Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/151

 himself, all-blessed.’ Here it points out to us, in the first place, the incomprehensible essence of God (or nature, or substance), as much as it can be comprehended now by our reason, and, in the second place, the essential attributes by which this essence, or more correctly, God himself, is distinguished from other essences.” (pp. 94 and 95.)

The essence, nature, substance of God is pointed out to us, and so are the attributes by which God is distinguished from other essences. What are we talking about? About a limited being or about God How can God be distinguished from others? How can we distinguish in him substance, nature, and attributes? Is he not incomprehensible? Is not he higher and more perfect than anything? Less and less do I understand the sense of what they are trying to tell me, and it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that for some reason they need inevitably, by rejecting sound reason, the laws of logic, conscience, for some secret purposes they need to do what they have been doing until now: to reduce my conception about God and the conception of all believers to a base, semi-pagan conception. Here is what is said about this nature and about the attributes of him who is here called God:

“17. The conception about the essence of God. God is a spirit. The word ‘spirit,’ indeed, more comprehensibly than anything else signifies for us the incomprehensible essence or substance of God. We know of only two kinds of substances: material, complex substances, which have no consciousness or reason, and immaterial, simple, spiritual substances, which are more or less endowed with consciousness and reason. We can nowise admit that God has in himself the substance of the first kind, since we see in all his acts, both of creation and of foresight, the traces of the greatest reason. On the other hand, we are of necessity forced to assume the substance