ap- 
 parent," was the formula I was obliged to 
 adopt. 
 
 On my return from abroad I settled in the 
 country, and occupied myself with the organ- 
 ization of schools for the peasantry. This 
 occupation was especially grateful to me, be- 
 cause it was free from the spirit of falseness 
 so evident to me in the career of a literary 
 teacher. 
 
 Here again I acted in the name of progress 
 but this time I brought a spirit of 'critical in- 
 quiry to the system on which the progress 
 rested. I said to myself that progress was 
 often attempted in an irrational manner, and 
 
20 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 •that it was necessary to leave a primitive 
 people and the children of peasants perfectly 
 free to choose the way of progress which they 
 thought best. In reality I was still bent on 
 the solution of the same impossible problem, 
 how to teach without knowing what I had to 
 teach. In the highest sphere of literature I 
 had understood that it was impossible to do 
 this because I had seen that each taught dif- 
 ferently, and that the teachers quarrelled 
 among themselves, and scarcely succeeded in 
 concealing their ignorance. Having now to 
 deal with peasants' children, I thought that I 
 could get over this difficulty by allowing the 
 children to learn what they liked. It seems 
 now absurd when I remember the expedients 
 by which I carried out this whim of mine to 
 teach, though I knew in my heart that I could 
 teach nothing useful, because I myself did not 
 know what was necessary. 
 
 After a year spent in this employment with 
 the schools, I again went abroad, for the pur- 
 pose of finding out how I was to teach under 
 these conditions. 
 
 I believed that I had found a solution abroad, 
 
MY CONFESSION. 21 
 
 and, armed with that conviction, I returned to 
 Russia, the same year in which the peasants 
 were freed from serfdom ; and, accepting the 
 office of a country magistrate or arbitrator, I 
 began to teach the uneducated people in the 
 schools, and the educated classes in the jour- 
 nals which I published. Things seemed to be 
 going on well, but I felt that my mind was not 
 in a normal state and that a change was near. 
 I might then, perhaps, have come to that state 
 of absolute despair to which I was brought 
 fifteen years later, if it had not been for a new 
 experience in life which promised me safety — 
 the home life of a family man. For a year I 
 occupied myself with my duties as arbitrator, 
 with the schools, and my newspaper, and got 
 so involved that I was harassed to death ; my 
 arbitration was one continual struggle, what to 
 do in the schools became less and less clear, 
 and my newspaper shuffling more and more 
 repugnant to me, always the same thing — try- 
 ing to teach without knowing how or what — 
 so that I fell ill, more with a mental than phy- 
 sical sickness, gave up everything, and started 
 for the steppes to breathe a fresher air, to 
 
22 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 drink mare's milk, and live a mere animal 
 life. 
 
 Soon after my return I married. The new 
 circumstances of a happy family life by whicli 
 I was now surrounded completely led my mind 
 away from the search after the meaning of life 
 as a whole. My life was concentrated in my 
 family, my wife, and children, and consequent- 
 ly in the care for increasing the means of sup- 
 porting them. The effort to effect my own 
 individual perfection, already replaced by the 
 striving after general progress, was again 
 changed into an effort to secure the particular 
 happiness of my family. In this way fifteen 
 years passed. Notwithstanding that during 
 these fifteen years I looked upon the craft of 
 authorship as a very trifling thing, I continued 
 all the time to write. I had experienced the 
 seductions of authorship, the temptations of an 
 enormous pecuniary reward and of great ap- 
 plause for valueless work, and gave myself up 
 to it as a means of improving my material 
 position, and of stifling all the feelings which 
 led me to question my own life and that of 
 society for the meaning in them. In my 
 
MY CONFESSION. 23 
 
 writings I taught what for me was the only 
 truth, that the object of life should be our own 
 happiness and that of our family. 
 
 By this rule I lived; but five years ago, a 
 strange state of mind-torpor began at times to 
 grow upon me. I had moments of perplexity, 
 of a stoppage, as it were, of life, as if I did not 
 know how I was to live, what I was to do. I 
 began to wander, and was a victim to low 
 spirits. This, however, passed, and I continued 
 to live as before. Later, these periods of per- 
 plexity grew more and more frequent, and in- 
 variably took the same form. During their con- 
 tinuance the same questions always presented 
 themselves to me : " Why ? " and " What after ? " 
 
 At first it seemed to me that these were 
 empty and unmeaning questions, that all they 
 asked about was well known, and that when- 
 ever I wished to find answers to them I could 
 do so without much trouble — then I had no 
 time for it. But these questions presented 
 themselves to my mind with ever-increasing fre- 
 quency, demanding an answer with still great- 
 er and greater persistence, grouping themselves 
 into one dark and ominous spot. It was with me 
 
24 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 as iii every case of a hidden, mortal disease — 
 at first the symptoms, as to its position, are 
 slight, and are disregarded by the patient, 
 while later they are repeated more and more 
 frequently, till they end in a period of uninter- 
 rupted suffering. The sufferings increase, and 
 the patient, before he has time to seek a 
 remedy, is confronted with the fact that what 
 he took for a mere indisposition has become 
 more important to him than anything else on 
 earth, that he is face to face with death. 
 
 This is exactly what happened mentally to 
 myself. I became aware that this was not a 
 mere passing phase of mental ill-health, that the 
 symptoms were of the utmost importance, and 
 that if these questions continued to recur, I 
 must find an answer to them. I tried to an- 
 swer them. The questions seemed so foolish, 
 so simple, so childish; but no sooner had I 
 begun my attempt to decide them than I 
 was convinced that they were neither childish 
 nor silly, but were concerned with the deepest 
 problems of life, and again that I was, think of 
 them as I would, utterly unable to find an 
 answer to them. 
 
MY CONFESSION. 25 
 
 Before occupying myself with my estate, 
 with the education of my son, with the writing 
 of books, I was bound to know why I did these 
 things. Till I know the reasons for my own 
 acts, I can do nothing, I cannot live. While 
 thinking of the details of the management of 
 my household and estate, which in these days 
 occupied much of my time, the following ques- 
 tion came into my head : " Well, I have now 
 six ^thousand ' desatins ' in the govt rumen t of 
 Samara, and three hundred horses — what 
 then ? " I was quite disconcerted, and knew 
 not what to think. Another time, dwelling on 
 the thought of how I should educate my chil- 
 dren, I asked myself, " Why t " Again, when 
 considering by what means the well-being of 
 the people might best be promoted, I suddenly 
 exclaimed, " But what concern have I with it?" 
 When I thought of the fame which my works 
 had gained me, I used to say to myself, " Well, 
 what if I should be more famous than Gogol, 
 Poushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere — than all the 
 writers of the world — well, and what then ? " I 
 could find no reply. Such questions demand an 
 answer, and an immediate one ; without one it 
 is impossible to live, but answer there was none. 
 
IV. 
 
 My life had come to a sudden stop. I was 
 able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I 
 could not, indeed, help doing so ; but there was 
 no real life in me. I had not a single wish to 
 strive for the fulfilment of what I could feel to 
 be reasonable. If I wished for anything, I 
 knew beforehand that, were I to satisfy the 
 wish, nothing would come of it, I should still 
 be dissatisfied. Had a fairy appeared and 
 offered me all I desired, I should not have 
 known what to say. If I seemed to have, at a 
 given moment of excitement, not a wish, but a 
 mood resulting from the tendencies of former 
 wishes, at a calmer moment I knew that it was 
 a delusion, that I really wished for nothing. I 
 could not even wish to know the truth, because 
 I guessed what the truth was. 
 
 The truth lay in this, that life had no mean- 
 ing for me. Every day of life, every step in it, 
 brought me nearer the edge of a precipice, 
 26 
 
MY CONFESSION. 27 
 
 whence I saw clearly the final ruin before me. 
 To stop, to go back, were alike impossible ; nor 
 could I shut my eyes so as not to see the suffer- 
 ing that alone awaited me, the death of all in 
 me, even to annihilation. Thus I, a healthy 
 and a happy man, was brought to feel that I 
 could live no longer, that an irresistible force 
 was dragging me down into the grave. I do 
 not mean that I had an intention of committing 
 suicide. The force that drew me away from 
 life was stronger, fuller, and concerned with far 
 wider consequences than any mere wish ; it was 
 a force like that of my previous attachment to 
 life, only in a contrary direction. The idea of 
 suicide came as naturally to me as formerly that 
 of bettering my life. It had so much attrac- 
 tion for me that I was compelled to practise a 
 species of self-deception, in order to avoid 
 carrying it out too hastily. I was unwilling to 
 act hastily, only because I had determined first 
 to clear away the confusion of my thoughts, 
 and, that once done, I could always kill myself. 
 I was happy, yet I hid away a cord, to avoid 
 being tempted to hang myself by it to one of 
 the pegs between the cupboards of my study, 
 
28 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 where I undressed alone every evening, and 
 ceased carrying a gun because it offered too 
 easy a way of getting rid of life. I knew not 
 what I wanted; I was afraid of life; I shrank 
 from it, and yet there was something I hoped 
 for from it. 
 
 Such was the condition I had come to, at a 
 time when all the circumstances of my life were 
 pre-eminently happy ones, and when I had not 
 reached my fiftieth year. I had a good, a lov- 
 ing, and a well-beloved wife, good children, a 
 fine estate, which, without much trouble on my 
 part, continually increased my income ; I was 
 more than ever respected by my friends and ac- 
 quaintances; I was praised by strangers, and 
 could lay claim to having made my name 
 famous without much self-deception. More- 
 over, my mind was neither deranged nor weak- 
 ened ; on the contrary, I enjoyed a mental and 
 physical strength which I have seldom found in 
 men of my class and pursuits : I could keep up 
 with a peasant in mowing, and could continue 
 mental labor for ten hours at a stretch, without 
 any evil consequences. 
 
 The mental state in which I then was seemed 
 
MY CONFESStOtf. 29 
 
 to me summed *up in the following : my life 
 was a foolish and wicked joke played upon me 
 by I knew not whom. Notwithstanding my 
 rejection of the idea of a Creator, that of a be- 
 ing who thus wickedly and foolishly made a joke 
 of me seemed to me the most natural of all 
 conclusions, and the one that threw the most 
 light upon my darkness. I instinctively rea- 
 soned that this being, wherever he might be, 
 was one who was even then diverting himself 
 at my expense, as he watched me, after from 
 thirty to forty years of a life of study and 
 development, of meirial and bodily growth, 
 with all my powers matured and having reached 
 the point at which life as a whole should be 
 best understood, standing like a fool with but 
 one thing clear to me, that there was nothing 
 in life, that there never was anything, and 
 never will be. "To him I must seem ridic- 
 ulous. . . . But was there, or was there not, 
 such a being?" Neither way could I feel 
 it helped me. I could not attribute reasonable 
 motive to any single act, much less to my 
 whole life. I was only astonished that this 
 had uot occurred to me before, from premises 
 
30 MY confe'ssiox. 
 
 which had so long been known. Illness and 
 death would come (indeed they had come), if 
 not to-day, then to-morrow, to those whom I 
 loved, to myself, and nothing would remain but 
 stench and worms. All my acts, whatever I 
 did, would sooner or later be forgotten, and I 
 myself be nowhere. Why, then, busy one's 
 self with anything ? How could men see this, 
 and live ? It is possible to live only as long as 
 life intoxicates us ; as soon as we are sober 
 again we see that it is all a delusion, and a 
 stupid one ! In this, indeed, there is nothing 
 either ludicrous or amusing; it is only cruel 
 and absurd. 
 
 There is an old Eastern fable about a trav- 
 eller in the steppes who is attacked by a furi- 
 ous wild beast. To save himself the traveller 
 gets into a dried-up well ; but at the bottom of 
 it, he sees a dragon with its jaws wide-open to 
 devour him. The unhappy man dares not get 
 out for fear of the wild beast, and dares not 
 descend for fear of the dragon, so he catches 
 hold of the branch of a wild plant growing in 
 a crevice of the well. His arms grow tired, 
 and he feels that he must soon perish, death 
 
MY CONFESSION". 31 
 
 awaiting him on either side, but he still holds 
 on ; and then he sees two mice, one black and 
 one white, gnawing through the trunk of the 
 wild plant, as they gradually and evenly make 
 their way round it. The plant must soon give 
 way, break off, and he will fall into the jaws of 
 the dragon. The traveller sees this, and knows 
 that he must inevitably perish ; but, while still 
 hanging, he looks around him, and, finding 
 some drops of honey on the leaves of the wild 
 plant, he stretches out his tongue and licks 
 them. 
 
 Thus do I cling to the branch of life, know- 
 ing that the dragon of death inevitably awaits 
 me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot 
 understand why such tortures have fallen to 
 my lot. I also strive to suck the honey which 
 once comforted me, but it palls on my palate, 
 while the white mouse and the black, day and 
 night, gnaw through the branch to which I 
 cling. I see the dragon too plainly, and the 
 honey is no longer sweet. I see the dragon, 
 from whom there is no escape, and the mice, 
 and I cannot turn my eyes away from them. 
 It is no fable, but a living, undeniable truth, to 
 
32 my confession; 
 
 be understood of all men. The former delu- 
 sion of happiness in life which hid from me 
 the horror of the dragon, no longer deceives me. 
 However I may reason with myself that I 
 cannot understand the meaning of life, that I 
 must live without thinking, I cannot again begin 
 to do so, because I have done so too long already. 
 I cannot now help seeing that eacli day and 
 each night, as it passes, brings me nearer to 
 death. I can see but this, because this alone is 
 true — all the rest is a lie. The two drops of 
 honey, which more than anything else drew me 
 away from the cruel truth, my love for my 
 family and for my writings, to which latter I 
 gave the name of art, no longer taste sweet to 
 me. " My family," thought I; "but a family, 
 a wife and children, are also human beings, 
 and subject to the same conditions as myself; 
 they must either be living in a lie, or they 
 must see the terrible truth. Why should 
 they live? Why should I love, care for, 
 bring up, and watch over them ? To bring 
 them to the despair which fills myself, or to 
 make dolts of them? As I love them, I can- 
 not conceal from them the truth — every step 
 
MY CONFESSION. 33 
 
 they take in knowledge leads them to it, and 
 that truth is death." 
 
 But art, then; but poetry? Under the influ- 
 ence of success and flattered by praise, I had 
 long persuaded myself that these were things 
 worth working for, notwithstanding the ap- 
 proach of death, the great destroyer, to anni- 
 hilate my writings, and the memory of them ; 
 but now I soon saw that this was only another 
 delusion, I saw clearly that art is only the 
 ornament and charm of life. Life having lost 
 its charm for me, how could I make others see 
 a charm in it? While I was not living my 
 own life, but one that was external to me, as 
 long as I believed that life had a meaning, 
 though I could not say what it was, life was 
 reflected for me in the poetry and art which I 
 loved, it was pleasant to me to look into the 
 mirror of art ; but when I tried to discover the 
 meaning of life, when I felt the necessity of 
 living myself, the mirror became either unnec- 
 essary or painful. I could no longer take com- 
 fort from what I saw in the mirror — that my 
 position was a stupid and desperate one. 
 
 It warmed my heart when I believed that 
 
34 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 life had a meaning, when the play of the light 
 on the glass showed me all that was comic, 
 tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible in life, 
 and comforted me ; but when I knew that life 
 had no meaning at all, and was only terrible, 
 the play of the light no longer amused me. 
 No honey could be sweet upon my tongue 
 when I saw the dragon, and the mice eating 
 away the stay which supported me. Nor was 
 that all. Had I simply come to know that life 
 has no meaning, I might have quietly accepted 
 it as my allotted portion. I could not, how- 
 ever, remain thus unmoved. Had I been like 
 a man in a wood, out of which he knows that 
 there is no issue, I could have lived on ; but I 
 was like a man lost in a wood, and who, terri- 
 fied by the thought, rushes about trying to find 
 a way out, and, though he knows each step can 
 only lead him farther astray, cannot help run- 
 ning backwards and forwards. 
 
 It was this that was terrible, this which to 
 get free from I was ready to kill myself. I felt 
 a horror of what awaited me ; I knew that this 
 horror was more terrible than the position 
 itself, but I could not patiently await the end. 
 
MY CONFESSION. 35 
 
 However persuasive the argument might be 
 that all the same something in the heart or 
 elsewhere would burst and all be over, still I 
 could not patiently await the end. The horror 
 of the darkness was too great to bear, and I 
 longed to free myself from it by a rope or a 
 pistol ball. This was the feeling that, above 
 all, drew me to think of suicide. 
 
V. 
 
 It was possible, however, that I had over- 
 looked something, that I had failed to under- 
 stand something, and I often asked myself, if 
 such a state of utter despair could be, what 
 man was born to. I sought an explanation of 
 the questions which tormented me in every 
 branch of human knowledge ; I sought that 
 explanation painfully and long, not out of mere 
 curiosity nor apathetically, but obstinately day 
 and night ; I sought it as a perishing man 
 seeks safety, and I found nothing. My search 
 not only failed, but I convinced myself that all 
 those who had searched like myself had failed 
 also, and come like me to the despairing con- 
 viction that the only absolute knowledge man 
 can possess is this — that life is without a 
 meaning. I sought in all directions, and, 
 thanks to a life of study, and also to the foot- 
 ing which I had gained in learned society, all 
 the sources of knowledge were open to me, not 
 
Mt CONFESSION. 37 
 
 merely through books, but through personal 
 intercourse. I had the advantage of all that 
 learning could answer to the question, " What 
 is life?" 
 
 It was long before I could believe that 
 human learning had no clear answer whatever 
 to this question. It seemed to me, when I con- 
 sidered the importance which science attributed 
 to so many theories unconnected with the 
 problem of life, and the serious tone which 
 pervaded her inquiries into them, that I must 
 have misunderstood something. For a long J 
 time I was too timid to oppose the learning of 
 the day, and I fancied that the insufficiency of 
 the answers winch I received was not its fault, 
 but was owing to my own gross ignorance ; but 
 this thing was not a joke to pass the time with 
 me, but the business of my life, and I was at 
 last forced to the conclusion that these ques- 
 tions were just and necessary ones underlying 
 all knowledge, and that it was not I that was 
 in fault in putting them, but science in pretend- 
 ing to have an answer to them. 
 
 The question, which in my fiftieth year had 
 brought me very close to suicide, was the sim- 
 
38 M Y CONFESSION. 
 
 plest of all questions, one to make itself heard 
 in the heart of every man from undeveloped 
 childhood to wisest old age ; a question without 
 which, as I had myself experienced, life became 
 impossible. 
 
 That question was as follows : " What result 
 will there be from what I am doing now, and 
 may do to-morrow ? what will be the issue of 
 my life ? " Otherwise expressed, it may run : 
 "Why should I live? why should I wish for 
 anything? why should I do anything?" 
 Again, in other words it is : " Is there any 
 meaning in my life which can overcome the 
 inevitable death awaiting me?" 
 
 To this question, one and the same though 
 variously expressed, I sought an answer in 
 human knowledge, and I found that with 
 respect to this question all human knowledge 
 may be divided into two opposite hemispheres, 
 with their respective poles, the one negative, 
 the other affirmative, but that at neither end is 
 to be found an answer to the problem of life. 
 One system of knowledge seems to deny that 
 there is such a question, but, on the other 
 hand, has a clear and exact answer to all its 
 
my confession: 39 
 
 own independent inquiries : it is the system of 
 experimental science, at the extreme end of 
 which is mathematics. Another system ac- 
 cepts the question, but does not answer it ; it 
 is that of theoretic philosophy, and at its ex- 
 tremity is metaphysics. I had been addicted 
 from my youth to theoretical study; later, 
 mathematics and the exact sciences had at- 
 tracted me ; and till I came to put clearly to 
 myself this question as to the meaning of life, 
 until it grew up in me, as it were, of itself, and 
 till I felt that it demanded an immediate an- 
 swer, I was content with the artificial and con- 
 ventional answers given by learning. 
 
 For the practical side of life I used to say to 
 myself, "All is development and differentia- 
 tion, all tends to complication and perfection, 
 and there are laws which govern this process. 
 You are yourself a part of the whole. Learn 
 as much as possible of this whole, and learn the 
 law of its development; you will then know 
 your own place in the great unity, and know 
 yourself as well." Though I feel shame in 
 confessing it, I must needs own that there was 
 a time when I was myself developing — when 
 
40 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 my muscles and memory were strengthening, 
 my power of thinking and understanding on 
 the increase — that I, feeling this, very natu- 
 rally thought that the law of my own growth 
 was the law of the universe and explained the 
 meaning of my own life. But there came 
 another time when I had ceased to grow, and I 
 felt that I was not developing but drying up ; 
 my muscles grew weaker, my teeth began to fall 
 out, and I saw that this law of growth not only 
 explained nothing but that such a law did not 
 and could not exist ; that I had taken for a 
 general law what only affected myself at a 
 given age. 
 
 On looking more closely into the nature of 
 this pretended law, it was clear to me that 
 there could be no law of eternal development ; 
 that to say everything in infinite space and 
 time is developed, complicated, differentiated, 
 and perfected, is to talk nonsense. Such words 
 have no meaning, for the infinite can know 
 nothing of simple and compound, of past and 
 future, of better and worse. It was a personal 
 question that was of such importance to me, 
 and which remained without an answer: 
 
MY CONFESSION. 41 
 
 " What am I myself with all my desires ? " 
 I understood that the acquirement of knowl- 
 edge was interesting and attractive, but that it 
 could only give clear and exact results in pro- 
 portion to its inapplicability to the question of 
 life. The less it had to do with these ques- 
 tions, the clearer and more exact it was ; the 
 more it took the character of a solution of 
 these questions, the obscurer and less attractive 
 they, became. If we turn to those branches of 
 knowledge in which men have tried to find a 
 solution to the problem of life, to physiology, 
 psychology, biology, sociology, we meet with a 
 striking poverty of thought, with the greatest 
 obscurity, with an utterly unjustifiable preten- 
 sion to decide questions beyond their compe- 
 tence, and a constant contradiction of one 
 thinker by another, and even by himself. If 
 we turn to the branches of knowledge which 
 are not concerned with the problem of life, but 
 find an answer to their own particular scien- 
 tific questions, we are lost in admiration of 
 man's mental powers ; but we know before- 
 hand that we shall get no answer to our 
 questions about life itself, for these branches 
 
42 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 of knowledge directly ignore all questions 
 concerning it. 
 
 Those who profess them say, "We cannot 
 tell you what you are and why you live ; such 
 questions we do not study. But if you wish to 
 know the laws of light, of chemical affinities, of 
 the development of organisms ; if you wish to 
 know the laws that govern different bodies, 
 their form, and relations to number and size ; if 
 you wish to know the laws of your own mind, 
 we can give you clear, exact, and absolutely 
 certain answers on every point." The relation 
 of experimental science to the question of the 
 meaning of life may be put as follows : Ques- 
 tion, " Why do I live ? " Answer, " Infinitely 
 small particles, in infinite combinations, in end- 
 less space and endless time, eternally change 
 their forms, and when you have learned the 
 laws of these changes, you will know why you 
 live." I used to say to myself when theorizing, 
 " Spiritual causes lie at the root of man's life 
 and development, and they are the ideals which 
 govern him. These ideals find expression in 
 religion, in science, in art, and in the forms of 
 government, and rise higher, from one stage to 
 
MY CONFESSION. 43 
 
 another, till man at last reaches his highest 
 good. I am myself a man, and am therefore 
 called upon to assist in making the ideals of 
 humanity known and accepted." 
 
 In the days of my mental weakness this 
 reasoning sufficed for me ; but as soon as the 
 problem of life really, as it were, arose within 
 me, the whole theory fell to pieces at once. 
 Not to speak of the dishonest inaccuracy, by 
 which learning of this kind is made to give as 
 general results those due to the study of but a 
 small part of mankind; not to speak of the 
 many contradictions among the various cham- 
 pions of this theory, as to what are the ideals of 
 humanity ; the strangeness, if it be not the silli- 
 ness, of this way of thinking is that, in order 
 to answer the question which occurs to every 
 man — " What am 17" or " Why do I live ? " 
 or " What am I to do ? " — we must first 
 answer this other question : " What is the life 
 of that unknown quantity to us, mankind, of 
 which we are acquainted with but one minute 
 part in one minute period of time ? " 
 
 In order to understand what he is himself, a 
 man must first know what that mysterious 
 
44 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 humanity is, which is formed of other men like 
 himself, and who again are ignorant of what 
 they are. 
 
 I confess there was a time when I believed 
 this. That was when I had my own cherished 
 ideals which determined my caprices, and I 
 would strive to evolve a theory which should 
 enable me to look upon my fancies as a law be- 
 longing to humanity. As soon, however, as the 
 question of the meaning of life made itself 
 clearly felt within me, my theoretical answer 
 was forever confuted. I understood that, as 
 in tHe experimental sciences there are real 
 sciences, and semi-sciences which pretend to 
 give answers to questions beyond their compe- 
 tence, so in the province of theoretical knowl- 
 edge is there a wide range of highly cultivated 
 philosophy which attempts to do the same. The 
 semi-sciences of this division, jurisprudence and 
 historical sociology, endeavor to decide the 
 questions concerning man and his life, by de- 
 ciding, each in his own way, another question, 
 that of the life of humanity as a whole. 
 
 But, as in the sphere of exact science, a man 
 who earnestly seeks an answer to the question, 
 
MY CONFESSION. 45 
 
 " How am I to live ? " cannot content himself 
 with the answer that if he studies in infinite 
 space and time the endless combinations and 
 changes of infinite particles, he will know what 
 his own life means, so a sincere man cannot be 
 satisfied with this other answer, " Study the 
 life of humanity as a whole, and then, though 
 we know neither its beginning nor its end, and 
 are ignorant of its parts, you will know what 
 your life means." 
 
 It is the same with these sham sciences as 
 with the sham experimental ones ; they con- 
 tain obscurity, inaccuracy, stupidity, and con- 
 tradiction, exactly in proportion to their diver- 
 gence from their proper sphere. The problem 
 of exact science is the succession of cause and 
 effect in material phenomena. If exact science 
 raises the question of a finite cause, it stumbles 
 against an absurdity. The problem of theoret- 
 ical science is the conception of the uncaused 
 existence of life. Directly the question of the 
 cause of phenomena is raised — as, for instance, 
 of social and historical phenomena — theoretical 
 science lands also in an absurdity. Experi- 
 mental science gives positive results, and shows 
 
46 MY CONFESSION-. 
 
 the grandeur of man's intellect, only when it 
 does not inquire into finite causes ; while, on 
 the contrary, theoretical science only shows 
 the greatness of man's mental powers, is only a 
 science at all, when it gets rid altogether of the 
 succession of phenomena, and looks upon man 
 only in relation to finite causes. Such in this 
 department of science is the office of its most 
 important branch, — of the one which is the 
 pole, as it were, of all the others, — of meta- 
 physics or philosophy. 
 
 This science puts the clear question, " What 
 am I, and what is the whole world around me ? 
 Why do I and the world exist?" and it has al- 
 ways answered it in the same way. Whatever 
 name the philosopher may give to the principle 
 of life existing in me and in all other living 
 beings, whether he call it an idea, a substance, a 
 spirit, or a will, he still says ever that it is a 
 reality, and that I have a real existence ; but 
 why this is so he does not know, and does not 
 try to explain if he is an exact thinker. 
 
 I ask, " Why should this reality be ? What 
 comes of the fact that it is and will be ? " 
 Philosophy cannot answer, it can only itself put 
 
MY CONFESSION. 47 
 
 the same question. If it be, then, a true phil- 
 osophy, its whole labor consists in this, that it 
 should put this question clearly. If it keep 
 firmly to its proper sphere, it can only answer 
 the question, " What am I and the whole world 
 around me?" by saying, "All and nothing," 
 and to that other question, " Why ? " by add- 
 ing, " I do not know." Thus, however I ex- 
 amine and twist the theoretical replies of phil- 
 osophy, I never receive an answer to my 
 question ; and that, not as in the sphere of ex- 
 perimental knowledge, because the answer does 
 not relate to the question, but because here, al- 
 though great mental labor has been applied 
 directly to the question, there is no answer, 
 and instead of one I get back my own question 
 repeated in a more complicated form. 
 
VI. 
 
 In my search for a solution of the problem of 
 life I experienced the same feeling as a man 
 who has lost himself in a wood. He comes to 
 an open plain, climbs up a tree, and sees around 
 him a space without end, but nowhere a house 
 — he sees clearly that there can be none ; he 
 goes into the thick of the wood, into the dark- 
 ness, and sees darkness, but again no house. 
 Thus had I lost my way in the wood of human 
 knowledge, in the twilight of mathematical and 
 experimental science, which opened out for me 
 a clear and distant horizon in the direction of 
 which there could be no house, and in the dark- 
 ness of philosophy, plunging me into a greater 
 gloom with every step I took, until I was at last 
 persuaded that there was, and could be, no 
 issue. When 1 followed what seemed the bright 
 light of learning, I saw that I had only turned 
 aside from the real question. Notwithstanding 
 the attraction of the distant horizon unfolded 
 48 
 
MY CONFESSION. 49 
 
 so clearly before me, notwithstanding the charm 
 of losing myself in the infinity of knowledge, I 
 saw that the clearer it was the less was it 
 needed by me, the less did it give me an 
 answer to my question. 
 
 I said to myself, "I know now all that 
 science so obstinately seeks to learn ; but an 
 answer to my question as to the meaning of 
 my life is not to be obtained from science." I 
 saw. that philosophy, notwithstanding that, or 
 perhaps because an answer to my question had 
 become the direct object of its inquiries, gave 
 no answer but the one I had given to myself, 
 " What is the meaning of my life ? It has 
 none. Or what will come of my life ? Noth- 
 ing. Or why does all that is exist, and why 
 do I exist? Because it does exist." When 
 I turned to one branch of science, I ob- 
 tained an endless number of exact answers 
 to questions I had not proposed : about the 
 chemical elements of the stars and planets, 
 about the movement of the sun with the 
 constellation of Hercules, on the origin of 
 species and of man, about the infinitely small 
 and weightless particles of ether ; but the only 
 
50 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 answer to my question as to the meaning of my 
 life was this, " You are what you call life ; that 
 is, a temporal and accidental agglomeration of 
 particles. The mutual action and reaction of 
 these particles on each other has produced 
 what you call your life. This agglomeration 
 will continue during a certain time, then the 
 reciprocal action of these particles will cease, 
 and with it ends what you call your life and all 
 your questions as well. You are an acciden- 
 tally combined lump of something. The lump 
 undergoes decomposition, this decomposition 
 men call life ; the lump falls asunder, decom- 
 position ceases, and with it all doubting." 
 This is the answer from the clear and positive 
 side of human knowledge, and if true to its own 
 principles it can give no other. 
 
 Such an answer, however, is no answer to 
 the question at all. I want to know the meaning 
 of my life ; and that it is an infinite particle 
 not only does not give a meaning to it, but 
 destroys the possibility of a meaning. The 
 compromise which experimental makes with 
 theoretical science, when it is said that the 
 meaning of life is development, and the efforts 
 
MY CONFESSION. 51 
 
 made towards its attainment, from its obscurity 
 and inaccuracy cannot be considered an answer. 
 The theoretical side of human knowledge, 
 when it keeps firmly to its own principles, 
 through all time has ever answered and still 
 answers one and the same, "The world is 
 something which is eternal and not to be 
 understood. The life of man is an inconceiv- 
 able part of this inconceivable whole." 
 
 Again I set aside all the compromises be- 
 tween theoretical and experimental science 
 which are the product of the sham sciences, 
 of so-called jurisprudence, of political economy, 
 and of history. In these sciences we have 
 again a false conception of development and 
 perfection, with this difference, that formerly 
 it was a development of everything, and now it 
 is a development of human life. The inaccu- 
 racy is again the same ; development and per- 
 fection in infinity can have no object, no direc- 
 tion, and therefore can give no answer to my 
 question. Whenever theoretical knowledge is 
 exact, where philosophy is true to itself, and 
 does not simply serve, like what Schopenhauer 
 calls "professorial philosophy," to divide all 
 
V 
 
 52 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 existing phenomena into new columns, and 
 give to them new names — wherever the 
 philosopher does not overlook the great 
 question of all, the answer is always the same, 
 the answer given by Sucrates, Schopenhauer, 
 Solomon, and Buddha. "We approach truth 
 only in the proportion as we are farther from 
 life," said Socrates, when preparing to die. 
 What do we who love truth seek in life ? In 
 order to be free from the body and all the ills 
 that accompany life in it. If so, then, how 
 shall we not be glad of the approach of death? 
 
 A wise man seeks death all his life, and 
 death has no terrors for him. This is what 
 Schopenhauer says : u Accept will as the ulti- 
 mate principle of the universe, and in all 
 phenomena, from the unconscious tendencies 
 of the unknown forces of nature to the con- 
 scious activity of man, acknowledge only the 
 objectivity of that will, and we still cannot get 
 rid of this logical consequence, that directly 
 that will uses its freedom to abdicate, to deny 
 and destroy itself, all phenomena disappear 
 with it, there is an end to the constant efforts 
 and impulses now going on, without aim and 
 
MY CONFESSION. 53 
 
 without intermission, in every degree of the 
 objectivity in which and through which the 
 universe exists, there is an end to the varieties 
 of successive forms, and with form vanish its 
 postulates, space and time, even to the last and 
 fundamental elements of form, the subject and 
 the object. If there is no will, no phenomenal 
 appearance, then there is no universe. The 
 only thing that remains to us is nothing. But 
 this passage to annihilation is opposed by our 
 own nature, by our will to live, which causes 
 our own existence and that of the universe. 
 That we so fear annihilation, or, what is the 
 same, that we so wish to live, only shows that 
 we ourselves are nothing but that wish, and 
 know nothing beyond it. Consequently, what 
 remains to us after the annihilation of will, 
 except will again, is assuredly nothing; on 
 the other hand, for those in whom will has 
 destroyed itself, the whole of this material 
 universe of ours, with all its suns and its milky 
 ways — is nothing" 
 
 " Vanity of vanities," says Solomon, " vanity 
 of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a 
 man of all his labor which he taketh under 
 
54 MY CONFESSION'. 
 
 the sun ? One generation passeth away, and 
 another generation conieth : but the earth 
 abideth forever. . . . The thing that hath 
 been, it is that which shall be ; and that 
 which is done is that which shall be done : 
 and there is no new thing under the sun. 
 Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, 
 this is new? it hath been already of old time, 
 which was before us. t There is no remem- 
 brance of former things ; neither shall there 
 be any remembrance of things that are to come 
 with those that shall come after. 
 
 "I the Preacher was king over Israel in 
 Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and 
 search out by wisdom concerning all things that 
 are done under heaven : this sore travail hath 
 God given to the sons of man to* be exercised 
 therewith. I have seen all the works that are 
 done under the sun ; and behold, all is vanity 
 and vexation of spirit. ... I communed with 
 mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to 
 great estate, and have gotten more wisdom 
 than all they that have been before me in 
 Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great expe- 
 rience of wisdom and knowledge. And I 
 
MY CONFESSION. 55 
 
 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. 
 
 "I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will 
 prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure : 
 and, behold, this also is vanity. I said of 
 laughter, It is mad : and of mirth, What doeth 
 it? I sought in mine heart to give mys'elf unto 
 wine (yet acquainting mine heart with wis- 
 dom), and to lay hold on folly, till I might 
 see what was that good for the sons of men, 
 which they should do under the heaven all 
 the days of their life. I made me great works ; 
 I builded me houses ; I planted me vineyards ; 
 I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted 
 trees in them of all kind of fruits ; I made me 
 pools of water, to water therewith the wood 
 that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants 
 and maidens, and had servants born in rny 
 house ; also I had great possessions of great 
 and small cattle above all that were in Jeru- 
 salem before me : I gathered me also silver and 
 gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of 
 
56 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 the provinces: I gat me men singers and 
 women singers, and the delights of the sons of 
 men, as musical instruments, and that of all 
 sorts. So I was great, and increased more 
 than all that were before me in Jerusalem : 
 also my wisdom remained with me. And 
 whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not 
 from them, I withheld not mine heart from 
 any joy. . . . Then I looked on all the works 
 my hands had wrought, and on the labor that 
 I had labored to do : and behold, all was 
 vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no 
 profit under the sun. 
 
 "And I turned myself to behold wisdom, 
 and madness, and folly. . . . And I myself 
 perceive also that one event happeneth to them 
 all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth 
 to the fool, so it happeneth even to me ; and 
 why was I then more wise ? Then I said in 
 my heart, that this also is vanity. For there 
 is no remembrance of the wise more than of 
 the fool forever ; seeing that which now is in 
 the days to come shall be forgotten. And how 
 dieth the wise man ? as the fool. 
 
 "Therefore I hated life; because the work 
 
MY CONFESSION. 57 
 
 that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto 
 me : for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, 
 I hated all my labor which I had taken under 
 the sun : because I should leave it unto the 
 man that shall be after me. . . . For what 
 hath man of all his labor, and of the vexation 
 of his heart, wherein he hath labored under 
 the sun ? For all his days are sorrows, and his 
 travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in 
 the night. This is also vanity. There is noth- 
 ing better for a man than that he should eat 
 and drink, and that he should make his soul 
 enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that 
 it was from the hand of God. .... 
 
 " All things come alike to all : there is one 
 event to the righteous, and to the wicked ; to 
 the good and to the clean, and to the unclean ; 
 to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacri- 
 ficeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; 
 and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an 
 oath. This is an evil among all things that 
 are 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. 
 
58 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 "For to him that is joined to all 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 anything, 
 neither have they anj r more a reward ; for the 
 memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, 
 and their hatred, and their envy, is now per- 
 ished ; neither have they any more a portion for- 
 ever in anything that is done under the sun." 
 
 Thus speaks Solomon, or the one who wrote 
 the above ; and this is what an Indian sage 
 says: " Sakya Muni, the young and happy heir 
 to a great throne, from whom had been kept 
 the sight of illness, old age, and death, once 
 while out driving saw a horrible-looking, tooth- 
 less old man. The prince was much aston- 
 ished, and asked the driver what it meant, and 
 why the man was in such a pitiable and disgust- 
 ing state. When he learned that this was the 
 common lot of all men, and that he himself, 
 prince and young though he was, must inevita- 
 bly one day be the same, he was unable to con- 
 tinue his drive, and ordered the carriage to be 
 driven home, that he might have time to think 
 it all over. He shut himself up alone and 
 
MY CONFESSION. 59 
 
 thought it over. He probably thought of 
 something which consoled him, for again he 
 got into his carriage and drove off merry and 
 happy. This time lie is met by a sick man. 
 He sees a worn-out, tottering man, who is 
 quite blue in the face and has dim eyes. The 
 prince stopped and asked what it was. When 
 he was told that it was illness, that old men 
 are subject to it, and he himself, young and 
 happy prince though he was, might fall ill the 
 next day, he again lost all desire for amuse- 
 ment, and gave orders to drive home. There 
 he again sought peace of mind, and probably 
 found it, for soon after he started again, for 
 the third time, in his carriage. This time, 
 however, he saw something new also — some 
 men were carrying something by. 'What is 
 that?' 'A dead body.' 'What does a dead 
 body mean ? ' asks the. prince ; and he is told 
 that to become one means to become what the 
 man before him now is. The prince descends 
 and approaches the body, uncovers it, and 
 looks at it. ' What will become of him ? ' asks 
 the prince. He is told that the body will be 
 thrust into a hole dug in the earth. ' Why ? ' 
 
60 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 'Because he will never be alive again, and 
 only stench and worms can come from him.' 
 4 And that is the lot of all men? And it will 
 be so with me? I shall be put underground 
 to stink and have worms come from me?' 
 4 Yes.' 4 Back ! I will not go for the drive, 
 and never will go again.' " 
 
 So Sakya Muni could find no comfort in life, 
 and he decided that life was a very great evil, 
 and applied all his energies to freeing himself 
 and others from it, so that after death, life 
 should in no way be renewed, and the very 
 root of life should be destroyed. Thus speak 
 all the Indian sages. Here we have the only 
 direct answers which human wisdom can give 
 to the problem of life. " The life of the body 
 is evil and a lie, and so the annihilation of that 
 life is a good for which we ought to wish," 
 says Socrates. 
 
 Life is what it ought not to be ; " an evil, 
 and a passage from it into nothingness is the 
 only good in life," says Schopenhauer. Every- 
 thing in the world, both folly and wisdom, both 
 riches and poverty, rejoicing and grief, all is 
 vanity and worthless. Man dies and nothing 
 
MY CONFESSION. 61 
 
 is left of him, and this again is vanity, says 
 Solomon. 
 
 "To live, knowing that sufferings, illness, 
 old age, and death are inevitable, is not possi- 
 ble; we must get rid of life, get rid of the 
 possibility of living," says Buddha. 
 
 And what these powerful minds have said, 
 what millions on millions of men have thought 
 and felt, has been thought and felt by me. 
 
 Thus my wanderings over the fields of 
 knowledge not only failed to cure me of my 
 despair, but increased it. One branch of 
 knowledge gave no answer at all to the prob- 
 lem of life, another gave a direct answer which 
 confirmed my despair, and showed that the 
 state to which I had come was not the result 
 of my going astray, of any mental disorder, 
 but, on the contrary, of my thinking rightly, 
 of my being in agreement with the conclusions 
 of the most powerful intellects among man- 
 kind. 
 
 I could not be deceived. All was vanity. 
 A misfortune to be born. Death was better 
 than life, and life's burden must be got rid of. 
 
VII. 
 
 Having failed to find an explanation in 
 knowledge, I began to seek it in life itself, hop- 
 ing to -frnfcl it in^he men wfe$ surrounded me; 
 and I began to watch men like myself, to 
 observe how they lived, and how they practi- 
 cally treated the question which had brought 
 me to despair. 
 
 And this is what I found among those of the 
 same social position and culture as myself. 
 
 I found that for those who occupied the 
 same position as myself there were four means 
 of escape from the terrible state in which we 
 all were. 
 
 The first means of escape is through igno- 
 rance. It consists in not perceiving and under- 
 standing that life is an evil and an absurdity. 
 People of this class — for the greater part 
 women, or men who are either very young or 
 very stupid — have not understood the problem 
 of life as it presented itself to Schopenhauer, 
 
MY CONFESSION. 63 
 
 to Solomon, and to Buddha. They see neither 
 the dragon awaiting them, nor the mice eating 
 through the plant to which they cling, and 
 they taste the drops of honey. But they only 
 lick the honey for a time; something directs 
 their attention to the dragon and the mice, and 
 there is an end to their tasting. From these I 
 could learn nothing: we cannot unknow what 
 we do know. 
 
 The second means of escape is the Epicu- 
 rean. It consists in, while we know the hope- 
 lessness of life, taking advantage of every good 
 there is in it, in avoiding the sight of the 
 dragon and mice, and in seeking the honey as 
 best we can, especially wherever there is most 
 of it. Solomon points out this issue from the 
 difficulty 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: 
 for that shall abide with him of his labor the 
 days of his life, which God giveth him, under 
 the sun. ... Go thy way, 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, 
 
64 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 which he hath given thee under the sun, all 
 the days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion 
 in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest 
 under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
 to do, do it with thy might; for there is no 
 work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, 
 in the grave, whither thou goest." 
 
 Such is the way in which most people, who 
 belong to the circle in which I move, reconcile 
 themselves to their fate, and make living possi- 
 ble. They know more of the good than the 
 evil of life from the circumstances of their 
 position, and their blunted moral perceptions 
 enable them to forget that all their advantages 
 are accidental, and that all men cannot have 
 harems and palaces, like Solomon ; that for one 
 man who has a thousand wives, there are thou- 
 sands of men who have none, and for each pal- 
 ace there must be thousands of men to build it 
 with the sweat of their brow, and that the same 
 chance which has made me a Solomon to-day 
 may make me Solomon's slave to-morrow. 
 The dulness of their imagination enables these 
 men to forget what destroyed the peace of 
 Buddha, the inevitable sickness, old age, and 
 
MY CONFESSION. 65 
 
 death, which if not to-day, then to-morrow, 
 must be the end of all their pleasures. 
 
 Thus think and feel the majority of the men 
 of our time of the upper classes. That some 
 of them call their dulness of thought and imag- 
 ination by the name of positive philosophy, 
 does not, in my opinion, separate them from 
 those who, in order not to see the real question, 
 search for and lick the honey. I could not 
 imitate such as these ; my imagination not 
 being blunted like theirs, I could not artifi- 
 cially prevent its action. Like every man who 
 who really lives, I could not turn my eyes aside 
 from the mice and the dragon, when I had 
 once seen them. 
 
 The third means of escape is through 
 strength and energy of character. It consists 
 in destroying life when we have perceived that 
 it is an evil and an absurdity. Only men of 
 strong and unswerving character act thus. 
 Understanding all the stupidity of the joke 
 that is played with us, and understanding far 
 better the happiness of the dead than of the 
 living, they put an end at once to the parody 
 of life, and bless any means of doing it — a 
 
6Q MY CONFESSION. 
 
 rope round the neck, water, a knife in the 
 heart, or a railway train. The number of 
 those in my own class who thus act continu- 
 ally increases, and those who do this are gener- 
 ally in the prime of life, with their physical 
 strength matured and un weakened, and with 
 but few of the habits that undermine man's 
 intellectual powers yet formed. I saw that 
 this means of escape was the worthiest, and 
 wished to make use of it. 
 
 The fourth means of escape is through weak- 
 ness. It consists, though the evil and absur- 
 dity of life are well known, in continuing to 
 drag on, though aware that nothing can come 
 of it. People of this class of mind know that 
 death is better than life, but have not the 
 strength of character to act as their reason dic- 
 tates, to have done with deceit and kill them- 
 selves ; they seem to be waiting for something 
 to happen. This way of escape is due solely to 
 weakness, for if I know what is better, and it 
 is within ray reach, why not seize it? To this 
 class of men I myself belonged. 
 
 Thus do those of ray own class, in four diffei*- 
 ent ways, save themselves from a terrible con- 
 
MY CONFESSION. 67 
 
 tradiction. With the most earnest intellectual 
 efforts I could not find a fifth way. One way 
 is to ignore life's being a meaningless jumble of 
 vanity and evil, — not to know that it is better 
 not to live. For me not to know this was im- 
 possible, and when I once saw the truth, I 
 could not shut my eyes to it. Another way is 
 to make the best of life as it is without think- 
 ing of the future. This, again, I could not do. 
 I, like Sakya Muni, could not drive to the 
 pleasure-ground, when I knew of the existence 
 of old age, suffering, and death. My imagina- 
 tion was too lively for that. Moreover, my 
 heart was ungladdened by the passing joys 
 which fell for a few rare instants to my lot. 
 The third way is, knowing that life is an evil 
 and a foolish thing, to put an end to it, to kill 
 one's self. I understood this, but still did not 
 kill myself. The fourth way is to accept life 
 as described by Solomon and Schopenhauer, to 
 know that it is a stupid and ridiculous joke, 
 and yet live on, to wash, dress, dine, talk, and 
 even write books. This position was painful 
 and disgusting to me, but I remained in it. 
 I now see that I did not kill myself because 
 
68 my confession: 
 
 I had, in a confused sort of way, an inkling 
 that my ideas were wrong. However persua- 
 sive and unanswerable the idea, which I shared 
 with the wisest on earth, that life has no mean- 
 ing, appeared to me, I still felt a confused 
 doubt in the truth of my conclusions, which 
 formed itself thus : " My reason tells me that 
 life is contrary to reason. If there is nothing 
 higher than reason (and there is nothing), 
 reason is the Creator of my life ; were there no 
 reason, there would be no life for me. How 
 can it be that reason denies life, and is at the 
 same time its creator? Again, from the other 
 side, if there were no life, I should have no 
 reason, consequently reason is born of life, and 
 life is all. Reason is the product of life, and 
 yet it denies life." I felt that something here 
 was wrong. I said to myself: "Life undoubt- 
 edly has no meaning, and is evil, but I have 
 lived and am still alive, and so also have lived 
 and are living the whole human race. How is 
 it, then ? Why do all men live, when all men 
 are able to die ? Is it that I and Schopenhauer 
 alone are wise enough to have understood the 
 unmeaning emptiness and evil of life ? " 
 
MY CONFESSION. 69 
 
 To see the inanity of life is a simple matter 
 enough, and it has long been apparent to the 
 simplest among us, but men still live on. Yes, 
 men live on, and never think of calling in ques- 
 tion the reasonableness of life ! 
 
 My acquired knowledge, confirmed by the 
 wisdom of the wisest of the world, showed me 
 that everything on earth, organic or inorganic, 
 was arranged with extraordinary wisdom, and 
 that, my own position alone was a foolish one. 
 But, all the same, the enormous masses of those 
 fools, my fellow-men, know nothing of the 
 organic or inorganic structure of the world, but 
 live on, and it seems to them that their lives 
 are subjected to perfectly reasonable condi- 
 tions ! 
 
 Then I thought to myself: "But what if 
 there be something more for me to know? 
 Surely this is the way in which ignorance acts. 
 Why, it always says exactly what I do now ! 
 What men are ignorant of they say is stupid. 
 It really comes to this, that mankind as a whole 
 have always lived, and are living, as if they 
 understood the meaning of life, for not doing 
 so they could not live at all, and yet I say that 
 
70 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 all this life has no meaning in it, and that I 
 cannot live." 
 
 Nobody prevents our denial of life by suicide, 
 but, then, kill yourself and you will no longer 
 argue about it. If you dislike life, kill yourself. 
 If in your life you cannot find a reason for it, 
 put an end to it, and do not go on talking and 
 writing about being unable to understand life. 
 You have got into a gay company, in which all 
 are well satisfied, all know what they are doing, 
 and you alone are wearied and repelled ; then 
 get out of it ! 
 
 And after all, then, what are we who, per- 
 suaded of the necessity of suicide, still cannot 
 bring ourselves to the act, but weak, inconsist- 
 ent men, — to speak more plainly, stupid men, 
 who carry about with them their stupidity, as 
 the fool carries his name written upon his cap ? 
 
 Our wisdom, indeed, however firmly it be 
 grounded on truth, has not imparted to us a 
 knowledge of the meaning of life, yet all the 
 millions that share in the life of humanity do 
 not doubt that life has a meaning. 
 
 It is certainly true that, from the far-distant 
 time when that life began of which even I 
 
MY CONFESSION. 71 
 
 know something, men lived who, though they 
 knew what proved to me that life had no mean- 
 ing, the argument of its inanity, still lived on, 
 and gave to life a meaning of their own. Since 
 any sort of life began for men, they have had 
 some conception of their own about it, and 
 have so lived down to my own time. All that 
 is in and around me, physical or immaterial, it 
 is all the fruit of their knowledge of life. The 
 very mental instruments which I have em- 
 ployed against that life, to condemn it, were 
 fashioned, not by me, but by them. I was 
 born, and bred, and have grown up, thanks to 
 them. They dug out the iron, taught how to 
 hew down the forests, to tame the cows and the 
 horses, to sow corn, to live one with another ; 
 they gave order and form to our life ; moreover, 
 they taught me how to think and how to speak. 
 And I, the work of their hands, their foster- 
 child, the pupil of their thoughts and sayings, 
 have proved to them they themselves had no 
 meaning ! " There must be something here," 
 said I, " that is wrong. I have made some mis- 
 take. " I could not, however, discover where 
 the mistake lay. 
 
VIII. 
 
 All these doubts, which I am now able to 
 express more or less clearly, I could not have 
 then explained. I then only felt that, despite 
 the logical certainty of my conclusions as to 
 the inanity of life, and confirmed as they were 
 by the greatest thinkers, there was something 
 wrong in them. Whether in the conclusion 
 itself, or in the way of putting the question, I 
 did not know ; I only felt that, though my rea- 
 son was entirely convinced, that was not 
 enough. All my reasoning could not induce 
 me to act in accordance with my convictions, 
 i. e., to kill myself. I should not speak the truth, 
 if I said that my reason alone brought me to 
 the position in which I was. Reason had been 
 at work no doubt, but something else had 
 worked too, something which I can only call an 
 instinctive consciousness of life. There also 
 worked in me a force, which determined my at- 
 tention to one thing rather than to another, and 
 72 
 
MY CONFESSION. 73 
 
 it was this that drew me out of my desperate 
 position, and completely changed the current 
 of my thoughts. This force led me to the idea 
 that I, with thousands of other men like me, 
 did not form the whole of mankind, — that I 
 was still ignorant of what human life was. 
 
 When I watched the restricted circle of 
 those who were my equals in social position, I 
 saw only people who did not understand the 
 question, people who kept down their under- 
 standing of it by the excitement of life, people 
 who understood it and put an end to life, and 
 people who, understanding, lived on through 
 weakness, in despair. And I saw no others. 
 It seemed to me that the small circle of 
 learned, rich, and idle people, to which I myself 
 belonged, formed the whole of humanity, and 
 that the millions living outside it were animals, 
 not men. 
 
 However strange, improbable, and incon- 
 ceivable it now seems to me, that I, reasoning 
 about life, could overlook the life of mankind 
 surrounding me on all sides, and fall into such 
 an error as to think that the life of a Solomon, 
 a Schopenhauer, and my own, was alone real 
 
74 MY CONCESSION. 
 
 and fit, and the life lived by unconsidered mill- 
 ions, a circumstance unworthy of. attention — 
 however strange this appears to me now, I see 
 that it was so then. Led away by intellectual 
 pride, it seemed to me not to be doubted that 
 I, with Solomon and Schopenhauer, had put 
 the question so exactly and truly that there 
 could be no other form of it ; it seemed un- 
 questionable that all these millions of men had 
 failed to 'conceive the depth of the question, 
 that I had sought the meaning of my life ; and 
 it never once occurred to me to think, " But 
 what meaning has been given, what meaning is 
 given now, by the millions of those who have 
 lived and are living on earth? " 
 
 I long lived in this state of mental aberra- 
 tion, which, though its theories are not always 
 openly professed, is not the less common among 
 those who are supposed to be the most learned 
 and most liberal part of society. But whether, 
 thanks to my strange kind of instinctive affec- 
 tion for the laboring classes, which impelled 
 me to understand them, and to see that they 
 are not so stupid as we think, or thanks to the 
 sincerity of my conviction that I could know 
 
MY CONFESSION'. 75 
 
 nothing beyond the advisability of hanging 
 myself, I felt that, if I wished to live and un- 
 derstand the meaning of life, I must seek it not 
 amongst those who have lost their grasp on it, 
 and wish to kill themselves, but among the 
 millions of the living and the dead, who have 
 made our life what it is, and on whom now 
 rests the burden of our life and their own. 
 
 So I watched the life common to such enor- 
 mous numbers of the dead and the living, the 
 life of simple, unlearned, and poor men, and 
 found something quite different. I saw that 
 all these millions, with rare exceptions, did not 
 come under any division of the classification 
 which I had made; I could not count thein 
 among those who do not understand the ques- 
 tion, because they not only put it but answer it 
 very clearly ; to count them among the Epicu- 
 reans I was also unable, because their life has 
 far more of privation and suffering than of 
 enjoyment ; to count them amongst those who, 
 against their reason, live through a life without 
 meaning, was still less possible, because every 
 act of their lives, and death itself, is explained 
 by them. Self-murder they look upon as the 
 
76 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 greatest of evils. It appeared that throughout 
 mankind there was a sense given to the mean- 
 ing of life which I had neglected and despised. 
 It came to this, that the knowledge based on 
 reason denied a meaning to life, and declined 
 to make it a subject of inquiry, while the 
 meaning given by the millions that form the 
 great whole of humanity was founded on a 
 despised and fallacious knowledge. 
 
 The knowledge based on reason, the knowl- 
 edge of the learned and the wise, denies a 
 meaning in life, and the great mass of all the 
 rest of mankind have an unreasoning con- 
 sciousness of life which gives a meaning to it. 
 
 This unreasoning knowledge is the faith 
 which I could not but reject. This is God, one 
 and yet three ; this is the creation in six days, 
 the devils and the angels ; and all that I cannot, 
 while I keep my senses, understand. My posi- 
 tion was a terrible one. I knew that from the 
 knowledge which reason has given man, I could 
 get nothing but the denial of life, and from 
 faith nothing but the denial of reason, which 
 last was even more impossible than the denial 
 of life. The result of the former was that life 
 
MY CONFESSION. 77 
 
 is an evil and that men know it to be one, that 
 men may cease to live if they will, but that 
 they always go on living — I myself lived on, 
 though I had long known that life had no sense 
 nor good in it. The result of the latter was 
 that, in order to understand the meaning of 
 life, I must abandon the guide without which 
 there can be no meaning in anything, my rea- 
 son itself. 
 
IX. 
 
 I WAS stopped by a contradiction which 
 could only be explained in two ways : either 
 what I called reasonable was not so reasonable 
 as I thought it, or what I called unreasonable 
 was not so unreasonable as I thought it. I 
 began by verifying the process of thinking 
 through which I had been led to the conclu- 
 sions of reasoning knowledge. 
 
 On doing this I found the process complete 
 without a flaw. The conclusion that life was 
 nothing was inevitable ; but I discovered a 
 mistake. The mistake was that I had not con- 
 fined my thoughts to the question proposed. 
 The question was, why should I live, i. e., what 
 of real and imperishable will come of my shad- 
 owy and perishable life — what meaning has 
 my finite existence in the infinite universe ? 
 And I had tried to answer this by studying 
 life. 
 
 It was evident that the decision of any num- 
 ber of questions concerning life could not sat- 
 78 
 
MY CONFESSION. ' 79 
 
 isfy me, because my question, however simple 
 it seemed at first, included the necessity of 
 explaining infinity by infinity, and the con- 
 trary. I asked myself what meaning my life 
 had apart from time, causation, and space. 
 After long and earnest efforts of thinking, I 
 could only answer — none at all. 
 
 Through all my reasoning with myself I con- 
 stantly compared, and I could not do other- 
 wise, the finite with the finite, and the infinite 
 with the infinite, and the conclusion was conse- 
 quently inevitable : a force is a force, matter is 
 matter, will is will, infinity is infinity, nothing 
 is nothing — and beyond that there was no re- 
 sult. It was like what happens in mathematics, 
 when instead of an equation to resolve we get 
 identical terms. The process of solution is cor- 
 rect, but our answer is a = a, x = x, or = 0. 
 This happened to me in my inquiries into the 
 meaning of my life. The answers given by 
 science to the question were all " identity." 
 
 Strict scientific inquiry, like that carried on 
 by Descartes, begins undoubtedly with a doubt 
 of everything, throws aside all knowledge 
 founded on belief, and reconstructs all in accord- 
 
80 my confession: 
 
 ance with the laws of reason and experience, 
 while it can give but one answer to the ques- 
 tion about the meaning of life, the one which I 
 myself obtained — an indefinite one. It seemed 
 to me at first that science did give a positive 
 answer, the answer of Schopenhauer : life has 
 no meaning, it is an evil ; but, when I inquired 
 more closely into the matter, I perceived that 
 the answer was not positive, that it was my own 
 feeling alone made me think it so. The answer 
 is expressed in the same terms as is that of the 
 Brahmins, of Solomon, and of Schopenhauer, 
 and is only an indefinite one, — the identity of 
 and 0, life is nothing. This philosophical 
 knowledge denies nothing, but answers that the 
 question cannot be decided by it, — that the 
 matter remains indefinite. 
 
 When I had come to this conclusion, I under- 
 stood that it was useless to seek an answer to 
 my question from scientific knowledge, because 
 the latter only shows that no answer can be ob- 
 tained till the question is put differently, — till 
 the question be made to include the relation 
 between the finite and the infinite. I also un- 
 derstood that, however unreasonable and mon- 
 
MY CONFESSION. 81 
 
 strous the answers given by faith, they do bring 
 in the relation of the finite to the infinite. 
 
 However the question, How am I to live ? be 
 put, the same answer is obtained — by the law 
 of God. Will anything real and positive come 
 of my life, and what? Eternal torment, or 
 eternal bliss. Is there a meaning in life not to 
 be destroyed by death, and, if so, what ? Union 
 with an infinite God, paradise. 
 
 In this way I was compelled to admit that, 
 besides the reasoning knowledge, which I once 
 thought the only true knowledge, there was in 
 every living man another kind of knowledge, an 
 unreasoning one, but which gives a possibility 
 of living — faith. 
 
 All the unreasonableness of faith remained 
 for me the same as ever, but I could not but 
 confess that faith alone gave man an answer as 
 to the meaning of life, and the consequent pos- 
 sibility of living. 
 
 When scientific reasoning brought me to the 
 conclusion that my life had no meaning, life 
 stood still in me, and I wished to end it. When 
 I looked at the men around me, at humanity as 
 a whole, I saw that men did live, and that they 
 
82 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 affirmed their knowledge as to the meaning of 
 life. For other men, as for myself, faith gave 
 a possibility of living and a meaning to life. 
 
 On examining life in other countries than my 
 own, as well among my contemporaries as 
 among those who have passed away, I found it 
 but one and the same. From the beginning 
 of the human race, wherever there is life there 
 is the faith which makes life possible, and 
 everywhere the leading characteristics of that 
 faith are the same. 
 
 Whatever answers any kind of faith ever 
 gives to any one, every one of these answers 
 clothes with infinity the finite existence of man, 
 gives a meaning to life which triumphs over 
 suffering, privation, and death. In faith, there- 
 fore, alone is found a possibility of living and a 
 meaning in life. What is this faith ? I under- 
 stood that faith is not only the apprehension of 
 things unseen, is not only a revelation (that is 
 only a definition of one of the signs of faith), is 
 not the relation of man to God (faith must first 
 be determined, and then God, and not faith 
 through God), and is not, as it has so often 
 been understood, acquiescence — faith is the 
 
MY CONFESSION. 83 
 
 knowledge of the meaning of man's life, 
 through which man does not destroy himself, 
 but lives. Faith is the force of life. 
 
 If a man lives, he believes in something. If 
 he did not believe that there was something to 
 live for, he would not live. If he does not see 
 and understand the unreality of the finite, he 
 believes in the finite ; if he sees that unreality, 
 he must believe in the infinite. Without faith 
 there is no life. 
 
 I then went back upon all the past stages of 
 my mental state, and was terrified. It was now 
 clear to me that for any one to live it was 
 necessary for him either to be ignorant of in- 
 finity or to accept an explanation of the mean- 
 ing of life which should equalize the finite and 
 the infinite. Such an explanation I had, but I 
 had no need of it while I believed in the finite, 
 and I began to apply to my explanation the 
 tests of reason, and in the light of the latter all 
 former explanations were shown to be worth- 
 less. But the time when I ceased to believe in 
 the finite passed, and I tried to raise my mental 
 structure on the foundation that I knew an ex- 
 planation which gave a meaning to life, but I 
 
84 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 tried in vain. Like so many of the greatest 
 minds of earth, I came only to the conclusion 
 that = 0, and, though nothing else could have 
 come of it, I was much astonished to have ob- 
 tained such an answer to my problem. 
 
 What did I do when I sought an answer in 
 the study of experimental science ? I wanted 
 to know why I lived, and to that end I studied 
 everything outside myself. Clearly in this way 
 I might learn much, but nothing of that which 
 I needed. 
 
 What did I do when I sought an answer in 
 the study of philosophy ? I studied the 
 thoughts of others in the same position as my- 
 self, and who had no answer to the question — 
 what is life ? Clearly I could in this way learn 
 nothing but what I myself knew, namely, that 
 it was impossible to know anything. 
 
 What am I ? — a part of the infinite whole. 
 In those few words lay the whole problem. 
 
 Could it be that men had only now begun to 
 put this question to themselves? Could it be 
 that no one before myself had asked this 
 simple question, that must occur even to the 
 mind of an intelligent child? 
 
MY CONFESSION-. 85 
 
 Since man has been on earth this question 
 lias to a certainty been put, and to a certainty 
 it has been understood that the decision of this 
 question is equally unsatisfactory, whether the 
 iinitebe compared with the finite, and the in- 
 finite with the infinite, or the solution sought 
 and expressed in the relation of the finite to the 
 infinite. 
 
 All these conceptions of the equality of the 
 finite and the infinite, through which we receive 
 the ideas of life, of God, of freedom, of good, 
 when we submit them to logical analysis, will 
 not bear the tests of reason. 
 
 If it were not so terrible, it would be laugh- 
 able to think of the pride and self-confidence 
 with which we, like children, pull out our 
 watches, take away the spring, make a play- 
 thing of them, and are then astonished that they 
 will no longer keep time. 
 
 The decision of the contradiction between 
 the finite and the infinite, and such an answer 
 to the question of what is life as shall enable 
 us to live, is wanted by and is dear to us. The 
 only answer is the one to be found everywhere, 
 always, and among all nations, an answer 
 
86 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 which has come down to us from the times in 
 which the origin of human life is lost, an 
 answer so difficult that we could never our- 
 selves have come to it — this answer we in our 
 careless indifference get rid of, by again rais- 
 ing the question which presents itself to every 
 one, but which no one can answer. 
 
 The conception of an infinite God, of the 
 divinity of the soul, of the way in which the 
 affairs of men are related to God, of the unity 
 and reality of the spirit, man's conception of 
 moral good and evil, these are conceptions 
 worked out through the infinite mental labors 
 of mankind; conceptions without which there 
 would be no life, without which I should not 
 myself exist, and yet I dare to reject the labors 
 of the whole human race, and to venture on 
 working out the problem again in my own way 
 alone. 
 
 I did not at the time think so, but the germs 
 of these thoughts were already within me. I 
 understood (1) that the position assumed by 
 Schopenhauer, Solomon, and myself, with all 
 our wisdom, was a foolish one : we understand 
 that life is an evil, and yet we live. This 
 
MY CONFESSION. 87 
 
 clearly is foolish, because if life is foolish, and 
 I care so much for reason, life should be put 
 an end to, and then there would be no one to 
 deny it. (2) I understood that all our argu- 
 ments turned in a charmed circle, like a cog- 
 wheel the teeth of which no longer catch in 
 another. However much and however well we 
 reason, we get no answer to our question, it 
 will always be = 0, and consequently our 
 method is probably wrong. (3) I began to 
 understand that in the answers given, by faith 
 was to be found the deepest source of human 
 wisdom, that I had no reasonable right to 
 reject them, and that they alone solved the 
 problem of life. 
 
X. 
 
 I understood what I have just stated, but 
 my heart was none the lighter for it. 
 
 I was now ready to accept any faith that did 
 not require of me a direct denial of reason, for 
 that would be to act a lie ; and 1 studied the 
 books of the Buddhists and the Mahometans, 
 and especially also Christianity, both in its 
 writings and in the lives of its professors 
 around me. 
 
 I naturally turned my attention at first to 
 the believers in my own immediate circle, to 
 learned men, to orthodox divines, to the elders 
 among the monks, to the teachers of a new 
 shade of doctrine, the so-called New Christians, 
 who preach salvation through faith in a Re- 
 deemer. I seized upon these believers, and 
 demanded from them what they believed in, 
 and what for them gave a meaning to life. 
 
 Notwithstanding that I made every possible 
 concession, that I avoided all disputes, I could 
 88 
 
my confession: 89 
 
 not accept the faith of these men. I saw that 
 what they called their faith did not explain 
 but obscured the meaning of life, and that they 
 professed it, not in order to answer the ques- 
 tion as to life which had attracted me towards 
 faith, but for some other purpose to which I 
 was a stranger. 
 
 I remember how terribly I felt the return of 
 the old feeling of despair, after the hopes with 
 which my connection with these people had 
 from time to time inspired me. 
 
 The more minutely they laid their doctrines 
 before me, the more clearly I perceived their 
 error, the more I lost all hope of finding in 
 their faith an explanation of the meaning of 
 life. 
 
 I was not so much alienated by the unneces- 
 sary and unreasonable doctrines which they had 
 mingled with the Christian truths always so 
 dear to me, as by the fact that their lives were 
 like my own, the only difference being that 
 they did not live according to the doctrines 
 which they professed. I felt that they de- 
 ceived themselves, and that for them, as for 
 myself, the only meaning of life was to live 
 
90 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 from hand to mouth, and take each for him- 
 self all that his hands can lay hold on. I saw 
 this, because had the ideas of life which they 
 conceived done away with fear, privation, 
 suffering, and death, they would not have 
 feared them. But these believers of my own 
 class, the same as I myself, lived in comfort 
 and abundance, struggled to increase and pre- 
 serve it, were afraid of privation, suffering, and 
 death ; and again, like myself and all other not 
 true believers, satisfied the lusts of the flesh, 
 and led lives as evil as, if not worse than, those 
 of infidels themselves. 
 
 No arguments were able to convince me of 
 the sincerity of the faith of these men. Only 
 actions, proving their conception of life to 
 have destroyed that fear of poverty, illness, 
 and death, so strong in myself, could have con- 
 vinced me, and such actions among them I 
 could not see. Such actions, I saw, indeed, 
 among the open infidels of my own class in life, 
 but never among its so-called believers. 
 
 I understood, then, that the faith of these 
 men was not the faith which I sought; that it 
 was no faith at all, but only an Epicurean con- 
 
MY C0KFESSI02T. 91 
 
 solation. I understood that this faith, if it 
 could not really console, could at least soothe 
 the repentant mind of a Solomon on his death- 
 bed, but that it could not serve the enormous 
 majority of mankind, who are born, not to be 
 comforted by the labors of others, but to create 
 a life for themselves. For mankind to live, for 
 it to continue to live and be conscious of the 
 meaning of its life, all these millions must have 
 another and a true conception of faith. It was 
 not, then, that I, Solomon, and Schopenhauer 
 had not killed ourselves, which convinced me 
 that faith existed, but that these millions have 
 lived and are now living, carrying along with 
 them on the impulse of their life both Solomon 
 and ourselves. 
 
 I began to draw nearer to the believers 
 among the poor, the simple, and the ignorant, 
 the pilgrims, the monks, the sectaries, and the 
 peasants. The doctrines of these men of the 
 people, like those of the pretended believers of 
 my own class, were Christian. Here also 
 much that was superstitious was mingled with 
 the truths of Christianity, but with this differ- 
 ence, that the superstition of the believers of 
 
92 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 my own class was not needed by them, and 
 never influenced their lives beyond serving as 
 a kind of Epicurean distraction, while the 
 superstition of the believing laboring class was 
 so interwoven with their lives that it was 
 impossible to conceive them without it — it 
 was a necessary condition of their living at all. 
 The whole life of the believers of my own class 
 was in flat contradiction with their faith, and 
 the whole life of the believers of the people 
 was a confirmation of the meaning of life 
 which their faith gave them. 
 
 Thus I began to study the lives and the 
 doctrines of the people, and the more I studied 
 the more I became convinced that a true faith 
 was among them, that their faith was for them 
 a necessary thing, and alone gave them a 
 meaning in life and a possibility of living. In 
 direct opposition to what I saw in my own 
 circle — the possibility of living without faith, 
 and not one in a thousand who professed 
 himself a believer — amongst the people there 
 was not in thousands a single unbeliever. 
 In direct opposition to what I saw in my 
 own circle — a whole life spent in idleness, 
 
MY CONFESSION'. 93 
 
 amusement, and dissatisfaction with life — I 
 saw among the people whole lives passed in 
 heavy labor and unrepining content. In 
 direct opposition to what I saw in my own 
 circle — men resisting and indignant with the 
 privations and sufferings of their lot — the peo- 
 ple unhesitatingly and unresistingly accepting 
 illness and sorrow, in the quiet and firm con- 
 viction that all was for the best. In contradic- 
 tion to the theory that the less learned we are 
 the less we understand the meaning of life, and 
 see in our sufferings and death but an evil 
 joke, these men of the people live, suffer, and 
 draw near to death, in quiet confidence and 
 oftenest with joy. In contradiction to the 
 fact that an easy death, without terror or 
 despair, is a rare exception in my own class, 
 a death which is uneasy, rebellious, and sor- 
 rowful is among the people the rarest excep- 
 tion of all. These men, deprived of all that 
 for us and for. Solomon makes the only good 
 in life, experience the highest happiness both 
 in amount and kind. I looked more carefully 
 and more widely around me, I studied the lives 
 of the past and contemporary masses of hu- 
 
94 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 manity, and I saw that, not two or three, not 
 ten or a hundred, but thousands and mill- 
 ions had so understood the meaning of life 
 that they were able both to live and to die. 
 All these men, infinitely divided by manners, 
 powers of mind, education, and position, all 
 alike in opposition to my ignorance, were 
 well acquainted with the meaning of life 
 and of death, quietly labored, endured priva- 
 tion and suffering, lived and died, and saw 
 in all this, not a vain, but a good thing. . 
 
 I began to grow attached to these men. 
 The more I learned of their lives, the lives 
 of the living and of the dead of whom I 
 read and heard, the more I liked them, and 
 the easier I felt it so to live. I lived in 
 this way during two years, and then there 
 came a change which had long been preparing 
 in me, and the symptoms of which I had 
 always dimly felt: the life of my own circle 
 of rich and learned men, not only became 
 repulsive, but lost all meaning whatever. All 
 our actions, our reasoning, our science and 
 art, all appeared to me in a new light. I 
 understood that it was all child's play, that 
 
MY CONFESSION. 95 
 
 it was useless to seek a meaning in it. The 
 life of the working classes, of the whole of 
 mankind, of those that create life, appeared 
 to me in its true significance. I understood 
 that this was life itself, and that the meaning 
 given to this life was a true one, and I ac- 
 cepted it. 
 
XT. 
 
 When I remembered how these very doc- 
 trines had repelled me, how senseless they 
 had seemed when professed by men whose 
 lives were spent in opposition to them, and 
 how they had attracted me and seemed 
 thoroughly reasonable when I saw men liv- 
 ing in accordance with them, I understood 
 why I had once rejected them and thought 
 them unmeaning, why I now adopted 'them 
 and thought them most reasonable. I under- 
 stood that I had erred, and how I had erred. 
 I had erred, not so much through having 
 thought incorrectly, as through having lived 
 ill. I understood that the truth had been 
 hidden from me, not so much because I had 
 erred in my reasoning, as because I had led 
 the exceptional life of an epicure bent on 
 satisfying the lusts of the flesh. I under- 
 stood that my question as to what my life 
 was, and the answer, an evil, were in accord- 
 96 
 
MY CONFESSION. 97 
 
 ance with the truth of things. The mistake 
 
 lay in my having applied an answer which 
 
 only concerned myself to life in general. I 
 
 > 
 had asked what my own life was, and the 
 
 answer was, an evil and a thing without 
 meaning. Exactly so, my life was but a long 
 indulgence of my passions ; it was a thing 
 without meaning, an evil; and such an answer, 
 therefore, referred only to my own life, and 
 not to human life in general. 
 
 I understood the truth which I afterwards 
 found in the Gospel ; " That men loved dark- 
 ness rather than light, because their deeds 
 were evil. For every man that doeth evil 
 hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, 
 lest his deeds should be reproved." I under- 
 stood that, for the meaning of life to be under- 
 stood, it was first necessary that life should 
 be something more than an evil and unmean- 
 ing thing discovered by the light of reason. 
 I understood why I had so long been near 
 to, without apprehending, this self-evident 
 truth, and that if we would judge and 
 speak of the life of mankind, we must take 
 that life as a whole, and not merely certain 
 parasitic adjuncts to it. 
 
98 my confession: 
 
 This trulli was always a truth, as 2 X 2 = 4, 
 but I had not accepted it, because, besides 
 acknowledging 2 X 2 = 4, I should have ac- 
 knowledged that I was evil. It was of more 
 importance to me to feel that I was good, more 
 binding on me, than to believe 2x2 = 4. 
 I loved good men, I hated myself, and I ac- 
 cepted truth. Now it was all clear to me. 
 What if the executioner, who passes his life 
 in torturing and cutting off heads, or a con- 
 firmed drunkard, asked himself the question, 
 What is life ? he could but get the same 
 answer as a madman would give, who had 
 shut himself up for life in a darkened chamber, 
 and who believed that he would perish if he 
 left it; and that answer could but be — Life 
 is a monstrous evil. 
 
 The answer would be a true one, but only 
 for the man who gave it. Here, then, was I 
 such a madman ? Were all of us rich, clever, 
 idle men, mad like this ? I understood at last 
 that we were ; that I, at any rate, was. Look 
 at the birds ; they live but to fly, to pick up 
 their food, to build their nests, and when T see 
 them doing this their gladness rejoices me. 
 
MY CONFESSION. 99 
 
 The goat, the hare, the wolf live but to feed 
 and multiply, and bring up their young; and 
 when I see them doing this, I am well con- 
 vinced of their happiness, and that their life is 
 a reasonable one. What, then, should man do ? 
 He also must gain his living like the animals, 
 but with this difference, that he will perish if 
 he attempt it alone ; he must labor, not for 
 himself, but for all. And when he does so, I 
 am firmly convinced he is happy, and his life is 
 a reasonable one. 
 
 What had I done during my thirty years of 
 conscious life ? I had not only not helped the 
 life of others, I had done nothing for my own. 
 I had lived the life of a parasite, and contented 
 myself with my ignorance of the reason why I 
 lived at all. If the meaning of the life of man 
 lies in his having to work out his life himself, 
 how could I, who during thirty years had done 
 my best to ruin my own life and that of others, 
 expect to receive any other answer to my ques- 
 tioning of life but this, that my life was an evil 
 and had no meaning in it ? It was an evil ; it 
 was without meaning. 
 
 The life of the world goes on through the will 
 
100 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 of some one. Some one makes our own life and 
 that of the universe his own inscrutable care, 
 /i j To have a hope of understanding what that 
 will means, we must first carry it out, we must 
 do what is required of us. Unless I do what is 
 required of me, I can never know what that 
 may be, and much less know what is required 
 of us all and of the whole universe. 
 
 If a naked, hungry beggar be taken from the 
 cross-roads into an enclosed space in a splendid 
 establishment, to be well clothed and fed, and 
 made to work a handle up and down, it is evi- 
 dent that the beggar, before seeking to know 
 why he has been taken, why he must work the 
 handle, whether the arrangements of the estab- 
 lishment are reasonable or not, must first do as 
 he is directed. If he do so he will find that the 
 handle works a pump, the pump draws up 
 water, and the water flows into numerous chan- 
 nels for watering the earth. He will then be 
 taken from the well and set to other work ; he 
 will gather fruits and enter into the joy of his 
 lord. As he passes from less to more important 
 labors, he will understand better and better 
 the arrangements of the whole establishment ; 
 
MY COXFESSIOX. 101 
 
 and he will take his share in them without once 
 stopping to ask why he is there, nor will he 
 ever think of reproaching the lord of that place. 
 And thus it is with those that do the will of 
 their master ; no reproaches come from simple 
 and ignorant working-men, from those whom 
 we look upon as brutes. But we the while, wise 
 men that we are, devour the goods of the mas- 
 ter, and do nothing of that which he wills us to 
 do-; but instead, seat ourselves in a circle to 
 argue why we should move the handle, for that 
 seems to us stupid. And when we have 
 thought it all out, what is our conclusion? 
 Why, that the master is stupid, or that there is 
 none, while we ourselves are wise, only we feel 
 that we are fit for nothing, and that we must 
 somehow or other get rid of ourselves. 
 
XII. 
 
 My conviction of the error into which all 
 knowledge based on reason must fall assisted 
 me in freeing myself from the seductions of 
 idle reasoning. The conviction that a knowl- 
 edge of truth can only be gained by living, led 
 me to doubt the justness of my own life , but I 
 had only to get out of my own particular 
 groove, and look around me to observe the sim- 
 ple life of the real working class, to understand 
 that such a life was the only real one. I 
 understood that, if I wished to understand life 
 and its meaning, I must live, not the life of a 
 parasite, but a real life ; and, accepting the 
 meaning given to it by the combined lives of 
 those that really form the great human whole, 
 submit it to a close examination. 
 
 At the time I am speaking of, the following 
 w T as my position. 
 
 During the whole of that year, when I was 
 constantly asking myself whether I should or 
 should not put an end to it all with a cord or a 
 
 102 
 
MY CONFESSION. 103 
 
 pistol, during the time that my mind was occu- 
 pied with the thoughts which I have described, 
 my heart was oppressed by a tormenting feel- 
 ing, which I cannot describe otherwise than as 
 a searching after God. 
 
 This search after a God was not an act of my 
 reason, but a feeling, and I say this advisedly, 
 because it was opposed to my way of thinking ; 
 it came from the heart. It was a feeling of 
 dread, or orphanhood, of isolation amid things 
 all apart from me, and of hope in a help I 
 knew not from whom. Though I was well 
 convinced of the impossibility of proving the 
 existence of God — Kant had shown me, and I 
 had thoroughly grasped his reasoning, that this 
 did not admit of proof — I still sought to find 
 a God, still hoped to do so, and still, from the 
 force of former habits, addressed myself to one 
 in prayer. Him whom I sought, however, I 
 did not find. 
 
 At times I went over in my mind the argu- 
 ments of Kant and of Schopenhauer, showing 
 the impossibility of proving the existence of the 
 Deity; at times I began to refute their reasoning. 
 
 I would say to myself that causation is not in 
 
104 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 the same category as thought and space and 
 time. If I am, there is a cause of my being, 
 and that the cause of all causes. That cause of 
 all things is what is called God ; and I dwelt 
 upon this idea, and strove with all the force 
 that was in me to reach a consciousness of the 
 presence of this cause. 
 
 No sooner was I conscious of a power over 
 me than I felt a possibility of living. Then I 
 asked myself : " What is this cause, this 
 power? How am I to think of it? What is 
 my relation to what I call God?" And only 
 the old familiar answer came into my mind, 
 " He is the creator, the giver of all." This 
 answer did not satisfy me, and I felt that the 
 staff of life failed me, I fell into great fear, and 
 began to pray to Him whom I sought, that He 
 would help me. But the more I prayed, the 
 clearer it became that I was not heard, that 
 there was no one to whom to pray. With de- 
 spair in my heart that there was no God, I 
 cried : " Lord, have mercy on me, and save ! 
 O Lord, my God, teach me ! " But no one had 
 mercy on me, and I felt that life stood still 
 within me. 
 
my confession: 105 
 
 Again and again, however, the conviction 
 came back to me that I could not have ap- 
 peared on earth without any motive or mean- 
 ing, — that I could not be such a fledgling 
 dropped from a nest as I felt myself to be. 
 What if I wail, as the fallen fledgling does on 
 its back in the grass? It is because I know 
 that a mother bore me, cared for me, fed me, 
 and loved me. Where is that mother? If I 
 have been thrown out, then who threw me ? I 
 cannot but see that some one who loved me 
 brought me into being. Who is that some 
 one ? Again the same answer, God. He 
 knows and sees my search, my despair, my 
 struggle. " He is," I said to myself. I had 
 only to admit that for an instant to feel that 
 life re-arose in me, to feel the possibility of ex- 
 isting and the joy of it. Then, again, from the 
 conviction of the existence of God, I passed to 
 the consideration of our relation towards Him, 
 and again I had before me the triune God, our 
 Creator, who sent His Son, the Redeemer. 
 Again, I felt this to be a thing apart from me 
 and from the world. This God melted, as ice 
 melts, from before my eyes ; again there was 
 
106 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 nothing left, again the source of life dried up. 
 I fell once more into despair, and felt that I 
 had nothing to do but to kill myself, while, 
 worst of all, I felt also that I should never 
 do it. 
 
 I went through these changes of conviction 
 and mood, not once, not twice, but hundreds 
 of times — now joy and excitement, now despair 
 from the knowledge of the impossibility of 
 life. 
 
 I remember one day in the early spring-time 
 I was listening to the sounds of a wood, and 
 thinking only of one thing, the same of which 
 I had constantly thought for two years — I was 
 again seeking for a God. 
 
 I said to myself: "It is well, there is no 
 God, there is none that has a reality apart from 
 my own imaginings, none as real as my own 
 life — there is none such. Nothing, no mira- 
 cles can prove there is, for miracles only exist 
 in my own unreasonable imagination." 
 
 And then I asked myself: "But my concep- 
 tion of the God whom I seek, whence comes 
 it? 1 ' And again life flashed joyously through 
 my veins. All around me seemed to revive, to 
 
MY CONFESSION. 107 
 
 have a new meaning. My joy, though, did not 
 last long, for reason continued its work : " The 
 conception of God is not God. Conception is 
 what goes on within myself; the conception of 
 God is an idea which I am able to rouse in my 
 mind or not as I choose ; it is not what I seek, 
 something without which life could not be." 
 Then again all seemed to die around and with- 
 in me, and again I wished to kill myself. 
 , After this I began to retrace the process 
 which had gone on within myself, the hundred 
 times repeated discouragement and revival. I 
 remembered that I had lived only when I be- 
 lieved in a God. As it was before, so it was 
 now; I had only to know God, and I lived; I 
 had only to forget Him, not to believe In Him, 
 and I died. What was this discouragement 
 and revival? I do not live when I lose faith 
 in the existence of a God ; 1 should long ago 
 have killed myself, if I had not had a dim hope 
 of finding Him. I only really live when I feel 
 and seek Him. "What more, then, do I 
 seek?" A voice seemed to cry within me, 
 "This is He, He without whom there is no life. 
 To know God and to live are one. God is life." 
 
108 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 Live to seek God, and life will not be with- 
 out Him. And stronger than ever rose up life 
 within and around me, and the light that then 
 shone never left me again. 
 
 Thus I was saved from self-murder. When 
 and how this change in me took place I could 
 not say. As gradually, imperceptibly as life 
 had decayed in me, till I reached the impossi- 
 bility of living, till life stood still, and I longed 
 to kill myself, so gradually and imperceptibly 
 I felt the glow and strength of life return to 
 me. 
 
 It was strange, but this feeling of the glow 
 of life was no new sensation ; it was old enough, 
 for I had been led away by it in the earlier 
 part of my life. I returned, as it were, to the 
 past, to childhood and my youth. I returned 
 to faith in that Will which brought me into 
 being and which required something of me ; I 
 returned to the belief that the one single aim 
 of life should be to become better ; that is, to 
 live in accordance with that Will ; I returned 
 to the idea that the expression of that Will was 
 to be found in what, in the dim obscurity of 
 the past, the great human unity had fashioned 
 
MY CONFESSION. 109 
 
 for its own guidance; in other words, I 
 returned to a belief in God, in . moral per- 
 fectibility, and in the tradition which gives 
 a meaning to life. The difference was that 
 formerly I had unconsciously accepted this, 
 whereas now I knew that without it I could 
 not live. 
 
 The state of mind in which I then was may 
 be likened to the following. It was as if I had 
 suddenly found myself sitting in a boat which 
 had been pushed off from some shore unknown 
 to me, had been shown the direction of the 
 opposite shore, had had oars given me, and had 
 been left alone. I use the oars as best I can, 
 and row on ; but the farther I go towards the 
 centre, the stronger becomes the. current which 
 carries me out of my course, and the oftener I 
 meet other navigators, like myself, carried 
 away by the stream. There are here and there 
 solitary sailors who row hard, there are others 
 who have thrown down their oars, there are 
 large boats, and enormous ships crowded with 
 men ; some struggle against the stream, others 
 glide on with it. The farther I get, the more, 
 as I watch the long line floating down the cur- 
 
110 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 rent, I forget the course pointed out to me as 
 my own. In the very middle of the stream, 
 beset by the crowd of boats and vessels, and 
 carried like them along, I forget altogether in 
 what direction I started, and abandon my oars. 
 From all sides the joyful and exulting naviga- 
 tors, as they row, or sail down stream, with 
 one voice cry out to me that there can be no 
 other direction. I believe them, and let my- 
 self go with them. I am carried far, so far 
 that I hear the roar of the rapids in which I 
 must perish, and I already see boats that have 
 been broken up within them. Then I come 
 to myself. It is long before I clearly com- 
 prehend what has happened. I see before 
 me nothing but destruction. I am hurry- 
 ing towards it; what, then, must I do? On 
 looking back, however, I perceive a count- 
 less multitude of boats engaged in a cease- 
 less struggle against the force of the torrent, 
 and then I remember all about the shore, 
 the oars, and the course, and at once I begin 
 to row hard up the stream and again towards 
 the shore. 
 
 The shore is God, the course tradition, the 
 
MY CONFESSION. Ill 
 
 oars are the free-will given me to make for the 
 shore to seek union with the Deity. And thus 
 the vital force was renewed in me, and I began 
 again to live. 
 
XIII. 
 
 I renounced the life of my own class, for 
 I had come to confess that it was not a real 
 life, only the semblance of one, that its super- 
 fluous luxury prevented the possibility of 
 understanding life, and that in order to do so 
 I must know, not an exceptional parasitic 
 life, but the simple life of the working-classes, 
 the life which fashions that of the world, and 
 gives it the meaning which the working-classes 
 accept. The simple laboring men around me 
 were the Russian people, and I turned to this 
 people and to the meaning which it gives to 
 life. 
 
 This meaning may, perhaps, be expressed as 
 follows : — 
 
 We have all of us come on earth by the will 
 of God, and God has so created man that each 
 of us is able to ruin or to save his soul. The 
 problem of man's life being to save his soul, he 
 must live after God's Word: to live after 
 112 
 
my confession: 113 
 
 God's word, he must renounce all tlie pleasures 
 of life, labor, be humble, endure, and be chari- 
 table to all men. This to the people is the 
 meaning of the whole system of faith, as it has 
 come down to them through, and is now given 
 them by, the pastors of their Church and the 
 traditions which exist among them. 
 
 This meaning was clear to me, and dear to 
 my heart. This popular faith, however, among 
 the non-sectarian communities in which I 
 moved, was inextricably bound up with some- 
 thing else so incapable of being explained that 
 it repelled me. I mean the sacraments of the 
 Church, the fasts, and the bowing before relics 
 and images. The people were unable to sepa- 
 rate these things, and no more could I. 
 Though many things belonging to the faith 
 of the people appeared strange to me, I ac- 
 cepted everything, I attended the church ser- 
 vices, prayed, morning and evening, fasted, 
 prepared for the communion ; and, while doing 
 all this, for the first time felt that my reason 
 found nothing to object to. What had for- 
 merly seemed to me impossible, now roused 
 not the slightest opposition in me. 
 
114 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 The position which I occupied with relation 
 to questions of faith had become quite different 
 to what it once was. Formerly, life itself had 
 seemed to me full of meaning, and faith an 
 arbitrary assertion of certain useless and un- 
 reasonable propositions which had no direct 
 bearing on life. I had tried to find out their 
 meaning ; and, once convinced they had none, 
 had thrown them aside. Now, on the contrary, 
 I knew for certain that my life had not and 
 could not have any meaning, and that the 
 propositions of faith, not only appeared no 
 longer useless to me, but had been shown be- 
 yond dispute by my own experience to be that 
 which alone gave a meaning to life. Formerly 
 I looked upon them as a worthless, illegible 
 scrawl; now I did not understand them, but 
 knew that they had a meaning, and resolved to 
 find it out. 
 
 I reasoned thus: Faith springs, like man and 
 his reason, from the mysterious first cause. 
 That cause is God, in whom begin the body 
 and the mind of man. As my body proceeded 
 through successive gradations from God to me, 
 so have my reason and my conception of life 
 
my confession: 115 
 
 proceeded from Him, and consequently the 
 steps of this process of development cannot be 
 false. All that men sincerely believe in must 
 be true; it may be* differently expressed, but it 
 cannot be a lie, and consequently, if it seem 
 to me a lie, that must be because I do not 
 understand it. 
 
 Again, I said to myself: The true office of 
 faith is to give a meaning to life which death 
 cajinot destroy. It is only natural that for 
 faith to give an answer to the question of the 
 king dying amid every luxury, of the old and 
 labor-worn slave, of the unthinking child, of 
 the aged sage, of the half-witted old woman, 
 of the happy girl full of the strong passions of 
 youth, of all of both sexes under all possible dif- 
 ferences of position and education, — it is only 
 natural that, if there be but one answer to the 
 one eternally repeated question — " Why do I 
 live, and what will come of my life?" — the 
 answer, though one and the same in reality, 
 should be infinitely varied in its form ; that, in 
 exact proportion to its unvarying unity, to its 
 truth, and its depth, it should appear strange, 
 and even monstrous, in the attempts to find 
 
116 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 due expression which are owing to the bring- 
 ing-up, and the social state of each individual 
 answerer. But this reasoning, which justified 
 the oddities of the ritual side of faith, was 
 insufficient to make me feel that I had a right, 
 in a matter like faith, now become the one bus- 
 iness of my life, to take part in acts of which I 
 still am doubtful. I ardently desired to be one 
 with the people, and conform to the rites 
 which they practised, but I could not do it. I 
 felt that I should lie to myself, and mock what 
 I held most sacred, if I did this thing. At 
 this point our new Russian theologians came to 
 my assistance. 
 
 According to the explanation of these 
 divines, the fundamental dogma of faith is the 
 infallibility of the Church. From the accep- 
 tance of this dogma follows, as a necessary con- 
 sequence, the truth of all that is taught by 
 the Church. The Church, as the assembly of 
 believers united in love, and consequently pos- 
 sessing true knowledge, becomes the founda- 
 tion of my faith. I argued that the truth 
 which is in God cannot be attained by any 
 one man, — it can only be reached by the union 
 
MY CONFESSION. 117 
 
 of all men through love. In order to attain 
 the truth, we must not go each his own way ; 
 and, to avoid division, we must have love one 
 to the other, and bear with things which we do 
 not agree with. Truth is revealed in love, and, 
 therefore, if we do not obey the ordinances of 
 the Church, we destroy love, and make it im- 
 possible for us to know truth. 
 
 At the time I did not perceive the sophism 
 involved in this reasoning. I did not then 
 see that union through love may develop love 
 to the highest degree, but can never give the 
 truth that comes from God, as stated in the 
 words of the Nicene Creed, — that love can 
 never make any particular form of creed bind- 
 ing on all believers. I did not then see error 
 in this reasoning, and, thanks to it, I was able 
 to accept and practise all the rites of the Or- 
 thodox Church, but without understanding the 
 greater part of them. I struggled earnestly to 
 set aside all reasoning, all contradictions, and 
 endeavored to explain as reasonably as I could 
 all the doctrines of the Church which presented 
 any difficulty. 
 
 While thus fulfilling the ordinances of the 
 
118 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 Church, I submitted my reason to the tradition 
 adopted by the mass of my fellow-men. I 
 united myself to my ancestors, to my beloved 
 father, mother, and grandparents. They and 
 all before them, lived, and believed, and 
 brought me into being. I joined the millions 
 of the people whom I loved. Moreover, there 
 was nothing bad in all this, for bad with me 
 meant the indulgence of the lusts of the flesh. 
 When I got up early to attend divine service, I 
 knew that I did well, were it only because, for 
 the sake of a closer union with my ancestors 
 and contemporaries, I tamed my intellectual 
 pride, and, in order to seek for a meaning in 
 life, sacrificed my bodily comfort. It was the 
 same with preparing for the communion, the 
 daily reading of prayers, the bowing to the 
 ground, and the observance of all the fasts. 
 However insignificant the sacrifices were, they 
 were made in a good cause. I prepared for the 
 communion, fasted, and observed regular hours 
 for prayer both at home and at church. While 
 listening to the church service, I weighed 
 every word, and gave it a meaning whenever I 
 could. At mass the words which appeared to 
 
MY CONFESSION. 119 
 
 me to have most importance were the follow- 
 ing: u Let us love one another in unity." 
 What follows — the confession of belief in 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — 
 I passed over, because I could not under- 
 stand it. 
 
XIV. 
 
 It was so necessary for me at that time to 
 believe in order to live, that I unconsciously 
 concealed from myself the contradictions and 
 the obscurities in the commonly received doc- 
 trines. 
 
 This interpretation of the sense of the ritual 
 had, however, its limits. Though the leading 
 points of the Liturgy became clearer and 
 clearer to me ; though I gave a kind of mean- 
 ing to such expressions as " Remembering our 
 Sovereign Lady, the most Holy Mother of God, 
 and all the Saints, let us devote ourselves, 
 each other, and our whole lives to the Christ 
 God " ; though I explained the frequent repeti- 
 tion of prayers for the Emperor and his family 
 by the fact that they were more exposed to 
 temptation than others, and were therefore 
 more in need of prayer, and the prayers for 
 victory over our enemies and opponents to 
 mean victory over the principle of evil ; never- 
 theless the hymn of the Cherubim, the prepara- 
 120 
 
MY CONFESSION. 121 
 
 tion of the bread and wine, the adoration of 
 the Virgin — in short, two-thirds of the whole 
 service — either remained for me without an 
 explanation at all, or made me feel that the 
 only one I could apply to them was false, while 
 to lie was to break off my connection with 
 God, and lose utterly the possibility of believ- 
 ing. 
 
 I felt the same at the celebration of the 
 principal Church holidays. I could under- 
 stand the seventh clay, the consecration of a 
 day to communion with God. The great holi- 
 day, however, was in remembrance of the 
 Resurrection, the reality of which I could 
 neither imagine nor understand. It was this 
 which gave a name to the holiday in each 
 week, to the Sunday, to the day on which the 
 sacrament of the Eucharist was. given, a mys- 
 tery which to me was utterly inconceivable. 
 The other twelve holidays, with the exception 
 of Christmas, were all in remembrance of mira- 
 cles, which I tried not to think of in order not 
 to deny : the Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, 
 the Intercession of the Virgin, and so on. On 
 these holidays, I felt that the greatest impor- 
 
122 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 tance was given to what I believed to be of the 
 least, and I either held fast to the explanation 
 which quieted me most, or else shut my eyes so 
 as not to see what disquieted me. 
 
 This feeling came upon me strongest when- 
 ever I took part in the most ordinary, and 
 generally considered the most important, sacra- 
 ments, as christening and the holy communion. 
 Here I had to do with nothing difficult, but 
 with what was easy to be understood: such acts 
 appeared to me a delusion, and I was on the 
 horns of a dilemma — to lie, or to reject. 
 
 I shall never forget the painful feeling I ex- 
 perienced when I took the communion for the 
 first time after many years. The service, the 
 confession, the prayers, all this was understood 
 by me, and produced the glad conviction that 
 the meaning of life lay open to me. The com- 
 munion I explained to myself as an action 
 done in remembrance of Christ, and as signify- 
 ing a cleansing from sin and a complete accept- 
 ance of Christ's teaching. If this explanation 
 was an artificial one, I at least did not perceive 
 it. It was such happiness for me to humble 
 myself with a quiet heart before the priest, a 
 
MY CONFESSION. 123 
 
 simple and mild old man, and repenting of my 
 sins, to lay bare all the past troubles of my 
 soul ; it was such happiness to be united in 
 spirit with the meek Fathers of the Church who 
 composed these prayers ; such happiness to be 
 one with all who have believed and who do 
 believe, that I could not feel my explanation 
 was an artificial one. But when I drew near 
 to the altar, and the priest called upon me to 
 repeat that I believed that what I was about to 
 swallow was the real body and blood, I felt a 
 sharp pain at the heart ; it was no uncon- 
 sidered word, it was the hard demand of one 
 who could never have known what faith was. 
 
 I now allow myself to say that it was a hard 
 demand, but then I did not think so ; it was 
 only exquisitely painful. I no longer thought, 
 as I had done in my youth, that all was clear in 
 life ; I had been drawn towards faith because 
 outside it I had found nothing but ruin, and as 
 therefore I could not throw faith aside, I had 
 believed and submitted. I had found in my 
 heart a feeling of humility and meekness which 
 had helped me to do this. I humbled myself 
 again, I swallowed the blood and the body 
 
124 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 without any mocking thoughts in the wish to 
 believe, but the shock had been given, and 
 knowing what awaited me another time, I 
 could never go again. 
 
 I still continued an exact observance of the 
 rites of the Church, and I still believed that the 
 doctrines I followed were true ; and then there 
 happened to me a thing which now is clear 
 enough, but which then appeared to me very 
 strange. 
 
 I once listened to the discourse of an unlet- 
 tered peasant pilgrim. He spoke of God, of 
 faith, of life, and of salvation, and a knowledge 
 of what faith was seemed open to me. 
 
 I went amongst the people, familiarizing my- 
 self with their ideas of life and faith, and the 
 truth became clearer and clearer to me. It was 
 the same when I read the " Martyrology " and 
 " Prologues " ; they became my favorite books. 
 With the exception of the miracles, and looking 
 upon these as fables to bring out forcibly the 
 thought, the reading of these books revealed to 
 me the meaning of life. There I found the 
 lives of Macarius the Great ; of Tosaph the 
 Prince (the story of Buddha) ; the discourses 
 
MY CONFESSION. 125 
 
 of St. Chrysostom ; the story of the traveller in 
 the well ; of the Monk who found gold ; of 
 Peter the Publican ; — this is the history of the 
 martyrs, of those who have all testified the 
 same, that life does not end with death ; here 
 we have the story of unlettered foolish men, 
 who knew nothing of the doctrines of the 
 Church. 
 
 But "no sooner did I mix with learned be- 
 lieyers, or consult their books, than doubts, 
 uneasiness, and the bitterness of dispute came 
 over me, and I felt that the more I studied 
 their discourses the more I wandered from the 
 truth, the nearer I came to the precipice. 
 
XV. 
 
 How often have I not envied the peasant, 
 nnable to read or write, his lack of learning. 
 The very doctrines of faith which to me were 
 nonsense contained for him nothing that was 
 false ; he was able to accept them and to 
 believe in truth, the same truth in which I 
 believed; while to me, unhappy one, it was 
 clear that truth was connected with falsehood 
 by the finest threads of difference, and that I 
 could not receive it in such a form. 
 
 In this condition I lived for three years, and 
 when I first, like a new convert, little by little 
 drew nearer to truth, and, led by an instinct, 
 groped my way to the light, these obstacles 
 seemed to me less formidable. When I failed 
 to understand anything, I said, " I am wrong, I 
 am wicked." But the more I became imbued 
 with the spirit of the truths which I studied, 
 the more surely I saw them to be the substratum 
 of life, the greater and more formidable became 
 
 126 
 
MY CONFESSION. 127 
 
 the obstacles, the more clearly defined the line 
 which I was unable to understand, and of which 
 I could only seek an explanation through lying 
 unto myself. 
 
 Notwithstanding all my doubts and suffer- 
 ings, I still remained in the Orthodox Church ; 
 but practical questions arose which required 
 immediate decision, and the decisions of the 
 Church, contrary to the elementary principles 
 of the faith by which I lived, compelled me 
 finally to abandon all communion with it. 
 
 The questions were, in the first place, the 
 relation of the Orthodox Church to other 
 churches, to Catholicism and the so-called 
 Sectaries. The interest which I took in this 
 great question of faith led me at this time to 
 form acquaintance with the professors of dif- 
 ferent creeds, Catholics, Protestants, Old Be- 
 lievers, New Dissenters, and others, and among 
 them I found many who sincerely believed and 
 obeyed the highest moral standard. I desired 
 to be a brother to these men, and what came of 
 it? The doctrines which had seemed to prom- 
 ise me the union of all men in faith and love, 
 in the persons of their best representatives, 
 
128 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 showed themselves but capable of educating men 
 in a lie ; resulted but in this, that what gives 
 them strength to live is a temptation of the 
 devil, the belief that they alone possess the pos- 
 sibility of knowing truth. 
 
 And I saw that the members of the Orthodox 
 Church consider all those who do not profess 
 the same faith as themselves to be heretics, 
 exactly as Catholics and others account our 
 Orthodoxy to be heresy; I saw that all con- 
 sider others who did not adopt the same out- 
 ward symbols and the same formulas of faith as 
 themselves as their enemies. The Orthodox 
 Church does this, though she tries to conceal 
 it ; and it must be so, in the first place, because 
 the assertion that you live a lie and I am in the 
 truth is the hardest thing that one man can say 
 to another ; in the second place, because a man 
 who loves his children and his relations cannot 
 but feel at enmity with those who desire to con- 
 vert them to another faith. Moreover, this 
 enmity increases as men learn more of the par- 
 ticular doctrines which they adopt. Thus I, 
 who had believed faith was to be found in the 
 union of love, was unwillingly forced to see 
 
MY CONFESSION. 129 
 
 that the doctrines of faith destroy the very 
 thing which they should produce. 
 
 This snare is so evident, to men living like 
 ourselves in countries where differing faiths are 
 professed, and witnessing the contempt and self- 
 confidence with which the Catholic absolutely 
 rejects Protestantism and Orthodoxy, repaid by 
 the scorn of the Orthodox for the Catholic and 
 the Protestant, and that of the latter for both 
 the others, while the same relation of enmity 
 includes the Old Believers, the Revivalists, the 
 Shakers, and all other creeds, that at first it 
 perplexes us. 
 
 We say to ourselves, " No, it cannot be so 
 simple as that, and yet these men have not 
 seen that when two propositions flatly con- 
 tradict each other, the truth on which faith 
 should rest is in neither. There must be some 
 cause for this, there must be some explana- 
 tion." I myself thought there was, and sought 
 for it. I read everything I could get on the 
 subject, and consulted with as many as I could, 
 but the only explanation I obtained was that 
 of the hussar, who accounts his regiment the 
 first in the world, while his friend the lancer 
 
130 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 says the same of his own. The clergy of all 
 religions, the best among them, all told me of 
 their belief that they alone were right and all 
 others wrong, and that all they could do for 
 those who were in error was to pray for them. 
 I went to the Archimandrites, the Archpre- 
 lates, the Priors, and the Monks, and asked 
 them, but no one made the slightest attempt to 
 explain this snare to me but one, and his ex- 
 planation was such that I put no more ques- 
 tions to any one. 
 
 I said that, for every unbeliever who returns 
 to belief (in which category I place the whole 
 of the present young generation) the principal 
 question is, Why is truth to be found in the 
 Orthodox Church and not in the Lutheran nor 
 the Catholic one ? He is taught in his gym- 
 nasium, and he cannot but know what the 
 peasant is ignorant of, that Protestants and 
 Catholics equally affirm their own faith to be 
 the only true one. Historical proofs, twisted 
 by each party to serve their own purpose, are 
 insufficient. 
 
 Is it not possible, as I have already said, 
 for a higher knowledge to issue from the 
 
MY CONFESSION. 131 
 
 disappearance of these differences, as they 
 do already disappear for those who sincerely 
 believe ? Can we not go farther on our way 
 to meet the Old Believers ? They affirm that 
 our way of signing the cross, of singing halle- 
 lujah, and of moving round the altar, is not 
 the same as theirs. We say, u You believe 
 in the Nicene Creed, in all the sacraments, and 
 we also believe." Let us add, " Keep to that, 
 and for the rest do as you will." We shall 
 then be united to them by this, that we both 
 place the essential points of faith above the 
 unessential. Again, can we not say to Catho- 
 lics, " You believe in certain things which are 
 essential, and for what concerns the dispute 
 about the procession of the Trinity and the 
 Pope, do as you please " ? Can we not say 
 the same to the Protestant, and unite with 
 him in what is really important? My fellow- 
 disputant agreed with me, but added that 
 such concessions draw down the reproach 
 that the clergy have receded from the faith 
 of their forefathers and favor dissent, while 
 the office of those in authority in the Church 
 is to preserve the purity of the Kussian Greek 
 
132 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 Orthodox faith as handed down from our 
 ancestors. 
 
 Then I understood it all. I am in search 
 of faith, the staff and strength of life, while 
 these men seek the best means of fulfilling 
 in the sight of men certain human obligations, 
 and having to deal with earthly affairs they 
 fulfil them as ordinary men ever do. However 
 much they may talk of their pity for the errors 
 of their brethren, of praying for them at the 
 throne of the Most High, for earthly affairs 
 force is needed, and force always has been, is, 
 and will be, applied. If two religious sects 
 each believe that truth resides in themselves, 
 and that the faith of the other is a lie, they 
 will preach their doctrines in the hope of 
 converting their brethren to the truth, and, if 
 false doctrines are taught to the inexperienced 
 sons of the Church who still tread in the ways 
 of truth, she cannot but burn the books and 
 banish the men who seduce her sons. What 
 can be done with the Sectaries who, in their 
 enthusiasm for a faith which the Church 
 pronounces false, seduce her sons ? What 
 can be done with them, but to cut off their 
 
MY CONFESSION. 133 
 
 heads or imprison them ? In the time of Alexis 
 Michaelovitch men were burnt at the stake ; in 
 other words, the severest punishment of the 
 time was applied, and in our days also the 
 severest punishment is applied; men are con- 
 demned to solitary confinement. When I 
 looked around me at all that was done in 
 the name of religion, I was horrified, and 
 almost entirely withdrew from the Orthodox 
 /Church. 
 
 The second point which concerned the 
 relations of the Church to the problems of 
 life was her connection with war and execu- 
 tions. It was the time of the war in Russia. 
 Russians slew their brethren in the name of 
 Christian love. Not to think of this was 
 impossible. Not to see that murder is an 
 evil, contrary to the very first principles 
 of every faith, was impossible. In the 
 churches, however, men prayed for the suc- 
 cess of our arms, and the teachers of religion 
 accepted these murders as acts which were 
 the consequence of faith. Not only murder 
 in actual warfare was approved, but, during 
 the troubles which ensued, the authorities 
 
134 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 of the Church, her teachers, monks, and 
 ascetics, approved the murder of erring and 
 helpless youths. I looked round on all that 
 was done by men who professed to be Chris- 
 tians, and I was horrified. 
 
XVI. 
 
 I ceased from this time to doubt, and 
 became firmly convinced that all was not 
 truth in the faith which I had joined. For- 
 merly I should have said that all in this 
 faith was false, but now it was impossible 
 to say so. 
 
 That the men of the people had a knowledge 
 of truth was incontestable, for otherwise they 
 could not live. Moreover, this knowledge of 
 truth was open to me ; I already lived by 
 it, and felt all its force, but in that same 
 knowledge there was also error. Of that 
 again I could not doubt. All, however, that 
 had formerly repelled me now presented itself 
 in a vivid light. Although I saw that there 
 was less of what had repelled me as false 
 among the people than among the represent- 
 atives of the Church, I also saw that in 
 the belief of the people what was false was 
 mingled with what was true. 
 135 
 
136 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 Whence, then, came this truth and this 
 falsehood? Both the falsehood and the truth 
 came to them from what is called the Church ; 
 both are included in the so-called sacred tradi- 
 tions and writings. I was thus, whether I 
 would or not, brought to the study and analysis 
 of these writings and traditions, a study which 
 up to that time I had feared, and I turned to 
 the study of theology, which I had once 
 thrown aside with contempt as useless. Then 
 theology had seemed to me but profitless 
 trifling with nonsense, for I was surrounded 
 by the phenomena of life, and I thought them 
 clear and full of meaning ; now I should have 
 been glad to throw off ideas unsuited to a 
 healthy state of mind, but I could not. 
 
 On this doctrinal basis was founded, or 
 at least with it was very intimately bound 
 up, the only explanation of the meaning of 
 the life I had so lately discovered. However 
 strange it might seem to my worn but prac- 
 tised intellect, it was the only hope of salva- 
 tion. To be understood, it must be cautiously 
 and carefully examined, even though the 
 result might not be the certain knowledge 
 
MY C0WFESSI02T. 137 
 
 of science, which, aware as I was of the 
 special character of religious inquiry, I did 
 not and could not seek to obtain. 
 
 I would not attempt to explain everything. 
 I knew that the explanation of the whole, like 
 the beginning of all things, was hidden in 
 infinity. I wished to be brought to the in- 
 evitable limit where the incomprehensible 
 begins; I wished that what remained un- 
 comprehended should be so, not because the 
 mental impulse to inquiry was not just and 
 natural (all such impulses are, and without 
 them I could understand nothing), but because 
 I had learned the limits of my own mind. 
 I wished to understand so that every unex- 
 plained proposition should appear to my rea- 
 son necessarily unexplainable, and not an 
 obligatory part of belief. I never doubted 
 that the doctrines contained both truth and 
 falsehood, and I was bound to separate the 
 one from the other. I began to do this. 
 What I found of false and of true, and to 
 what results I came, forms the second part 
 of this work,* which, if it be thought worth 
 
 * My Religion. 
 
138 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 while, and if it can be useful to any one, will 
 probably be some day published. 
 
 1879. 
 
 The above was written by me three years 
 ago. 
 
 The other day, on looking over this part 
 again, on returning to the succession of ideas 
 and feelings through which I had passed while 
 writing it, I saw a dream. 
 
 This dream repeated for me in a condensed 
 form all that I had lived through and described, 
 and I therefore think that a description of it 
 may, for those who have understood me, serve 
 to render clearer, to refresh the remembrance 
 of, and to collect into one whole, all that has 
 been described at so much length in these 
 pages. The dream was as follows. 
 
 I am lying on my back in bed, and I feel 
 neither particularly well and comfortable, nor 
 the contrary. I begin to think whether it is 
 well for me to lie, and something makes me 
 feel uncomfortable in the legs ; if the bed be 
 too short or ill-made, I know not, but something 
 is not right. I move my legs about, and at the 
 
MY CONFESSION'. 139 
 
 same time begin to think how and on what I 
 am lying, a thing which previously had never 
 troubled me. I examine the bed, and see that 
 I am lying on a network of cords fastened to 
 ths sides of the bedstead. My heels lie on one 
 of these cords, my legs on another, and this is 
 uncomfortable. I am somehow aware that the 
 cords can be moved, and with my legs I push 
 the cord away, and it seems to me that thus it 
 will be easier. But I had pushed the cord too 
 far ; I try to catch it with my legs, but this 
 movement causes another cord to slip from 
 under me, and my legs hang down. I move my 
 body to get right again, convinced that it will 
 be easy, but this movement causes other cords 
 to slip and change their places beneath me, and 
 I perceive that my position is altogether worse ; 
 my whole body sinks and hangs without my 
 legs touching the ground. I hold myself up 
 only by the upper part of the back, and I feel 
 now not only discomfort, but horror. I now 
 begin to ask myself what I had not thought of 
 before. I ask myself where I am, and on what 
 I am lying. I begin to look round, and first I 
 look below, to the place towards which my 
 
140 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 body sank, and where I feel it must soon fall. 
 I look below, and I cannot believe my eyes. 
 
 I am on a height far above that of the high- 
 est tower or mountain, a height beyond all my 
 previous powers of conception. I cannot even 
 make out whether I see anything or not below 
 me, in the depths of that bottomless abyss over 
 which I am hanging and into which I feel 
 drawn. My heart ceases to beat, and horror 
 fills my mind. To look down is too terrible. I 
 feel that if I look down I shall slip from the 
 last cord and perish. I stop looking, but not 
 to look is still worse, for then I think of what 
 will at once happen to me when the last cord 
 breaks. I feel that I am losing in my terror 
 the last remnant of my strength, and that my 
 back is gradually sinking lower and lower. 
 Another instant, and I shall fall. 
 
 Then all at once came into my mind the 
 thought that it could not be true, that it was a 
 dream ; I will awake. I strive to wake myself 
 and cannot. "What can I do?" I ask my- 
 self, and as I put the question I look above. 
 
 Above stretches another gulf. I look into 
 this, and try to forget the abyss below, and I 
 
MY CONFESSION. 141 
 
 do forget. The infinite depth repels and horri- 
 fies me ; the infinite height attracts and sat- 
 isfies me. I still hang on the last cords 
 which have not yet slipped from under me over 
 the precipice ; I know that I am hanging thus, 
 but I look only upwards, and my fear leaves 
 me. As happens in dreams, I hear a voice say- 
 ing, " Look well ; it is there ! " I pierce farther 
 and farther into the infinity above, and I feel 
 that it calms me. I remember all that has hap- 
 pened — how I moved my legs, how I was left 
 hanging in air, how I was terrified, and how I 
 was saved from my fears by looking above. I 
 ask myself, "And now, am I not hanging 
 still ? " and I feel in all my limbs, without look- 
 ing, the support by which I am held. I per- 
 ceive that I no longer hang nor fall, but have a 
 fast hold. I question myself how it is that I 
 hold on. I touch myself, I look around, and I 
 see that under the middle of my body there 
 passes a stay, and on looking up I find that I 
 am lying perfectly balanced, and that it was 
 this stay alone that held me up before. As it 
 happens in dreams, the mechanis-n by which I 
 am supported appears perfectly natural to me, 
 
142 MY CONFESSION. 
 
 a thing to be easily understood, and not to 
 be doubted, although this mechanism has no ap- 
 parent sense when I am awake. In my sleep I 
 was even astonished that I had not understood 
 this before. At my bedside stands a pillar, the 
 "Solidity of which is beyond doubt, though there 
 is nothing for it to stand upon. From this 
 pillar runs a cord, somehow cunningly and sim- 
 ply fixed, and if I lie across this cord and look 
 upwards, there cannot be even a question of 
 my falling. All this was clear to me, and I 
 was glad and easy in my mind. It seemed as 
 if some one said to me, "See that you remem- 
 ber ! " And I awoke. 
 
 Lyof N. Tolstoi. 
 
 1882. 
 
THE 
 
 SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 (A COMMENTARY ON THE ESSENCE OF 
 THE GOSPEL.) 
 
 143 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This short exposition of the Gospel is ex- 
 tracted from a larger manuscript work, which 
 c.annot be published in Russia. The work 
 consists of four parts. 
 
 The contents of the present book have been 
 extracted from the third part, which is an in- 
 vestigation independent of previous interpreta- 
 tions, and solely according to what has reached 
 us of the teaching of Christ, as attributed to 
 him, and related in the Gospels. 
 
 The Gospels have been harmonized by me 
 according to the sense of their teaching, and 
 in so doing I have had to deviate but little 
 from the order in which they stand ; so that 
 there are rather fewer transpositions of the 
 text in my rendering than in most other har- 
 monies with which I am acquainted. The 
 Gospel of John is taken in the same order as 
 the original. 
 
 145 
 
146 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 The division of the Gospel into twelve 
 sections is the natural outcome of the bearing 
 of its teaching, every two sections being united 
 by a link of cause and consequence. 
 
 I have also added the introduction from the 
 first chapter of John's Gospel, in which he 
 gives his view of the meaning of the whole 
 teaching, and the conclusion from his Epistle 
 (probably written before the Gospel), which 
 represents a general deduction from all that 
 precedes. The introduction and conclusion do 
 not form an essential part, but only give a 
 general view of the whole teaching ; and though 
 both might be omitted without detriment (the 
 more so that they are the words of John and 
 not of Jesus), I have preserved them, because, 
 when the teaching of Christ is taken in its 
 plain meaning, these parts, in their connection 
 with the whole and with each other, represent, 
 in opposition to the strange interpretation of 
 the Church, the simplest indication of the spirit 
 in which Christ's meaning must be understood. 
 
 At the head of each section, in addition to a 
 short definition of the contents, I have inserted 
 words corresponding to each from the prayer 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 147 
 
 which Jesus gave to his disciples. When my 
 work was ended, I was surprised to find that 
 the Lord's prayer is indeed nothing less than 
 the whole teaching of Christ, expressed in the 
 most condensed form, and in the identical 
 system by which I had distributed the sections, 
 every expression of it corresponding with them, 
 in idea and order. In the manuscript of the 
 third part, the Gospel, according to the four 
 Evangelists, is related without the least omis- 
 sion ; but in the present work the following 
 passages have been left out : the conception, 
 the birth of John Baptist, his imprisonment 
 and death, the birth of Christ, his flight with 
 Mary into Egypt, his miracles in Can a and 
 Capernaum, the expulsion of demons, the walk- 
 ing on the sea, the withering of the fig-tree, 
 the raising of the dead, the resurrection of 
 Christ, and the references to the prophecies 
 fulfilled during his life. All this has been 
 omitted in the present work, because, not con- 
 taining any part of the teaching, but only 
 describing events which took place before, 
 during, and after the public life of Christ, 
 these passages would render the exposition 
 
148 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 needlessly intricate ; nor do they contain 
 in themselves either contradiction or proof, 
 though their significance for Christianity has 
 been that, to the eyes of unbelievers, they cor- 
 roborate the divinity of Jesus ; but by those 
 who, uninfluenced by the account of miracle, 
 are unable, from the nature of the teaching 
 itself, to doubt that divinity, they are naturally 
 set aside, because felt to be needless. 
 
 In the original full exposition, every digres- 
 sion from the accepted translation, all inserted 
 explanations and omissions are justified and, 
 proved by a comparison with different versions 
 of the Gospel, by context, and by philological 
 and other considerations. In the present work 
 all these are omitted, because, however precise 
 and correct may be the analvsis of separate 
 passages, argument alone will convince no one 
 as to a right understanding of the teaching 
 itself. Such evidence must always lie in its 
 own unity, clearness, simplicity, and complete- 
 ness, and its force will arise from the sympathy 
 with which it meets the consciousness of every 
 man who is seeking for truth. 
 
 Concerning all deviations from the version 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 149 
 
 accepted by the churches, the reader must 
 understand that the generally accepted notion 
 as to the Gospels being, to the veriest letter, 
 sacred, is not only a most profound error, but 
 also a most gross and harmful deception. He 
 must remember also that Christ himself wrote 
 no book, as did philosophers like Plato or Mar- 
 cus Aurelius ; never did he, like Socrates, trans- 
 mit his teaching to learned or even to educated 
 men, but spoke for the most part to an unlet- 
 tered crowd, and that only long after his death 
 was his teaching and life described. 
 
 It must also not be forgotten that, out of a 
 large number of such descriptive manuscripts, 
 the Church selected at first three, adding later 
 a fourth Gospel (that according to John), that 
 out of the great mass of literature about Christ 
 they could not but have accepted much that 
 was not strictly accurate, and that there are as 
 many doubtful passages in the Canonical Gos- 
 pels as in the rejected Apocryphal writings. 
 Nor does it follow, if the teaching of Christ 
 were inspired, that a certain number of verses 
 and letters in recording it should become so, or 
 that certain selections should be considered 
 
150 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 sacred by the edict of a man. Let it be con- 
 sidered that these selected Gospels are the 
 work of many human minds, that during cen- 
 turies they underwent endless revisions, that 
 all the Gospels of the fourth century which 
 have reached us are written without punctua- 
 tion or division into verse and chapter, and 
 that the actual number of different renderings 
 for Gospel passages is estimated at fifty thou- 
 sand. 
 
 All this must be kept in view by the reader, 
 lest he should be carried away by the idea that 
 the Gospels have been transmitted to us direct 
 from heaven in the identical form in which we 
 at present accept them, and he must admit that 
 it is not only unblamable to omit from them 
 unnecessary passages, but that it is most un- 
 reasonable to be withheld from doing so by the 
 sentiment that considers sacred an appointed 
 number of verses and syllables. 
 
 On the other hand, I would not have it 
 understood that because I do not consider the 
 Gospels to be sacred books, directly descended 
 from heaven, that therefore I regard them as 
 mere monuments in the history of religious 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 151 
 
 literature. I am conscious of both their theo- 
 logical and historical bearing, but I desire to 
 contemplate neither; what I see in Chris- 
 tianity is not an exclusively divine revelation, 
 nor a mere historical phenomenon, but a teach- 
 ing which gives the meaning of life. 
 
 When at the age of fifty, having asked all 
 the reputed philosophers about me as to the 
 meaning of life, and of myself, and having 
 been told by them that life was an evil, and 
 without meaning, and I myself an accidental 
 concatenation of particles, I fell into despair, 
 and thought to kill myself, I was brought to 
 Christianity by the remembrance of a past 
 time; how in my childhood I and those about 
 me, chiefly men un corrupted by wealth, had a 
 faith and saw a purpose, and with the light of 
 this reality I called to question the wisdom of 
 those of my own class, and tried to understand 
 the answer of Christianity to believers. 
 
 On studying the various forms of Christian 
 religions, I found them to consist in large 
 measure of the strangest superstitions, which, 
 however, did not prevent many from finding 
 life in their teaching. I then began to con- 
 
152 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 sider the source from which they were derived, 
 and found in the Gospels an explanation of the 
 meaning of life that perfectly satisfied me, one 
 higher than anything I had known, or could 
 imagine. And here, dazzled in new-found 
 light, I found full answer for all questioning as 
 to the meaning and purpose of my life and 
 that of others, that explained the solutions of 
 every other nation, and to my mind excelled 
 them. I had sought a reply, not to some his- 
 toric or theologic difficulty, but to the question 
 of life ; and therefore to me now the chief 
 matter is, not whether Jesus Christ was God, 
 or from whom descended the Holy Ghost, or 
 when and by whom was a certain Gospel 
 written, or if it may not even be attributed 
 to Christ ; but the light itself is of importance 
 to me, that it still shines upon me after eigh- 
 teen hundred years with un dimmed brightness; 
 but how to call it, or of what it consist, or who 
 gave it existence, is immaterial to me. 
 
 This introduction might here conclude if the 
 Gospels were books but lately discovered, or if 
 the teaching of Christ had not undergone eigh- 
 teen centuries of misinterpretation. In order 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CIIRISTS TEACHING. 153 
 
 to understand it, it is well to acquire a clear 
 apprehension of the various systems with which 
 it has been overlaid. 
 
 The commonest and most subtle of these is 
 the substitution, under the name of Christian 
 doctrine, of the teaching of the Church for that 
 of Christ which it professes to be, though com- 
 posed from the explanations of most contradic- 
 tory writings, in which the teaching of Christ 
 forms but a small part, and that contorted and 
 strained to accord with the explanation of the 
 rest of the document. 
 
 According to this misinterpretation, the 
 teaching of Jesus is only one link in the chain 
 of revelation that commenced with the creation 
 of man, and continues in the Church to the 
 present day. By it Jesus is called God, but 
 such acceptance does not place in His teaching 
 a deeper import than that contained in the 
 words of Moses, in the Psalms, the Acts of 
 the Apostles, the Epistles, the Apocalypse, 
 the Decrees of the Councils, and the writings 
 of the Fathers ; no understanding of the teach- 
 ing of Christ is admitted which does not 
 accord with that of the preceding and follow- 
 
154 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 ing revelation, and in furtherance of this object 
 the least contradictory meaning for passages 
 most hopelessly at variance in the Pentateuch, 
 Psalms, Gospels, etc., is eagerly sought for. 
 
 There naturally may be an innumerable num- 
 ber of such interpretations having for their 
 object, not the truth, but the reconciliation 
 of contradictions in the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, every man having a solution of his own, 
 and an assertion that such is a continued reve- 
 lation of the Holy Ghost, as the Epistles of 
 Paul, the Decrees of the Councils, commenc- 
 ing, " We and the Holy Ghost," the Edicts of 
 the Popes, Synods, and of all sects and persons 
 who claim and proclain that they are the 
 mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit. All adopt 
 the same groundless subterfuge for sanction 
 as to the truth of their own interpretation, 
 and they forget that a like method may be, 
 and has been, employed by others who contra- 
 dict them. 
 
 Without entering into an analysis of the 
 faiths so formed, each with its own declara- 
 tion of truth, it is easy to see that the common 
 ground of all, the equal inspiration of both 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 155 
 
 Old and New Testament, forms an insurmount- 
 able, self-erected obstacle to understanding the 
 teaching of Christ, and that hence emanates 
 the possibility — nay, even the necessity — of a 
 large number of hostile sects, whose formation 
 can only be prevented by a reconciliation of all 
 the varied revelations, or by a right conception 
 of the teaching of one man, believed to be 
 God. The teaching of Him who has descended 
 to- earth for the very sake of our instruction 
 cannot be variously understood. If it was 
 indeed God, He at least would have so dis- 
 closed the truth that all might understand ; 
 if He failed to do so, how then is He God? 
 or, if, indeed, the truths of God are such that 
 even He cannot make them intelligible, how 
 can men do so ? 
 
 If Christ were not God, a great man only, 
 then still less can his teaching engender sects ; 
 for a great man is only great so far as he ex- 
 presses clearly what others have rendered in- 
 comprehensible. His words may be dark, but 
 never misty, and there will, and must be, many 
 ways into the darkness, but all will tend to- 
 wards elucidation. All clear, deep insight into 
 
156 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 his obscurity, at one with the spirit of his 
 teaching, uncontradicted by the plainer facts of 
 it, and bringing the whole into conformity, 
 will be accepted eagerly by all, and cannot of 
 itself form sects, or rouse animosity. False 
 interpretation will shed itself in time ; and that 
 alone which claims a source in the super- 
 natural, which asserts itself as a revelation of 
 the Holy Ghost, demanding recognition as the 
 sole truth, and condemnation for every other, 
 can become sectarian ; for the sectarianism of 
 Christianity has its root in the idea that the 
 Gospels are to be understood, not by them- 
 selves, but in accordance with all so-called 
 Holy Writings, and in the fact that the 
 Church, professing a revelation of the Holy 
 Ghost, which from its first descent upon the 
 Apostles has been constantly transmitted by 
 its own elected representatives, nowhere ex- 
 presses clearly and finally what this revelation 
 may be, # and yet upon its supposed continuity 
 builds a faith — and calls it Christ's. 
 
 Like the Mahometans, who hold to the reve- 
 lations of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, these 
 churchmen admit three also — of Moses, of 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 157 
 
 Christ, and of the Holy Ghost; but unlike the 
 former, who subordinate those of Moses and 
 of Christ to that of Mahomet, who, as the 
 last revelation, explained all that preceded 
 him, and claimed from faithful believers ab- 
 solute credence ; they would accept all three, 
 and call themselves after the name of the 
 second, in order to combine the license of 
 their own teaching with the authority of 
 Christ's. 
 
 Those who accept the revelation of Paul, of 
 the Councils, of the Fathers, of the Pope, or of 
 the Patriarchs, should state unmistakably that 
 they do so, and should call their creed by the 
 name of the last revealer. Far from doing so, 
 they preach doctrines most alien to Christ, and 
 yet so claim his countenance that one might 
 gather from them that it was Christ who de- 
 clared that it was by his blood he had re- 
 deemed the world, that God was a Trinity, 
 that the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apos- 
 tles and was transmitted to the priesthood by 
 the laying on of hands, that for salvation 
 seven sacraments are needed, that the com- 
 munion must be celebrated in two aspacts, and 
 
158 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 so forth ; whereas in all Christ's teaching there 
 is no hint even at all this. 
 
 Such a faith might be called that of the 
 Holy Ghost, for only one that acknowledges 
 the revelation of Jesus Christ as final and 
 in itself complete should be called by his 
 name. 
 
 Argument on such a point may appear need- 
 less, yet up to the present the teaching of 
 Christ has never been separated from an 
 artificial and altogether unwarrantable con- 
 nection with the Old Testament, on the one 
 hand, and on the other from such arbitrary 
 additions to, and perversions of, its reality 
 as are continually made in the name of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 Up to the present time, some, conceiving 
 Christ to be the second person of the Trinity, 
 accept his teaching only as it accords with that 
 pseudo-revelation of the Holy Ghost which 
 they find in the Old Testament, the Epistles, 
 the Edicts of the Councils, and the Patristic 
 writings, and preach a strange creed founded 
 thereon which they assert to be the faith of 
 Christ. Others, who do not believe Christ to 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 159 
 
 be God, understand liis teaching by the inter- 
 pretation of Paul and others ; believing him to 
 have been a man, they would, however, deprive 
 him of the right every man may claim, of being 
 only answerable for his own words, and in try- 
 ing to explain his teaching credit him with what 
 he would never have dreamed of saying. This 
 school of critics, well represented by Renan, 
 without giving themselves the trouble of ex- 
 tricating in the teaching of Jesus what he 
 taught himself from what is ascribed to him, 
 without endeavoring to obtain from it any deep 
 meaning, explain his appearance and the prop- 
 agation of his faith by incidents in his life, 
 and from the circumstances of his time. The 
 problem, however, which they have failed to 
 explain is, that eighteen hundred years ago 
 there appeared a poor man who taught, was 
 beaten, and executed ; and though since his 
 time many others have in like manner perished 
 for their belief, this one man is still thought 
 by thousands to be — God. Churchmen tell 
 us that he is so considered because so he 
 is; but if he be not, how can the fact be 
 explained ? 
 
160 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 And it is entirely overlooked by the critics 
 of this school, who diligently investigate all the 
 details of the life of Christ, that, however much 
 they may disclose by such a process, they do in 
 reality discover nothing ; could they even es- 
 tablish the minutest details of his life, they 
 would be as far as ever from the secret of his 
 influence, which is hid, not with the people 
 amongst whom he abode, nor by the history 
 and superstition of the times, but in the nature 
 of this man's teaching which made humanity 
 single him out from amongst all other preach- 
 ers, and accept him as God. 
 
 Explanation can only come from a special 
 study of his teaching. And the solution is 
 simple ; but it must be undertaken independ- 
 ently of the many false interpretations volun- 
 teered by men who neither wished nor were 
 able to understand him. 
 
 The modern school of criticism to which I 
 have referred was so pleased with its own as- 
 sertion of the non-divinity of Christ, that it has 
 since directed all its efforts to complete the 
 proof of his humanity, forgetting that the more 
 successful be the process, the more difficult 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 161 
 
 will the final solution be as to the reason of his 
 influence. In order clearly to understand this 
 singular error, it is only necessary to read an 
 article by Havet, one of the imitators of Renan, 
 who asserts that " Je"sus n'avait rien de Chre- 
 tien," or to find in Sourris a proposition which 
 seems to give him pleasure — that Jesus Christ 
 was a very rough and stupid man. 
 
 It is not a contradiction of the divinity of 
 Christ that is required, but an exposition of 
 his teaching in all its purity, so lofty and so 
 simple as to obtain for its founder the title of 
 God. 
 
 And therefore, if the reader belong to that 
 large number of educated men, who, having 
 been brought up in the religion of the Church, 
 have recoiled from its contradiction of common 
 sense and the conscience ; and if he have not 
 lost all love and respect for the spirit of 
 Christ's teaching, I would ask him to consider 
 that what has alienated him is equally foreign 
 to Christ, who has been made responsible for 
 all the monstrous parasitic tradition that has 
 fastened about his words, and that to judge of 
 Christ's Christianity he must study its effect 
 
162 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING, 
 
 upon its Founder ; and if he do so, he will 
 discover that it has no admixture of elements, 
 no sympathy with superstition, no dregs, no 
 darknesses ; but that it is the strictest, purest, 
 and fullest system of metaphysical ethics, 
 above the most ambitious ascent of human 
 reason, and in the wide circle of which 
 moves to its achievement all highest human 
 effort. 
 
 If the reader is one of those who profess 
 the religion of the Church not for the 
 attainment of personal advantage, but for 
 their own inner welfare, I would ask him 
 to consider how different a thing, despite 
 its similarity of name, is the teaching in this 
 book from that which he follows, and to 
 decide, not whether the faith so offered him 
 coincides with his own religion, but which 
 of the two most agrees with his heart and 
 reason. 
 
 But if he belong to those who, professing the 
 doctrines of the Church, hold to them, npt 
 from belief, but for convenience, then let him 
 know that, however many adherents such a 
 method may have, however powerful they may 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 163 
 
 be, on whatever thrones they may seat them- 
 selves, or by whatever high names they may be 
 called, they are not the accusers, but the ac- 
 cused. Let such remember that they have long 
 ago said all that for themselves can be said; 
 that, had they succeeded in proving all they 
 desire, the same has been done to its own sat; 
 isfaction by each of the hundred creeds that on 
 a mutual basis mutually reject each other ; but 
 that now not proof is demanded of them, but 
 that they should justify themselves from the 
 charge of blasphemy in having held the teach- 
 ing of Esdra, the Councils, the Theophilacts, 
 equal to that of Christ the God, and from the 
 charge of calumny against God, in having pro- 
 claimed as His teaching the fanaticism of 
 their own hearts, and from the charge of decep- 
 tion in having hid the word of God, and 
 set up in its place their own religion of 
 the Holy Ghost; and so depriving millions 
 of men of the good Christ brought for them, 
 have given to the world, for his peace and 
 love, the froward countenance of malice and 
 murder. 
 
 Such have before them two alternatives: the 
 
164 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 rejection of the falsehood or the persecution * 
 of those who so correct them, for which, while 
 ending my writings, I prepare myself with joy 
 and with fear for my weakness. 
 
 * The English reader must remember that the author is 
 still living under a system of religious repression. — Ed. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE GOSPEL. THE GOOD TIDINGS OP JESUS 
 CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 The Understanding of Life, 
 
 The announcement of Jesus Christ substi- 
 tuted a conception of the meaning of life for 
 faith in an external God. 
 
 The Gospel is the announcement that the 
 source of all is not an external God, as men 
 think, but the Spirit of Life. And, therefore, 
 in the place of what men call God, according 
 to the Gospel, stands this spirit. 
 
 Without it there is no life, all men are alive 
 only through it, and those who do not under- 
 stand this, but suppose the flesh to be the foun- 
 dation of life, deprive themselves of the true 
 life ; whereas those who understand that they 
 are alive not through the flesh but through the 
 spirit, have the true life that has been shown by 
 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 165 
 
166 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 Having conceived that the true life of man 
 originates in the spirit, he gave men the teach- 
 ing and example of that life in the body. 
 
 Previous religions represented a law, stating 
 what was, and what was not to be done for the 
 worship of God. But the teaching of Christ 
 consists in the understanding of life. No one 
 has ever seen or can know an external God, 
 and therefore the worship of an external God 
 cannot direct life. 
 
 Only the acceptance of the source of all, an 
 inward consciousness of the knowledge which 
 flows from that source, points out the way to 
 life. 
 
THE 
 
 SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 Man, the son of God, powerless in the flesh, is 
 free in the spirit. ( Our Father.) 
 
 Christ in his childhood called God his 
 Father. There was at that time in Judea a 
 prophet called John, who preached the coming 
 of God upon the earth, if men would change 
 their lives, counting all men as equal ; would 
 not offend but help each other; that so His 
 kiugdom might be established. Having heard 
 this preaching, Jesus retired from men into the 
 wilderness in order to contemplate the life 
 of man, and his relation to the eternal be- 
 ginning of all, called God. He accepted as 
 his Father the eternal source of all, which John 
 had preached. 
 
 Having stayed in the wilderness forty days 
 167 
 
168 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 without food, he began to suffer from hunger, 
 and thought to himself, I am the son of God 
 the Almighty, and therefore I must be as 
 He is ; but lo, I want to eat, and yet bread 
 does not appear at my desire, therefore I am 
 not almighty. Then he said to himself, Though 
 I cannot create bread out of stone, yet I can 
 refrain from bread; and so, if not almighty 
 in the flesh, I can become so in the spirit, 
 for I can conquer the flesh, and not in it, 
 but in the spirit, be the son of God. But 
 he said again to himself, If I am the son 
 of a spirit, then I can renounce the flesh, 
 and destroy it. And to this he answered, I 
 am born through the spirit into the flesh ; such 
 was the will of my Father, and I "may not 
 oppose it. But if thou canst not satisfy the 
 desires of thy flesh, nor renounce it, thou 
 shouldest work for it, and enjoy all the 
 pleasures it can afford thee. And to this he 
 replied, I can neither satisfy the desires of 
 the flesh nor yet renounce it, but my life 
 is almighty in the spirit of my Father, and 
 therefore in the flesh I must serve, and work 
 only for the spirit, the Father. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 169 
 
 And having become persuaded that the life 
 of man is in the spirit of the Father, Jesus 
 came out of the wilderness, and began to 
 preach unto men. He declared that this 
 spirit was in him, that henceforth the heavens 
 were opened, and the powers of heaven had 
 united with man, for whom a life of eternity 
 and freedom had commenced, and that all 
 men, however cursed by the flesh, might 
 attain it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 And therefore man must work, not for the flesh 
 but according to the spirit, {Which art in 
 heaven?) 
 
 The Jews, considering themselves true be- 
 lievers, worshipped an external God, the 
 Creator and Lord of the universe. 
 
 According to them, this God had entered 
 into an agreement with them, in which He 
 promised to help them, and they to worship 
 Him ; one of the chief conditions in the 
 agreement being the keeping of the Sabbath. 
 Jesus said, The Sabbath is a human insti- 
 tution. A man who lives in the spirit is 
 above all external rites. The keeping of 
 the Sabbath, like all rites of outward wor- 
 ship, includes a delusion. We cannot do 
 nothing on the Sabbath; a good deed must 
 be done at any time, and if the Sabbath 
 hinders the doing of a good action, the Sabbath 
 is evidently an error. 
 
 170 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 171 
 
 Another condition in this agreement with 
 God was the avoidance of the society of those 
 of another faith. Concerning this, Jesus said 
 that God required not sacrifice but mutual 
 love. He also said, referring to the rule of 
 absolution and purification, that God requires 
 charity before external cleanliness; all such 
 ceremonies, he said, were harmful, the very 
 tradition of the Church an evil, as it leads 
 men. to neglect the most important deeds 
 of love towards a father or mother, and to 
 justify themselves by tradition. 
 
 Concerning all that is eternal, the rules 
 of the former law, which defined cases of 
 defilement, Jesus said, Know all of you that 
 nothing external can defile a man ; he is de- 
 filed only by what he thinks and does. 
 
 After this he went to Jerusalem, the town 
 that was considered sacred, and, entering the 
 Temple which the orthodox believers of the 
 time considered the abode of God, said that 
 man is more important than the Temple, and 
 that it is only necessary to love and to help 
 one's neighbor. Jesus said also that there is no 
 need to worship God in any definite place, 
 
172 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 but that we must worship the Father by deed 
 and in the spirit, which is the consciousness in 
 man of his sonship to the eternal Spirit, which 
 may neither be seen nor shown. 
 
 Temples are needless, for the true temple is 
 the world cemented together with love ; and 
 external worship is both false and hurtful 
 when it encourages evil deeds, like that of 
 the Jews which enjoined murder and the 
 meglecting of parents, and because the man 
 who is exact in the accomplishment of rites 
 becomes self-satisfied, and neglects the doing 
 of love. 
 
 Man is the son of God by the spirit, and 
 therefore he must worship the Father in the 
 spirit. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 From the spirit of the Father hath proceeded the 
 life of all men. (Hallowed be Thy name?) 
 
 The disciples of John asked Jesus, What 
 was his kingdom of God. He said, I and John 
 preach the same kingdom ; it is that all men, 
 however poor, may be blessed. John was the 
 first who gave to the people the kingdom of 
 God, not in an external form, but in the souls 
 of men. 
 
 The orthodox believers went to hear him, 
 but understood nothing, for such can only con- 
 ceive what themselves invent about God, and 
 marvel that men refuse their inventions. But 
 John preached the kingdom of God within 
 men, and so out-went his predecessors that 
 from his time the law, the prophets, and all ex- 
 ternal worship became unnecessary, since it 
 was disclosed that the kingdom of God was in 
 the hearts of men. 
 
 173 
 
174 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 The beginning and end of all is in the soul. 
 Every man recognizes, besides his bodily con- 
 ception, a free spirit within himself, with a 
 power of reasoning independent of the body. 
 This spirit, infinite and proceeding from the 
 infinite, is the beginning of all which we call 
 God, and we know Him only through our 
 knowledge of Him in ourselves. This spirit is 
 the source of our life, and must be put above 
 all, for by it we live, and having made it the 
 foundation of our being, we receive eternal 
 life. 
 
 The Father who sent His spirit into men did 
 not do so to deceive them with the loss of it, 
 but that they might have it forever. We can- 
 not choose life and death. 
 
 Life in the spirit is death in the body ; in 
 the spirit is life and good, in the body darkness 
 and evil. 
 
 Belief in the spirit is the doing of good, un- 
 belief is the doing of evil ; the one is life, the 
 other death. God the Creator, the founder of 
 all, we cannot know ; but we may believe that 
 He has sown, in all alike, the spirit, which on 
 good ground grows, and on bad fails. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 175 
 
 Only the spirit gives life to men, and it de- 
 pends on them whether they keep or lose it. 
 ■Evil does not exist for the spirit, for it is but 
 the counterfeit of life. Existence or non-exist- 
 ence : for every man, if he choose it, the king- 
 dom of heaven within him. All may enter or 
 refrain ; and he who possesses the life of the 
 spirit has eternal life. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 And therefore the will of the Father is that all 
 men should have life and happiness. (Thy 
 kingdom come.) 
 
 Jesus had pity on men because they knew 
 not true happiness, and he taught them. He 
 said, Blessed are those who have no goods, no 
 fame, and no care for these things, but wretched 
 are they who seek wealth and honors ; for the 
 poor and the oppressed obey the will of the 
 Father, which the rich and the honored seek 
 only from men in this life. In order to fulfil 
 the will of the Father, we must not fear to be 
 poor and despised ; we must be glad of it, and 
 thus show men in what true happiness consists. 
 
 In order to fulfil the will of the Father, 
 which gives life and happiness to all men, we 
 must fulfil five commandments. 
 
 The first commandment — 
 176 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 177 
 
 To offend no one, and by no act to excite 
 evil in others, for out of evil comes evil. 
 
 The second commandment — 
 
 To be in all things chaste, and not to quit 
 the wife whom we have taken ; for the aban- 
 doning of wives and the changing of them is 
 the cause of all loose living in the world. 
 
 The third commandment — 
 
 Never to take an oath, because we can prom- 
 ise nothing, for man is altogether in the hands 
 of the Father, and oaths are imposed for wicked 
 ends. 
 
 The fourth commandment — 
 
 Not to resist evil, to bear with offences, and 
 to do yet more than is demanded of us ; neither 
 to judge, nor to go to law, for every man is 
 himself full of faults, and cannot teach. By 
 seeking revenge men only teach others to do 
 the same. 
 
 The fifth commandment — 
 
 To make no distinction between our own 
 countrymen and foreigners, for all men are the 
 children of one Father. 
 
 These five commandments should be ob- 
 served, not to gain praise from man, but for 
 
178 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 our own sakes, for our own happiness, and 
 therefore neither prayer nor fasting in the sight 
 of man is necessary. The Father knows all we 
 need. So we have nothing to ask Him for, 
 but only to strive to do His will. The will of 
 the Father is this, that we should have no 
 malice in our hearts to any one. 
 
 To fast is unnecessary, because men only 
 fast to obtain the praise of others, and the 
 praise of man is what we should avoid. We 
 have only to care for one thing — to live ac- 
 cording to the will of the Father, and the rest 
 will all come of itself. If we take care for the 
 things of the flesh, we cannot take care for the 
 things which are of the kingdom of Heaven. 
 A man may live without care for food or dress. 
 The Father will give life. We only need to 
 take care that we are living at the present 
 moment after the will of the Father. The 
 Father gives even to children what they need. 
 We have only to desire the strength of the 
 spirit, which is given by the Father. The five 
 commandments show the way to the kingdom 
 of Heaven. This narrow path alone leads to 
 eternal hope. False teachers, wolves in sheep's 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 179 
 
 clothing, always try to drive men from this 
 road. We must beware of them. It is always 
 easy to recognize these false teachers, because 
 they teach evil in the name of good. If they 
 teach violence and slaughter, they are false 
 teachers. By what they teach they may be 
 known. 
 
 It is not he who calls upon the name of God, 
 but he who does good work, that fulfils the will 
 of the Father. Thus, whoever fulfils these five 
 commandments will have the absolute certainty 
 of a true life which nothing can deprive him of, 
 but whoever does not fulfil them will not have 
 any certainty of life, but a life which he will 
 soon lose, so that nothing will remain to him. 
 The teaching of Jesus astonished and delighted 
 all the people, because it promised liberty to 
 all. 
 
 The teaching of Jesus was the fulfilment of 
 the prophecies of Isaiah, that the chosen of God 
 should bring light unto men, should defeat evil, 
 and should establish truth, not by violence, but 
 by mildness, humility, and goodness. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TRUE LIFE. 
 
 The fulfilment of the will of the Father gives 
 a true life. (Thy will he done^) 
 
 The wisdom of life is to understand that we 
 live but as the sons of the Spirit, who is our 
 Father. Men adopt for their lives the aims of 
 the flesh, and through attaining those aims tor- 
 ment themselves and others. By accepting the 
 teaching of the spirit as to life, and by subduing 
 and quieting the flesh, men obtain the full satis- 
 faction in the life of the spirit, of the life which 
 was appointed for them. It happened once 
 that Jesus asked a woman of another faith to 
 give him to drink. The woman refused, under 
 the pretext that she was of another faith. On 
 this Jesus said to her, If thou hadst understood 
 that he is a living man who asks thee for drink, 
 in whom is the spirit of the Father, thou 
 wouldst not have refused, but have sought by 
 180 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 181 
 
 doing good to be united in the spirit to the 
 Father, and the spirit of the Father would have 
 given thee water, not such as that which makes 
 men wish to drink again, but water which gives 
 eternal life. It is needless to pray to God in 
 any appointed place ; those only can serve Him 
 in whom is His spirit, by deeds of love. 
 
 And Jesus said to his disciples, The true 
 food of man is the fulfilment of the will of the 
 Father. The fulfilment of that will is always 
 possible. Our whole life is a gathering of the 
 living fruits sown in us by the Father. These 
 fruits are the good which we do unto others. 
 
 We have no need to await anything ; our life 
 must be a ceaseless act of good to man. 
 
 After this Jesus happened to be in Jerusalem. 
 There, there was a bathing-place, and a man 
 lying doing nothing, a sick man waiting to be 
 cured by a miracle. Jesus went up to him and 
 said, Wait not to be cured by a miracle, but 
 cure thyself as far as thou hast strength, and 
 mistake not the meaning of life. The sick man 
 listened to Jesus, arose, and went his way. 
 
 On seeing that, the Pharisees began to re- 
 proach Jesus for what he had said, and for hav- 
 
182 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST S TEACHING. 
 
 ing cured the sick on the Sabbath. Jesus said 
 unto them : I have done nothing new, I have 
 done only what our common Father, the Great 
 Spirit, does. He lives and gives life to men, 
 and I have done the same. To do this is the 
 vocation of every man. Every man is free to 
 live or not to live. To live, means to fulfd the 
 will of the Father, that is, to do good to others ; 
 not to live, means to fulfil our own will, and to 
 do no good to others. It is in the power of 
 every man to do the one or the other, to obtain 
 life or to destroy it. See what the true life of 
 man is like ; a master gave his slaves a part of 
 a valuable property, and ordered them to labor 
 each with his own share. Some did so, and 
 others did not, but hid what had been given 
 them. The master came to call them to ac- 
 count; and to those who had done much he 
 gave more than they already had, and from 
 those who had done little he took everything 
 away. 
 
 The share in the valuable property of the 
 master is the spirit of life in man, the son of 
 the Father. He who labors in life for the life 
 of the spirit obtains eternal life ; while he 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 183 
 
 who labors not, loses the life which was 
 given him. 
 
 The true life is the common life of all, not 
 the life of one. All must labor for the life of 
 others. 
 
 After this Jesus went into the desert, and 
 many of the people followed after him. In the 
 evening the disciples came and said, With what 
 shall we feed all these men ? Among the 
 people there were some who had nothing, and 
 some who had taken with them bread and fish. 
 Then Jesus said to the disciples, Give all the 
 bread you have. He took the bread and gave 
 it to his disciples, and they gave it to others, 
 and then others began to do the same. And 
 all ate what others gave, and all were satisfied, 
 but they had no need to eat all they had. And 
 Jesus said, So also you must do. Every one 
 must not seek to provide himself with food, 
 but must give to others what he has, as the 
 spirit in man tells him to do. 
 
 The real food of man is the spirit of the 
 Father. Men live only through the spirit. 
 
 We are bound to serve all the functions of 
 life, for to live is not to do our own will, but 
 
184 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 the will of the Father of life. The will of the 
 Father is that the life of the spirit which is in 
 every man should remain in him, and that all 
 should preserve that life till the hour of death. 
 The Father is the spirit which is the source of 
 all life. Life is only the fulfilment of the will 
 of the Father, and therefore for the fulfilment 
 of the will of the spirit it is necessary to give 
 up the things of the flesh. The flesh is food 
 for the life of the spirit, and only by consuming 
 the things of the flesh can the spirit live. 
 
 After this Jesus chose certain disciples and 
 sent them abroad to proclaim everywhere his 
 teaching of the life of the spirit. When he 
 sent them he said, Go and preach the life of 
 the spirit, and therefore give up beforehand all 
 the pleasures of the flesh, have nothing of your 
 own. Make yourselves ready for persecution, 
 privations, and suffering. You will be hated by 
 those who love the life of the flesh, and they 
 will torture and kill you, but. be not afraid. 
 If you fulfil the will of the Father, you will 
 have the life of the spirit, and no man can 
 take it from you. 
 
 The disciples set forth, and when they re- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 185 
 
 turned they announced that everywhere they 
 had prevailed over evil. 
 
 Then the Pharisees said to Jesus that his 
 teaching, even if it prevailed over evil, was 
 an evil itself, inasmuch as those who professed 
 it had to endure suffering. To this Jesus 
 answered, Evil cannot prevail over evil, for 
 evil can only be overcome by good. Good is 
 the will of the Father-Spirit, of the spirit 
 whrch is common to all men. Every man 
 knows that good exists for him. If he does 
 good to others, if he does what is the will of 
 the Father, he does well. Therefore the fulfil- 
 ment of the will of the Father-Spirit is good, 
 although it be accompanied with suffering and 
 death for those who accomplish it. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A FALSE LIFE. 
 
 And therefore, in order to attain to a true life, a 
 man on earth must abstain from the false life 
 of the flesh, and live in the spirit. ( On earth 
 as in heaven.") 
 
 For the life of the spirit there can be no 
 difference between relations and strangers. 
 
 Jesus said that his mother and his brothers 
 were nothing to him in their personal relation- 
 ship ; those only were near to him who fulfilled 
 the will of the common Father. 
 
 The happiness and the life of man depend, 
 not upon his family ties, but on the life of the 
 spirit. Jesus says, Blessed are they who keep 
 to the knowledge of the Father. A man who 
 lives by the spirit has no home. Jesus said 
 that no home had been appointed for him. 
 For the fulfilment of the will of the Father no 
 appointed place is needed, it is everywhere and 
 always to be found. 
 
 186 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CUEIST'S TEACHING. 187 
 
 The death of the body cannot be terrible to 
 a man who has surrendered himself to the will 
 of the Father, for the life of the spirit does not 
 depend on the death of the body. Jesus says 
 that he who believes in the life of the spirit 
 cannot fear anything. 
 
 No cares can prevent a man living the life o{ 
 the spirit. To the man who said that he would 
 perform the will of the Father afterwards, but 
 that^he must first bury his father, Jesus an- 
 swered, Only the dead can trouble about bury- 
 ing the dead ; the living live always by fulfill- 
 ing the will of the Father. 
 
 Care for family and domestic affairs cannot 
 prevent the life of the spirit. He who troubles 
 himself about the way in which his bodily life 
 will be affected by his fulfilling the will of the 
 Father, is like the tiller who while he ploughs 
 looks behind him and not before. 
 
 The cares for the joys of the life of the flesh, 
 which seem so important to men, are really but 
 a dream. The only real business of life is the 
 announcement of the will of the Father, atten- 
 tion to it, and fulfilment of it. To the reproach 
 of Martha, that she was left alone to look after 
 
188 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 the supper, while her sister Mary, instead of 
 helping her, cared only to listen to his teach- 
 ing, Jesus replied, In vain dost thou reproach 
 her; trouble thyself with these things if they 
 are necessary for thee, but let alone those who 
 need not bodily pleasures ; let them do the one 
 thing needful in order to live. 
 
 Jesus said that he who wishes to obtain the 
 true life, which consists in the fulfilment of the 
 will of the Father, must before all things give 
 up his own personal desires. Such an one 
 must not only refrain from fashioning his life 
 according to his own wishes, but be ready at 
 any hour to endure all kinds of privation and 
 suffering. 
 
 He who wishes to fashion his bodily life after 
 his own will, will ruin the true life which fulfils 
 the will of the Father. 
 
 And there is no advantage in the accumula- 
 tion of necessity for the life of the body, if 
 such should ruin the life of the spirit. 
 
 The life of the spirit is destroyed by noth- 
 ing so surely as by the love of gain, the ac- 
 quirement of wealth. Men forget that, what- 
 ever riches and property they acquire, they 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 189 
 
 may die at any moment, and that property is 
 not needed for their life. Death hangs over 
 each of us. Illness, the murderous violence of 
 men, accident at any moment may put an end 
 to life. The death of the body is the unavoid- 
 able condition of every instant of life. While 
 a man lives he should look upon each hour of 
 his life as a respite granted him by favor. We 
 should remember this, and not say that we do 
 not know it. We know and foresee all that 
 happens on earth and in heaven, but we for- 
 get the death which we know awaits us every 
 moment. If we did not forget this, we could 
 not give ourselves up to the life of the body; 
 we could not depend on it. 
 
 Christ went on to say, In order to follow my 
 teaching, you must weigh well the advantages 
 of serving the flesh and your own will against 
 those of fulfilling the will of the Father. He 
 alone who has carefully calculated this can 
 become my pupil, but he who has done so 
 will not prefer a pretended good and a pre- 
 tended life to a true good and a true life. 
 The true life is given to men, and men know 
 it, and listen to its call, but, ever led away 
 
190 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 by the cares of the moment, they lose this 
 life. 
 
 The true life is like the feast given by a 
 rich man, to which he invited guests. He 
 called to them, as the voice of the Father- 
 Spirit calls unto all. But some of the guests 
 were occupied with their trade, others with 
 their household affairs, others again with their 
 family, and these came not to the feast. The 
 poor, however, who had no earthly cares, went 
 to the feast and were happy. And thus men, 
 led away by their care for the life of the body, 
 deprive themselves of the true life. 
 
 Whoever shall not utterly renounce all the 
 cares and advantages of the life of the body, 
 cannot fulfil the will of the Father, for it is 
 not possible partly to serve ourselves and 
 partly the Father. We must calculate whether 
 it profit us to serve the flesh, whether we are 
 able to fashion our lives as we will. We 
 must do as a man does who would build a 
 house, or who prepares for war. He calculates 
 beforehand whether he will be able to finish 
 his house, whether he can hope for victory. 
 If he see that both are impossible, he will 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 191 
 
 throw away in vain neither his trouble nor 
 his troops, to be ruined for nothing and to 
 become the laughing-stock of others. Were 
 it possible to regulate the life of the body 
 according to our own wishes, it might be 
 worth while to serve the flesh ; but as that 
 is impossible, it is better to renounce all that 
 belongs to the flesh and serve only the spirit. 
 Otherwise, it is neither one thing nor the 
 other. Our bodily life we do not secure, and 
 our spiritual life we lose. Therefore, in order 
 to fulfil the will of the Father, we must utterly 
 renounce all the works of the flesh. 
 
 The life of the body is as the imaginary 
 treasure of another entrusted to us, that we 
 may use it so as to procure for ourselves true 
 riches. If a steward serve a rich man, and 
 know that, however long he may serve this 
 master, the latter will call him to account 
 and leave him with nothing, he does wisely, 
 while he still administers his master's wealth, 
 to do good to others. In that case, if his 
 master send him off, those to whom he has 
 done good will receive and keep him. Men 
 should do the same with the life of the body. 
 
192 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 The life of the body is the treasure of another 
 of which they dispose only for a time. If they 
 use that treasure well, they will obtain true 
 riches for themselves. 
 
 Unless we give up our pretended wealth, we 
 shall obtain no real wealth. We cannot serve 
 both the false life of the flesh and that of the 
 spirit; we must serve the one or the other. 
 We cannot strive for riches and serve God. 
 What is great in the sight of men is an abom- 
 ination unto God. Wealth to God is an evil 
 thing. The rich man is wrong in that he eats 
 in abundance and luxury while the beggar 
 hungers at his gate. All should know that 
 the retaining of property for ourselves is a 
 direct non-fulfilment of the will of the Father. 
 
 There came once to Jesus a rich Pharisee, 
 and he began to boast that he had fulfilled all 
 the commandments of the law. Jesus re- 
 minded him of the commandment to love 
 all men as we love ourselves, saying that this 
 was the will of the Father. The Pharisee 
 answered that he had ever done this. Then 
 Jesus said that it was not true. If thou didst 
 wish to fulfil the will of the Father, thou 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 193 
 
 wouldst have no property. It is impossible 
 to fulfil the will of the Father, if thou hast 
 goods which thou givest not to others. 
 
 And Jesus said to his disciples, It seems to 
 men that without property they cannot live ; 
 but I say unto you that the true life is in 
 giving of your own unto others. A certain 
 man, by name Zaccheus, heard the teaching of 
 Jesus, believed it, and invited Jesus into his 
 house, saying, The half of my substance I give 
 to the poor, and I will repay fourfold those 
 whom I have offended. And Jesus said, Be- 
 hold a man in the act of fulfilling the will of 
 the Father ; but there is no position in which 
 the will of the Father is wholly fulfilled ; our 
 whole life is but the attempt to fulfil it. 
 
 Good has no measure of comparative value ; 
 we cannot say who has done more, who less. 
 The widow who gives her last mite gives more 
 than the rich man who gives his thousands. 
 Neither can we measure good by utility. 
 
 Let us take as our example of the way to do 
 good the woman who took pity on Jesus, and 
 heedlessly anointed his feet with the most 
 valuable oil. Judas said that she bad acted 
 
194 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 foolishly, that she had expended what might 
 have fed many. But Judas was a thief and a 
 liar, who spoke of the good things of the flesh, 
 and never thought of the poor. It is not 
 worldly advantage, nor the amount of it, that 
 is wanted, but that we should at every instant 
 of our lives love others and give up to them 
 what is our own. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE. 
 
 The true food of life is the fulfilment of the will 
 of the Father *, and union with Him. {Giive 
 us this day our daily bread.) 
 
 In answer to the demand of the Jews for 
 proof of the truth of his teaching, Jesus said 
 that the proof was this, that he taught not 
 of himself, but of the common Father of all. 
 
 I teach what is good in the sight of the 
 Father of all men, and therefore what is 
 good for all men. Do what I say, fulfil my 
 five commandments, and you will see that 
 what I say is right. The fulfilment of these 
 five commandments delivers the world from 
 evil, and the commandments are true. It 
 is clear that he who teaches, not what is 
 his own personal will, but the will of Him 
 who sent him, teaches truth. The law of 
 Moses teaches the fulfilment of the will of man, 
 195 
 
196 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 and therefore it is full of contradictions ; my 
 teaching prescribes. the fulfilment of the will of 
 the Father, and therefore it leads in all things 
 to one end. 
 
 The Jews did not understand him, and 
 sought for external evidence that he was the 
 Christ spoken of by the prophets. To this 
 he answered, Seek not to know who I am, nor 
 whether your prophets wrote of me or not, but 
 take to heart my teaching and what I say to 
 you of our common Father. Myself, as a man, 
 you need not believe in, but believe in what I 
 tell you in the name of the common Father of 
 all men. 
 
 No external proof of whence I came is 
 wanted, but that you should follow my teach- 
 ing. He who follows that shall obtain a true 
 life. There can be no proof of the truth of 
 my teaching. It is light, and, as light cannot 
 be made light, so the truth of what is true can- 
 not be proved. My teaching is light, and 
 whoever sees it has light and life, and for him 
 all proof is needless. But whoever is in dark- 
 ness must come to the light. 
 
 But the Jews again asked him who he was 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 197 
 
 after the flesli. He said to them, I am what I 
 told you from the first, a man, and the son of 
 the Father of life. Only he who understands 
 that he is himself a son of this Father (which 
 truth I teach), and who fulfils His will, ceases 
 to be a slave, and becomes free ; for it is only 
 the error which makes us take the life of the 
 body for the real life, that prevents our being 
 free. Only he who understands the truth, that 
 life consists only in the fulfilment of the will of 
 his Father, is free and immortal. 
 
 As the slave does not stay in the master's 
 house forever, whereas the son does always, so 
 the man who lives as a slave to the flesh does 
 not live a life which lasts forever, but the man 
 who fulfils in the spirit the will of the Father 
 has life eternal. In order to understand me 
 you must understand that my Father is not 
 your father — is not the one whom you call 
 God. Your father is the god of the flesh, and 
 my Father is the Spirit of life. Your father is 
 the god of vengeance, the slayer of men, he 
 who punishes men, and my Father gives life. 
 We are, therefore, the children of different 
 fathers. I seek the truth, and you desire 
 
198 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 to slay me, in order to please your god. 
 Your god is a devil, the cause of evil, and if 
 you serve him you serve the devil. My 
 teaching is that we are the sons of the Father 
 of life, and he who believes in my teaching will 
 not see death. The Jews said, How can it be 
 that a man shall not die, when all, even those 
 most pleasing to God, even Abraham himself, 
 died ? How canst thou say that thou thyself, 
 and those who believe in thy teaching, shall 
 not die ? 
 
 To this Jesus answered that he taught noth- 
 ing of himself. I speak of that first cause of 
 life which you call God, and which is in men. 
 This cause I know, and cannot help knowing ; 
 I know its will and fulfil that will, and of that 
 first cause of life I say that it has been, is, and 
 will be, and that for it there is no death. 
 
 To require a proof of the truth of my teach- 
 ing, is as if proof were required of a blind 
 man, why and how he saw light. 
 
 A blind man cured of his blindness, and re- 
 maining the same man that he was before, 
 could only say that he had been blind, and that 
 now he saw. In the same way, the man who 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 199 
 
 once did not, but now does, understand the 
 meaning of his life, can say no more. 
 
 Such a man can only say that formerly he 
 did not know true happiness in life,* and that 
 now he does. Like the blind man cured of .his 
 blindness, if told that he has been cured by 
 wrong treatment, that the man who cured him 
 is a sinner, that he ought to have been cured 
 differently, he can only reply that he knows 
 nothing about right or wrong treatment, about 
 the sinfulness of the man who cured him, or of 
 any other better means of cure ; he knows only 
 that he was blind, and that now he can see. 
 
 It is thus with the man who has attained to 
 an understanding of the meaning of life, of 
 true happiness, and the fulfilment of the will 
 of the Father ; he cannot say whether this 
 teaching is right or not, whether the teacher is 
 a sinner or not, who discovered this teaching, 
 or whether a better happiness can or cannot be 
 known. He says that formerly he saw no 
 meaning in life, and now he does see a mean- 
 ing : he knows no more. 
 
 And Jesus said, My teaching is the awaken- 
 ing of a life that was asleep. He who believes 
 
200 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 in my teaching wakes to eternal life, and is 
 alive after death. 
 
 My teaching is not to be proved, but men 
 follow it because it alone promises life to them. 
 
 As sheep follow the shepherd who gives 
 them food and life, so men accept my teaching 
 because it gives life to all. As sheep do not 
 follow the thief who climbs into the fold, but 
 flee from him, so men cannot believe in a teach- 
 ing founded on violence and slaughter. My 
 teaching is a door for the sheep, and all those 
 who follow me find a true life. The good 
 shepherd is himself the master, and loves his 
 sheep, and gives his life for them; the bad 
 shepherd is the hired one, who loves not his 
 sheep. The same with teachers : he only is a 
 true one who does not pity himself, and he is 
 a bad one who makes self his first object. My 
 teaching is that we take no care for ourselves, 
 but be ready to give up our bodily life for the 
 life of the spirit ; this is what I teach and what 
 I fulfil. 
 
 The Jews still did not understand him, and 
 Still sought for proof whether he were Christ 
 or not, and consequently whether they should 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 201 
 
 believe him or not. They said, Do not perplex 
 us, but say at once, art thou Christ or no ? 
 Jesus answered that they should believe not 
 words but deeds. By the works which I 
 teach, you will understand whether I teach the 
 truth or not. Do what I do, and cease to 
 weigh words. Fulfil the will of the Father, 
 then indeed you all will be united with me 
 and with the Father, for I, the Son of Man, am 
 whsyt the Father is. I am that which you call 
 God, and which I call the Father. I and the 
 Father are one. In your scriptures it is written 
 that God said to men, Ye are gods. Every 
 man by the spirit is the son of the Father, and 
 if he lives to fulfil the will of the Father, he is 
 one with the Father. If I fulfil the will of the 
 Father, the Father is in me and I am in the 
 Father. 
 
 After this Jesus asked his disciples how they 
 understood his teaching about the Son of Man. 
 Simon Peter answered, Thy teaching is that 
 thou art the Son of the God of life, that God 
 is the life of the spirit in man. And Jesus 
 said to him, Blessed art thou, Simon, in having 
 understood this, for man indeed could not have 
 
202 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 revealed this unto thee, but thou hast under- 
 stood this by the revelation of God within 
 thee. 
 
 The true life of men is founded on this 
 knowledge, and such life knows no death. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIFE NOT IN TIME. 
 
 Therefore a man really lives when he thinks 
 only of fulfilling the will of the Father in -the 
 present, and leaves all thought of the past and 
 of the future. (Give us now our daily bread, 
 and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
 them that trespass against ws.) 
 
 To the doubts of his disciples, as to what 
 would be their reward for renouncing the life 
 of the flesh, Jesus answered, There can be no 
 reward for the man who understands the mean- 
 ing of my teaching : firstly, because a man who 
 renounces his relations and those dear to him, 
 and his property, in the name of my teaching, 
 gains a hundredfold more friends and prop- 
 erty ; secondly, because a man who seeks a 
 reward, seeks to have more than others, and 
 that is the thing most contrary to the fulfil- 
 ment of the will of the Father. In the king- 
 
 203 
 
204 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 dom of Heaven there are neither greater nor 
 less ; all are equal. 
 
 Those who seek a reward for doing good are 
 like workmen who demand a higher payment 
 than what they have agreed for with the mas- 
 ter, on the plea that on their own judgment 
 they are worthier than others. Reward and 
 punishment, abasement and exaltation, do not 
 exist for him who understands my teaching. 
 
 No one can be greater or of more importance 
 than another, according to the teaching of 
 Christ. 
 
 Every one may fulfil the will of the Father, 
 but by doing so no one becomes superior to, or 
 better than, another. Only kings and those 
 that serve them think themselves so. Accord- 
 ing to my teaching, says Jesus, there can be 
 no superiors, because he who wishes to be bet- 
 ter than others must be their servant, because 
 my teaching is that life is given a man not for 
 profit of being served, but for devotion of ser- 
 vice altogether for the sake of others, and that 
 he who does not follow this teaching, but exalts 
 himself, shall but become lower. 
 
 In order not to think of reward and exalta- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 205 
 
 tion of self, we must understand what is the 
 real meaning of life. It lies in the fulfilment 
 of the will of the Father, that what He has 
 given should be returned to Him. As the 
 shepherd leaves the whole flock to search for 
 one lost sheep, as a woman turns over every- 
 thing to find a lost coin, so the Father shows >/ 
 Himself to us as the One who draws back to 
 Himself what has once been His. 
 
 We must understand what makes life real. J 
 True life appears in this, that what is lost 
 returns to the owner, that that which sleeps is 
 awakened. Men who possess a true life, and 
 who have returned to the cause from which 
 they sprang, cannot, like other men, stay to 
 consider who is better and who worse, but, be- 
 ing sharers in the life of the Father, can only 
 rejoice over the lost one who returns to the 
 Father. If a son, who has lost his way and 
 wandered from the Father, repent and return 
 to Him, surely the other sons of the Father 
 cannot envy his joy, and can only be glad of 
 the return of a brother. 
 
 In order to believe in this teaching, to change 
 our lives and fulfil it, no external proofs, no 
 
206 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 rewards, are needed ; we require a clear under- 
 standing of what true life is. If men think 
 that they are the masters of their own lives, that 
 their lives were given them to be spent in the 
 pleasures of the flesh, naturally every act of 
 self-sacrifice for others will appear to them 
 worthy of reward, and unrecompensed the}' will 
 give up nothing. If the laborers in a garden, 
 who work there on condition of giving the 
 fruits to the master, having forgotten that 
 agreement, are required to pay according to it, 
 they will, when the chance occurs, kill him 
 who makes the demand. Those who consider 
 themselves to be masters of their own lives, 
 think like the laborers, and do not understand 
 that life is a gift of the spirit, which requires 
 the fulfilment of its will. In order to believe 
 and act, we must understand that man can do 
 nothing of himself, that if he renounces the life 
 of the flesh for the sake of doing good, he does 
 nothing for which he can claim thanks and re- 
 ward. We must understand that a man, when 
 he does good, does only what he is bound 
 to do, what he cannot but do. It is only 
 by thus understanding his life that a man 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 207 
 
 can so believe as really to be capable of doing 
 good works. 
 
 It is this understanding of life which makes 
 the kingdon of Heaven, which is invisible, and 
 not such as can be shown anywhere. The 
 kingdom of Heaven is in the understanding of 
 men. The world lives as it has always done. 
 Men eat, drink, give in marriage, trade, and die, 
 and all the while apart from these things there 
 lives,, in men's thoughts this kingdom. The 
 kingdom of Heaven is the understanding of 
 life, like a tree in spring growing of itself. 
 
 The true life through the fulfilment of the 
 will of the Father is not the life which is past, 
 is not that which is to come, but the life of the 
 present moment, what each of us must do now. 
 It follows, therefore, that we must never cease 
 in our efforts to carry out this life. Men are 
 appointed to care not for the life of the past or 
 for that of the future, but for the actual life at 
 any moment, and during that life to fulfil the 
 will of the Father of all men. If they lose 
 their hold of this life through not fulfilling the 
 the will of the Father, they cannot again re- 
 cover it: the watchman appointed to watch 
 
208 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 through the night does At perform his duty if 
 he fall asleep but for a moment, for in that 
 moment the thief may come. Man, therefore, 
 must apply all his energies to the present hour, 
 for the fulfilment of the Father's will can be 
 achieved only in the present. The will of the 
 Father is the life and the happiness of all men. 
 Therefore the fulfilment of His will is the good 
 of all men. Only those live who do good. 
 Good to men (at the present moment) is life, 
 and unites us to the common Father. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TEMPTATIONS. * 
 
 The delusions of the individual and temporal 
 life hide from men the true life, which alone is 
 real in union with the Father. {Lead us not 
 into temptation,) 
 
 Man is born with a knowledge of the true J 
 life through the fulfilment of the will of the 
 Father. Children live this life, and in them is 
 seen the will of the Father. In order to under- 
 stand the teaching of Jesus, we must under- 
 stand the life of children, and be what they are. 
 
 Children always live according to the will of J 
 the Father, and never break the five command- 
 ments. They would never break them, were 
 they not led into temptation by their elders. 
 Men corrupt children by leading them into 
 temptation, and by teaching them to break the 
 commandments. When they do so, they be- 
 have like one who, tying a millstone around 
 209 
 
210 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 another's neck, casts him into a river. Were 
 there no corruption, the world would have 
 happiness. The world is unhappy only through 
 corruption. Corruption is an evil which men 
 commit for the pretended good of their tem- 
 poral life. Corruption ruins men, therefore we 
 must sacrifice everything in order not to suc- 
 cumb to it. The temptation to sin against the 
 first commandment is that men account them- 
 selves upright in the sight of their fellows, and 
 others as indebted to them. In order not to fall 
 into this temptation men should remember the 
 infinite debt which all men owe to the Father, 
 and that they can only acquit themselves of 
 this debt by showing forgiveness to* their 
 brethren. 
 
 Therefore men must forgive offences against 
 themselves, and not be moved to anger even 
 though the offender trespass again and again. 
 However many times a man is wronged, he 
 must forgive and bear no malice, for the king- 
 dom of Heaven is only possible where there is 
 forgiveness. If we do not forgive, we do the 
 same as the debtor did. A debtor, who owed 
 much, came to the master and asked to be for- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 211 
 
 given his debts. The master forgave him all. 
 The debtor went forth and tormented another 
 man whose debt to him was small. That we 
 may have life, we must fulfil the will of the 
 Father ; we ask forgiveness from the Father of 
 life for that in which we fail to fulfil His will, 
 and we hope to obtain that forgiveness. What 
 do we, then, when we ourselves do not forgive ? 
 We avoid to do for others that which we crave 
 for ourselves. 
 
 The will of the Father is happiness, and evil 
 is that which separates us from the Father. 
 How should we not, then, try to put an end to 
 evil as quickly as possible? for evil ruins us 
 and deprives us of life. Evil plunges us into 
 bodily ruin. As much as we undo this evil, so 
 much do we acquire of life. If evil does not 
 divide us, and we are united in love, we have 
 all that we can wish to have. 
 
 The temptation to sin against the second 
 commandment is that we believe ourselves to 
 have been created for the pleasures of the flesh, 
 and that, by leaving one wife and taking an- 
 other, we add to those pleasures. In order not 
 u> fall into this temptation, we must remember 
 
212 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 that the will of the Father is not that a man 
 should find comfort in the beauty of a woman, 
 but that, having chosen a wife, he should form 
 with her one flesh. The will of the Father is 
 that every man should have a wife, and that 
 every woman should have a husband. If eacli 
 man have but one wife, all men will have 
 wives, and all wives husbands. Therefore 
 whoever changes his wife, deprives a wife of a 
 husband, and gives occasion to another husband 
 to leave his own wife and take the forsaken 
 one. It is allowable to have no wife, but not 
 to have more than one, for that is contrary to 
 the will of the Father, which consists in the 
 union of one husband and one wife. 
 
 The temptation to sin against the third com- 
 mandment is that men, for the happiness of 
 temporal life, have instituted authorities and 
 governments, and require oaths to be taken to 
 fulfil the obligations imposed by them. In 
 order not to fall into this temptation, we must 
 remember that we are bound to answer for our 
 lives to no one but to God. Men should look 
 on these demands of the civil authorities as 
 being acts of violence, and, according to the 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 213 
 
 commandment, not to resist evil, they should 
 give up and fulfil what is required of them, give 
 their property and their labor, but they cannot 
 give promises and oaths which bind their 
 actions. Oaths which are imposed on men 
 make men evil. A man who believes his life to 
 depend on the will of the Father, cannot prom- 
 ise what his actions shall be, because for such a 
 man nothing is more sacred than his own life. 
 
 The temptation to sin against the fourth 
 commandment is that men, when they give 
 way to envy and revenge, think by such means 
 to set others right. If a man offend another, 
 these men think it necessary to punish him, 
 and that it is right to try to condemn him. 
 
 In order not to fall into this temptation, we 
 must remember that men are told not to judge 
 but to save one another, and that they them- 
 selves, committing injustice, cannot judge of 
 what is unjust in others. Men can do but one 
 thing — teach others by giving an example of 
 purity, forgiveness, and love. 
 
 The temptation to sin against the fifth com- 
 mandment is that men think there is a differ- 
 ence between their fellow-countrymen and for- 
 
21-4 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 eigners, and that consequently it is necessary 
 to defend themselves against other nations and 
 to injure them. In order not to fall into this 
 temptation, we must know that all the com- 
 mandments are expressed in one, the fulfilment 
 of the will of the Father, who gives life and 
 happiness to all men alike, and we must do the 
 same good to all men. If other men make a 
 difference, and nations, because they account 
 each other foreigners, make war on each other, 
 each of us notwithstanding should fulfil the 
 will of the Father, and do good to every man, 
 even though he belong to another nationality 
 and make war on our own. 
 
 In order not to fall into any of the errors by 
 which man is beset, we must keep our minds 
 fixed on spiritual things, and not on those 
 which concern the body. If a man once under- 
 stand that only in the will of the Father he has 
 the life which he at the moment lives, no priva- 
 tion, no suffering, nor even death itself can 
 terrify him. Only he really lives who is ready 
 at any moment to give his bodily life for the 
 fulfilment of the will of the Father. 
 
 In order that all men might understand 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 215 
 
 that there is no death for those who truly 
 live, Jesus said, The life eternal must not be 
 understood as being like the present life. 
 Time and place are not in the true life which 
 is in the will of the Father. 
 
 Those who have awakened to the true life 
 live in the will of the Father, and the will 
 of the Father knows neither time nor place. 
 They are alive for the Father. If they have 
 died,, for us, they are alive for God. This is 
 why one commandment includes all ; love 
 with all your strength the origin of life, and, 
 as a consequence, every man who bears within 
 himself that origin. 
 
 And Jesus said, That origin of life is the 
 Christ whom you expect. The understanding 
 of this origin of life, for whom there are no 
 persons, no time, aud no place, is the very 
 Son of Man of whom I have taught you. 
 Whatever hides from men this origin of life 
 is seduction. There is the seduction of Scribes 
 and Pharisees, give not way to it ; there is the 
 seduction of power, give not way to it; and 
 there is again the most dangerous seduction, 
 that of the teachers of religion who call them- 
 
216 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 selves orthodox. Beware of this above all 
 others, because these self-styled teachers have 
 invented a false system of worship, and would 
 allure you from the true God. 
 
 Instead of serving the Father of life by 
 works, they have put words in their place, 
 they teach words and themselves do nothing, 
 therefore you can learn nothing but words 
 from them. The Father needs not words but 
 deeds. They have nothing to teach, because 
 they know nothing, but for personal ad- 
 vantage they call themselves teachers. But 
 you know that no one can be a teacher of 
 others. There is but one teacher for all, the 
 Lord of Life, the spirit. These self-styled 
 teachers, thinking to teach others, deprive 
 themselves of the true life and prevent others 
 from knowing it. They teach men to please 
 their God by external rites, and believe that 
 oaths can bring men to faith. They care only 
 for outward things. If there be but the ap- 
 pearance of faith, they care not for what is in 
 the hearts of men. They are like pompous 
 sepulchres, outside beautiful, and within an 
 abomination. They honor the saints and mar- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 217 
 
 tyrs with words, but they are the same who 
 formerly put them to death, and now they 
 would kill and torment the saints. From 
 them come all the temptations of the world, 
 for they offer evil in the name of good. Their 
 temptation is the root of all temptation, for 
 they have reviled all that is sacred on earth. 
 They will remain long unconverted, they will 
 continue to practise their deceptions, and to 
 increase the sum of evil in the world ; but the 
 time will come when all their temples will be 
 thrown down, all their outward worship abol- 
 ished, and then men will understand and be 
 united through love in the service of the one 
 Father of life, and in the fulfilment of His 
 will. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TEMPTATION. 
 
 Therefore to get rid of evil, we must every hour 
 of our life be in unity with the Father. 
 (Lead us not into temptation.) 
 
 The Jews saw that the teaching of Jesus 
 destroyed their state religion and nationality, 
 and saw at the same time that they could not 
 refute his teaching, so they resolved to kill 
 him. The innocence of Jesus and the justice 
 of his cause stayed them for a time, but the 
 High Priest Caiaphas bethought him of a 
 means of having Jesus put to death, notwith- 
 standing his innocence. Caiaphas said, They 
 had no need to inquire whether this man was 
 innocent or not, for the question was whether 
 they wished the Jewish^ nation to remain one 
 and indivisible, or that it should perish and be 
 lost among others. Our nation will perish and 
 be lost, if we let this man alone and do not 
 kill him. This argument was decisive, and 
 218 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 219 
 
 the Pharisees condemned Jesus to death, and 
 called upon the people to seize him as soon as 
 he appeared in Jerusalem. 
 
 Jesus, though he knew of this, came at the 
 feast of Easter to Jerusalem His disciples 
 would have persuaded him not to go there, but 
 Jesus said, Whatever the Pharisees may wish 
 to do unto me, whatever others may do, noth- 
 ing can change what is for me the truth. If I 
 see,. the light, I know where I am, and whither 
 I go. Only he who knows not truth can fear 
 anything or doubt of anything. He alone 
 stumbles who does not see. 
 
 So he went to Jerusalem. On the way he 
 stopped at Bethany. There Mary poured upon 
 him a vessel of costly ointment. Jesus, know- 
 ing that bodily death awaited him, said to his 
 disciples, who reproached Mary for having 
 anointed him with ointment so costly as spike- 
 nard, that it was a preparation of his body for 
 death. 
 
 When Jesus left Bethany and went to Jeru- 
 salem a great multitude met him and followed 
 him, and this the more persuaded the Pharisees 
 of the necessity of putting him to death. They 
 
220 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 only waited for an opportunity of seizing him. 
 He knew that the slightest imprudent word of 
 his against the law would be the pretext for 
 his punishment, but notwithstanding he entered 
 the Temple and again proclaimed that the wor- 
 ship of the Jews, with their sacrifices and 
 oblations, had hitherto been false, and preached 
 his own doctrines. But his teaching, founded 
 on the prophets, was such that the Pharisees 
 were unable to find an offence against the law, 
 for which he might be condemned to death, all 
 the more that the greater part of the people 
 were in his favor. 
 
 Now at the feast there were certain heathen, 
 and they, hearing of the teaching of Jesus, 
 wished to speak with him about it. The 
 disciples, when they heard of this, were fright- 
 ened. They were afraid that Jesus, in his con- 
 versation with the heathen, would betray him- 
 self, and anger the people. At first they 
 wished to prevent Jesus meeting them, but 
 afterwards decided to tell him who wished to 
 speak with him. On hearing this Jesus was 
 disturbed. He understood that if he preached 
 to gentiles he would clearly show that he had 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 221 
 
 cast off the whole of the Jewish law, would set 
 the common people against himself, and give 
 occasion to the Pharisees for accusing him of 
 associating with the hated gentiles. Jesus was 
 disturbed, knowing this, but he knew also that 
 his vocation was to explain to men, the sons of 
 one Father, their unity without distinction of 
 faith. He knew that this step would ruin him 
 in his bodily life, but that his thus perishing 
 would give men a true understanding of life, 
 and therefore he said, As the grain of wheat 
 must perish for the fruit to grow, so a man 
 must lose his life in the body to bring forth the 
 fruit of the spirit. He who keeps the life of 
 the body, loses the true life ; and he who loses 
 the life of the body, receives the true life. I 
 am troubled by what awaits me, but truly up to 
 this time I have lived only for that, only in 
 order to live till this hour ; how can I not do 
 what I have to do ? Therefore at this hour let 
 the will of the Father be shown in me. 
 
 Then, turning to the people, to the heathen 
 and the Jews, Jesus spoke out clearly what he 
 had said only in private to Nicodemus. He 
 said, The life of mankind with its various 
 
222 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 faiths and various governments, must cease. 
 All human authorities must come to an end. 
 It is only necessary to understand man's posi- 
 tion as a son of the Father of life, and this un- 
 derstanding will destroy all divisions and au- 
 thorities made among men, and will unite all 
 men in one whole. 
 
 The Jews said, Thou destroyest all our re- 
 ligion. According to our law, there is a 
 Christ, and thou sayest there is only a Son of 
 Man, and that he must be exalted. What 
 does this mean ? He answered them, To exalt 
 the Son of Man means to live by the light of 
 the understanding which is in men, in order to 
 live, while there is light, according to it. I 
 teach no new faith, but only what every man 
 knows in himself. Every man knows that he 
 has life in him, and every man knows that life 
 is given to him and to all men by the Father 
 of life. My teaching is only that you should 
 love the life given by the Father to all men. 
 
 Many of those not in authority believed 
 Jesus ; but the great men and the rulers did 
 not believe, because they would not judge of 
 his speech by the meaning which it had for 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 223 
 
 eternity ; they considered his doctrines only 
 by their relation to him. They saw that he 
 turned the people away from them, and wished 
 to kill him, but were afraid to take him openly, 
 so they desired to take him, not in Jerusalem 
 and in the light of day, but somewhere 
 secretly. 
 
 Then there came to them one of the twelve 
 disciples, called Judas Iscariot, and they gave 
 him money that he should betray Jesus into 
 the hands of the servants when he was not 
 with the people. Judas promised them, and 
 again joined Jesus, awaiting the time to betray 
 him. On the first day of the feast, Jesus and 
 the disciples celebrated the passover, and 
 Judas, thinking that Jesus did not know of 
 his treachery, was among them. But Jesus 
 knew that Judas had sold him for a price, 
 and, when they were all seated at table, Jesus 
 took the bread, broke it into twelve parts, and 
 gave a piece to each of the disciples, to Judas 
 among the rest, and without naming any one, 
 said, Take, eat my body. 
 
 Then he took the cup with wine, and gave it 
 to them, that all might drink, and Judas with 
 
224 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 them, saying, One. of you will shed my blood; 
 drink my blood. 
 
 Then Jesus arose and began to wash the 
 feet of all the disciples and of Judas, and 
 when he had finished, he said, I know that 
 one of you will betray me unto death, and will 
 shed my blood, but I have given him to eat 
 and to drink, and have washed his feet. I 
 have done this to teach you how you should 
 behave to those who do you evil. If you act 
 thus, you shall be blessed. The disciples still 
 continued to ask which of them should be his 
 betrayer. Jesus, however, would not name 
 him, lest they should punish him. When it 
 grew dark Jesus pointed to Judas, and told 
 him to go out. Judas rose from the table, 
 went out, and no one stopped him. 
 
 Then Jesus said, This is what it is to elevate 
 the Son of Man. To do so means to be loving 
 like the Father, not to those alone who love 
 us, but to all, even to those who do ill to us. 
 Therefore, do not argue about my teaching, 
 do not reason about it as the Pharisees do ; 
 but do what I have always done, what I have 
 now done before you. I give you one com- 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 225 
 
 mandment — love all men. My whole teach- 
 ing lies in this, that ye love men always and to 
 the end. After this, fear fell on the soul of 
 Jesus, and with his disciples in the night he 
 went into a garden to hide himself. On the 
 way he said to them, You are none of you 
 strong, but all timid; when I am taken you 
 will all flee from me. Then Peter said, No, I 
 will not leave thee, I will defend thee even 
 unto death. And all the disciples said the 
 same. Then Jesus said to them, If it be so, 
 prepare for defence ; collect your stores, for 
 you will have to hide ; take arms in order to 
 defend yourselves. The disciples said that 
 they had two swords. When Jesus heard 
 them speak of swords, he was grieved in his 
 heart, and going to a solitary place he began to 
 pray, telling his disciples to do the same, but 
 they did not understand him. Jesus said, 
 Father, put an end to the struggle of tempta- 
 tion within me. Strengthen me to the fulfil- 
 ment of Thy will ; I desire not my own will, 
 the defence of the life of my body; I desire Thy 
 will, in order not to resist evil. The disciples 
 still understood not. He said to them, Think 
 
226 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 not of the flesh, but strive to raise yourselves 
 in the spirit ; the spirit is strong, but the flesh 
 is weak. And again he said, Father, if this 
 suffering be inevitable, let me bear it ; but in 
 all my suffering I desire only that Thy will, 
 and not mine, be done. The disciples did not 
 understand. Then again Jesus struggled with 
 his temptation, and at length conquered it, 
 and coming to the disciples said, Now all is 
 decided, you may be at peace ; I will not con- 
 tend, but will give myself into the hands of the 
 men of this world. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE FAREWELL DISCOURSE. 
 
 Personal life is a deception of the flesh, an evil. 
 True life is the life which is common to all 
 men. (But deliver us from the evil one.) 
 
 Jesus, feeling himself ready for death, went 
 forth to give himself up. Peter stopped him, 
 and asked him whither he was going. Jesus 
 answered, I am going whither thou canst not 
 come. I am ready for death, and thou art not 
 yet ready Peter said, Not so ; I am now 
 ready to lay down my life for thee. Jesus 
 answered that a man can promise nothing. 
 He said to his disciples, I know that death 
 awaits me, but I believe in the life of the 
 Father, and therefore do not fear death. Be 
 not troubled by my death, but believe in the 
 true God and in the Father of life, and then 
 my death will not seem terrible to you. If I 
 am united with the Father of life, I cannot lose 
 227 
 
228 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 life. It is true that I do not tell you the how 
 and the where of life after death, but I show 
 you the way into true life. My teaching does 
 not speak of what life will do, but points out 
 the only true way to life, by union with the 
 Father. The Father is the beginning of life. 
 My teaching is that life is in the will of the 
 Father, and that the fulfilment of His will 
 gives life and happiness to all men. Your 
 guide, when I am no longer with you, will be 
 your knowledge of the truth. While you fulfil 
 my teaching, you will always feel that you are 
 in the truth, that the Father is in you, and you 
 are in the Father. And you, knowing the 
 Father within you, will feel that peace which 
 nothing can take from you. Therefore, if you 
 know the truth and live in it, neither my 
 death nor your own can alarm you. 
 
 Men imagine that each has a separate exis- 
 tence in his own individual will ; but this is 
 a deception. The only true life is that which 
 acknowledges the source of life in the will of 
 the Father. My teaching unfolds this unity of 
 life, and represents life, not as consisting of 
 separate branches, but as the one tree from 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 229 
 
 which all branches grow. Only he who lives 
 in the will of the Father, like the branch on a 
 tree, really lives, and he who lives by his own 
 will, perishes like the branch which drops off. 
 The Father gave away my life for the triumph 
 of good, and I have taught you to live for this 
 victory. If you fulfil my commandments, you 
 will be blessed. The commandment in which 
 my whole teaching is expressed is this only, 
 that all men should love one another. Love 
 consists in the laying down of our bodily life 
 for others. There is no other explanation of 
 love. When you fulfil my commandment of 
 love, you will not be as slaves that without 
 understanding obey their master's orders, but 
 as free men, free as I myself am, for I have 
 explained to you the meaning of life which 
 follows on the knowledge of the Father of life. 
 You have accepted my teaching, not because 
 you have chosen it by chance, but because it 
 is the only true teaching, and alone can make 
 men free. 
 
 The teaching of the world is to do evil to 
 men ; my teaching is to love one another, and 
 therefore the world has hated you as it has 
 
230 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 hated me. The world does not understand my 
 teaching, and therefore it will persecute you, 
 and do you evil in the belief that by doing so 
 it is serving God. Be not, then, astonished at 
 this, and understand that this must be so. 
 The world, not understanding the true God, 
 must persecute you, and you must uphold the 
 truth. 
 
 Do not sorrow because they kill me, for they 
 will do so because I uphold the truth. There- 
 fore, my death is needed that truth may be 
 upheld. My death, in which I do not renounce 
 the truth, shall strengthen you, and you will 
 understand what is false and what is true, and 
 what follows from the knowledge of falsehood 
 and of truth. You will understand that the 
 error lies in this, that men believe in the life of 
 the body, and do not believe in the life of the 
 spirit ; that the truth lies in union with the 
 Father; and that from this follows the victory 
 of the spirit over the flesh. 
 
 When my life in the body has ceased, my 
 spirit will be with you. But you, like all other 
 men, will not always feel in you the strength 
 of the spirit. You will sometimes grow weak 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 231 
 
 and lose its strength ; you will fall into tempta- 
 tion, and again at times awaken to the true 
 life. You will be often subject to the enslav- 
 ing enticements of the flesh, but that will be 
 only for a 'ime ; you will have to suffer and to 
 be born again in the spirit ; as a woman suffers 
 in the pains of childbirth, and then feels the 
 joy of having brought a man into the world, so 
 will you feel, when, after the enslavements of 
 the flesh, the spirit within you is roused again 
 to life. Then you will feel a happiness and a 
 peace that leaves you nothing more to desire. 
 Know, then, beforehand, that, notwithstanding 
 persecution, internal struggles, and the weaken- 
 ing of the spirit, the spirit is alive in you, and 
 that the only true God is the understanding of 
 the will of the Father, which has been unfolded 
 to you by me. 
 
 Then addressing himself to the Father-Spirit, 
 Jesus said, I have done what Thou hast com- 
 manded me, I have revealed to men that Thou 
 art the beginning of all. And they have 
 understood me. I have taught them that they 
 have all proceeded from one source of infinite 
 life, and that therefore they are all one ; that 
 
232 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 as the Father is in me, and I in the Father, so 
 are they one with me, and with the Father. I 
 have revealed to them that as Thou in love hast 
 sent them into the world, so they through love 
 must live in the world. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE VICTORY OF THE SPIRIT OVER THE FLESH. 
 
 Therefore for the man who lives not a personal 
 life, but in the common life which is through 
 the will of the Father, there is no evil. The 
 Aeath of the body is union with the Father, 
 {Thine be the kingdom, the power, and the 
 glory,') 
 
 When Jesus had finished his discourse to 
 his disciples, he arose, and, instead of escaping 
 or defending himself, he went to meet Judas, 
 who had brought soldiers to take him. Jesus 
 went up to him and asked him why he was 
 there. Judas gave no reply, and a crowd of 
 soldiers surrounded Jesus. Peter rushed to 
 defend his teacher, and, drawing his sword, 
 began to fight ; but Jesus stopped him, saying 
 that whoso takes the sword shall himself perish 
 by the sword, and ordered him to give up his 
 sword. Then Jesus said to those who came to 
 take him, I formerly went amongst you alone 
 233 
 
234 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 without fear, and now I fear you not, and give 
 myself up unto you. You may do with me 
 what you will. And then all the disciples 
 forsook him and fled. Jesus remained alone. 
 The officer ordered the soldiers to bind him 
 and take him to Annas, who had been high 
 priest, and lived in the same house with 
 Caiaphas, the latter being the then high priest. 
 It was he who thought of the pretext which 
 decided the Jews to kill Jesus — either they 
 must kill him or the whole nation must perish. 
 Jesus, feeling himself in the hands of the 
 Father, was ready for death, and did not resist 
 when he was seized, nor did he fear when they 
 led him away. Peter, who had just before 
 promised Jesus that he would not abandon 
 him, but would lay down his life for him, who 
 had tried to defend him, now when he saw that 
 Jesus was led away to punishment, was afraid 
 that he might suffer with him, and to the ques- 
 tions of the servants, whether he were not one 
 of Jesus' followers, denied it, and went away, 
 and only afterwards, when he heard the cock 
 crow, did he understand all that Jesus had said 
 to him. He understood that there are two 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 235 
 
 temptations of the flesh, that of fear and that 
 of using violence ; he understood then that 
 Jesus had struggled against these temptations 
 when he prayed in the garden, and invited his 
 disciples to pray. Now he had himself fallen 
 into both these temptations of the flesh against 
 which Jesus had warned him ; he had tried to 
 resist evil by violence, and to defend truth by 
 fighting and evil-doing ; he had been unable to 
 withstand the fear of bodily suffering, and had 
 denied his teacher. Jesus had not given way 
 to the temptations of resistance when his disci- 
 ples had secured two swords to defend him 
 with, nor to the temptation of fear when he 
 stood before the people in Jerusalem in the 
 presence of the heathen, nor when the soldiers 
 came to bind him and lead him to his trial. 
 
 Jesus was brought to Caiaphas. Caiaphas 
 asked Jesus as to his teaching, but Jesus, 
 knowing that Caiaphas questioned him not in 
 order to know what his teaching was but only 
 in order to accuse him, gave no direct answer, 
 but said, I have concealed nothing, and conceal 
 nothing ; if thou wouldst know what my teach- 
 ing is, ask of those who have heard and under- 
 
236 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 stood it. For this, one of the servitors of the 
 high priest struck Jesus on the cheek, and 
 Jesus asked why he had struck him. The man 
 gave no answer, and the high priest proceeded 
 with the trial. They brought witnesses to 
 prove that Jesus had boasted of destroying the 
 Jewish religion. The high priest again ques- 
 tioned Jesus; but he, seeing that the other 
 questioned him not to learn anything but only 
 to keep up the appearance of justice, answered 
 nothing. 
 
 Then the high priest asked him to say if he 
 were Christ, the Son of God. Jesus answered, 
 Yes, I am Christ, the Son of God ; and now, 
 while persecuting me you will see that the Son 
 of Man is equal to God. 
 
 And the high priest rejoiced over these 
 words, and said to the other judges, Are not 
 these words sufficient to condemn him? And 
 the judges answered that they were, and con- 
 demned him to death. When they had said 
 this, the crowd threw themselves upon Jesus, 
 and they beat him, spat in his face, and abused 
 him, but he held his peace. 
 
 The Jews had no power to put a man to 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 237 
 
 death, they required a decision from the Roman 
 governor ; and therefore, having condemned 
 Jesus according to their law, and abused him, 
 they brought him before Pilate, that he should 
 order him to be put to death. Pilate asked 
 why they wished for his death, and thej r 
 answered, Because he is an evil man. Pilate 
 said, If he is an evil doer, judge him according 
 to your law. They replied, We desire that 
 thou shouldst put him to death, because he has 
 sinned against Caesar : he is a rebel, he has set 
 the people at variance, he forbids tribute to be 
 paid to Caesar, and calls himself the King of 
 the Jews. Pilate called Jesus to him and said, 
 What means this? how art thou King of the 
 Jews? Jesus said, Wouldst thou really know 
 what my kingdom is, or dost thou ask me only 
 for appearance sake? Pilate answered, I am 
 no Jew, and it is the same to me whether thou 
 callest thyself the King of the Jews or not ; 
 but I ask thee what man art thou, and why do 
 they say that thou art a King? Jesus said, 
 They say truly that I call myself a King. I am 
 a King, but my kingdom is not of this world 
 but of heaven. Earthly kings kill and fight, 
 
238 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 and they have soldiers to aid them, but thou 
 seest that I do not resist, though I have been 
 bound and beaten. I am a heavenly King, and 
 all-powerful in the spirit. 
 
 Pilate said, Then it is true that thou callest 
 thyself a King? Jesus answered, Thou know- 
 est it thyself. Every man who lives in the 
 truth is free. By this alone I live, and for this 
 alone I teach ; I reveal to men the truth that 
 they are free through the spirit. Pilate said, 
 Thou teachest truth, but no one knows what 
 truth is, and each has his own conception of 
 the truth. And having said this, he turned 
 from Jesus and went again unto the Jews, and 
 said to them, I find no fault in this man. Why 
 would you put him to death? The priests 
 answered that he deserved death because he 
 roused the people to revolt. Then Pilate, in 
 the presence of the high priests, began to ques- 
 tion Jesus ; but Jesus, seeing that he was only 
 questioned for form's sake, answered nothing. 
 Then Pilate said, I alone cannot condemn him ; 
 take him before Herod. 
 
 In Herod's court Jesus gave no answer to 
 the accusations of the high priests; and Herod, 
 
THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 239 
 
 taking him for an idle boaster, ordered him to 
 be arrayed in a gorgeous garment, and sent 
 him back to Pilate. Pilate pitied Jesus, and 
 would have persuaded the high priest to par- 
 don him, if but in honor of the feast ; but the 
 priests held to what they had said, and they 
 and all the people after them cried aloud, Let 
 him be crucified ! Pilate a second time tried 
 to persuade them to let Jesus go, but the 
 priests and the people still cried that he must 
 be put to death. They said, He is guilty in 
 that he calls himself the Son of God. Pilate 
 again called Jesus before him, and asked him, 
 What does it mean that thou callest thyself the 
 Son of God? Who art thou? Jesus answered 
 nothing. Then Pilate said, Why dost thou not 
 answer me, when I have power to put thee to 
 death or to set thee free? Jesus answered, 
 Thou hast no power over me. Power cometh 
 only from above. Then Pilate for the third 
 time tried to persuade the Jews to let Jesus go, 
 but they said, If thou dost not put to death this 
 man whom we have shown to be a rebel against 
 Ceesar, thou thyself art not a friend but an 
 enemy of Caesar. On hearing these words 
 
240 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 Pilate gave way, and ordered Jesus to be put 
 to death ; but first lie had him stripped and 
 scourged, and then again clothed him in a gor- 
 geous robe, when he was beaten, mocked, and 
 abused. Then they gave him a cross to carry, 
 brought him to the place of punishment, and 
 crucified him. And when Jesus was hanging 
 on the cross all the people reviled him. To all 
 this he answered, Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do. And again, 
 when death was near, he said, My Father, into 
 Thy hands I give my spirit; and bending his 
 head he gave up the ghost. 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 TO UNDERSTAND LIFE IS TO DO GOOD. 
 
 The good tidings of Jesus Christ is the revelation 
 of the understanding of life* 
 
 To understand life we must know that the 
 source of life is infinite good, and that conse- 
 quently the life of man is the same. To under- 
 stand this source we must know that the spirit 
 of life in man proceeds from it. Man, who 
 before did not exist, was called into being by 
 this cause of life. This cause gave happiness 
 to man, and therefore happiness is in its nature. 
 
 In order not to be led away from the source 
 of his life, man must keep to the only property 
 of this source which he can understand, the 
 happiness of the works of love. Therefore the 
 life of man must be devoted to happiness, i.e., 
 to good works and to love. Man can do good 
 to none but his fellow-men. All individual de- 
 sires of the flesh are irreconcilable with the 
 
 241 
 
242 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
 
 source of good, and therefore man must re- 
 nounce them, and sacrifice the life of his body 
 to the cause of goodness, and to active love 
 for his neighbor. From the understanding of 
 life as revealed by Jesus Christ, follows love to 
 our neighbor. There are two proofs of the 
 truth of this understanding ; one is that for 
 those who do not accept it the cause of life ap- 
 pears an illusion which leads men to desire 
 such life and happiness as they cannot attain ; 
 the other is that man in his heart feels love 
 and good to his neighbor to be the only true, 
 free, and eternal life. 
 
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY OF 
 
 Crowell's Illustrated Edition 
 
 OF 
 
 LES MISERABLES. 
 
 " This translation of Victor Hugo's masterpiece is the best one 
 that has been made." — N. Y. Observer. 
 
 " Can hardly fail to be accepted by critical authorities as the per' 
 manent Standard." — Boston Traveller. 
 
 " Has been many times translated into English, but never has the 
 work been done by so clever and faithful a translator as Miss Hap- 
 good." — Albany Press. 
 
 " The most spirited rendering of Hugo's masterpiece into Eng- 
 lish, and the illustrations and the letter-press are just as deserving 
 of praise." — Phila. Press. 
 
 "The translation will no doubt supersede all others." — Cin* 
 Times- "Star. 
 
 " The publishers have made this book very attractive. They are 
 to be commended not only for the edition before us, but more 
 especially for a popular edition which will make this great work 
 accessible to a wider class of readers." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " Deserves the highest praise." — Nation. 
 
 "Miss Hapgood is sympathetic; she becomes one with her 
 author. Her rendering of ■ Les Miserables ' has not been equalled. 
 It will not be surpassed. The standard — it is here — is attained." 
 — National Bepublican. 
 
 ASK YOUR BOOKSELLER FOR 
 
 CROWELL'S ILLUSTRATED EDITION 
 
 LES MISERABLES. 
 
 By VICTOR HUGO. Translated from the French by Isabel 
 F. Hapgood. With 160 full-page illustrations, printed on fine 
 calendered paper, and bound in neat and attractive style. 
 
 5 vols., cloth, gilt top, $7.50; half calf, $15.00. 
 
 Popular edition in one vol., 12mo, $1.50. 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO, 
 
 13 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 
 
COUNT TOLSTOI'S WORKS. 
 
 The demand for these Russian stories has hut just fairly hegun; 
 but it is a literary movement more widespread, more intense, than 
 anything this country has probably seen within the past quarter of 
 a century. — Hoston Traveller. 
 
 ANNA KARENINA. mno, $1.75. 
 
 " Will take rank among the great works of fiction of the age." — Portland Tran- 
 script. 
 
 "As you read on, you say not, 'This is like life ' but 'This is life.'" — IV. D. 
 Howells. 
 
 IVAN ILYITOH, AND OTHER STORIES, xarao, $1.25. 
 
 " No living author surpasses him, and only one or two approach him, in the power 
 of picturing not merely places but persons, with minute and fairly startling fidelity." — 
 Congregationalist. 
 
 "Both the personal character and the literary art of Tolstoi are manifested with 
 simpler and clearer power in these writings than in his novels, and the book becomes 
 necessary to an adequate understanding of Tolstoi's mission and work." — Globe. 
 
 CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH. With Portrait of the Author. i 2 mo, $1.50. 
 A series of reminiscences and traditions of the author's early life. 
 " These exquisite sketches belong to the literature which never grows old, which 
 lives forever in the heart of humanity as a cherished revelation." — Literary World. 
 
 MY CONFESSION AND THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING:, iamo, $1.00. 
 
 An autobiographical account of the changes in the author's religious opinions, and 
 the various causes by which it was brought about ; all of which is told in the most 
 delightful manner, and will enable the reader to understand more clearly his " My 
 Religion," which is the sequel to this volume. 
 
 " Like the writings of Bunyan and Thomas a Kempis, Tolstoi's Confession will be 
 read eagerly and become spiritual tonic and daily food to little children in the Kingdom 
 of Chrisfc> whatever be their ' church,' tongue, or nation." — Critic, New York. 
 
 MY RELIGION. A companion book to My Confession. i2mo, $1.00. 
 
 '•' Should go to every household where the New Testament is read. * * * Every 
 man whose eyes are lifted above the manger and the trough should take ' My Religion ' 
 to his home. Let him read it with no matter what hostile prepossessions, let him read 
 it to confute it, but still read, and 'he that is able to receive it, let him receive it.' "— 
 New York Sun. 
 
 WHAT TO DO. Thoughts Evoked by the Census of Moscow. Containing passages 
 excluded by the Press Censor of Russia. i2mo, $1.25. A sequel to " My Confes- 
 sion " and " My Religion." 
 
 " Fascinating and startling." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 "A very thoughtful and instructive work." — Z ion's Herald. 
 
 THE INVADERS, AND OTHER STORIES. Tales of the Caucasus, umo, $1.25. 
 " Marked by the wonderful dramatic power which has made his name so popular 
 with an immense circle of readers in this country and in Europe." — Portland Press. 
 
 A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR, AND OTHER STORIES. {In Press.) i2mo, $1.50. 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 13 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 I 
 
 CDESaOlMEb