Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/111

 the definition of which was not tangible. The definition or elucidation of a thought, if there was any, was always in a reverse sense; to define or clear up a difficult word use was made of a word or series of words entirely incomprehensible. For a long time I wavered in doubt, did not permit myself to deny what I did not understand, and with all the forces of mind and soul tried to understand that teaching in the same way as those understood it who said that they believed in it, and demanded that others, too, should believe in it. This was the more difficult for me, the more detailed and quasi-scientific the exposition was.

When I read the Symbol of Faith in church Slavic, in its word-for-word translation from the obscure Greek text, I managed somehow to combine my conceptions of faith, but when I read the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, who express those dogmas more in detail, I was unable to combine my conceptions of faith, and was almost unable to make out what was meant by the words which I read. With the reading of the Catechism this disagreement and lack of comprehension increased. When I read the Theology, at first Damascene’s and then Makári’s, my lack of comprehension and my disagreement reached its farthest limits. But at last I began to understand the external connection which united those words, and that train of thoughts which had guided the writer, and the reason why I could not agree with them.

I worked over it for a long time and finally reached a point when I knew the Theology like a good seminarist, and I am able, following the trend of the thoughts which have guided the authors, to explain the foundation of everything, the connection between the separate dogmas, and the meaning in this connection of every dogma, and, above all, I am able to explain why such and not another connection, strange as it is, was chosen. When I attained to that, I was shocked. I saw that all that