Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/206

 telligent and so illiterate that I believe the polemic of the author and agree with him that the dogma of the Trinity is recognized by the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Infallible Church, and that I want to believe in it. I cannot believe it, because I cannot form any concept about what is meant by the triune God. Neither I nor any one else can recognize this dogma, if for no other reason, because the words, as they were expressed at first, have remained, after long speeches, quasi-explanations and proofs, nothing but words which can have no meaning whatever for a man with an unimpaired reason.

On the basis of the sacred church tradition you may assert anything you please, and if the tradition is imperturbable, it is impossible not to recognize as true what is transmitted by tradition; in any case, it is necessary to assert something, but here nothing is asserted,—these are words without any inner connection. Let us assume that it is asserted that God lives on Olympus, that God is made of gold, that there is no god, that there are four-teen gods, that God has children, or a son. All those are strange, wild assumptions, but with each of them some idea is connected; but no idea is connected with the assertion that God is one and three. So, no matter what authority may assert it, even if it be all the living and dead patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and no matter what uninterrupted voice from heaven may call out to me, saying, “I am one and three,” I shall remain in the same condition, not of unbelief (there is nothing here to believe in), but of perplexity about what these words mean, and in what language and by what law they may receive a meaning. For me, a man educated in the spirit of the Christian faith, who after all the erring of his life has retained a dim consciousness of what there is true in it; for me, who by the blunders of life and the seduction of reason have reached the negation of life and most terrible despair; for me, who have found salvation in uniting