Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/225

 this soul of mine? What connection is there between it and the body? Where are the limits of the soul and the body? From the definition of the properties of the soul directly result these questions. But there are no answers for them. What is so provoking in this teaching is that it compels you to put questions to which there can be no answers. As the definition of the attributes of God have abased and destroyed in me the conception of God, even so the definitions of the properties of the soul and its origin abase and lower in me the conception of the soul. God and the soul I know as well as I know infinity, not by means of definitions, but in an entirely different way. The definitions destroy this knowledge in me. Just as I know beyond any doubt that there is an infinity in number, so I know that there is a God and that I have a soul. But this knowledge is unquestionable for me only because I was inevitably brought to it. To the certainty of the infinity in number I was brought by addition. To the certainty of the knowledge of God I was brought by the question, “Whence am I?” To the certainty of the soul I was brought by the question, “What am I?” And I know beyond any doubt that there is an infinity in number, and that God exists, and that my soul exists, when I am led to this knowledge by means of the simplest questions.

To two I add one, and still one, and again and again, or I break a stick into two, and again into two, and again and again, and I cannot help recognizing infinity. I was born from my mother, and she from my grandmother, and she from my great-grandmother, and the last from whom? And I inevitably come to God. My hands are not I; my feet are not I; my head—not I, my feelings—not I, even my thoughts—not I; what, then, am I? I = I, I = my soul. But when I am told that an infinite number is first or not first, even or odd, I no longer comprehend a thing, and even renounce my conception of