Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/226

 infinity. The same do I experience when I am told about God, his essence, his attributes, his person; I no longer understand God. I do not believe in God. The same, when I am told about my soul and its properties. I no longer understand about it, and do not believe in my soul. No matter from what side I may approach God, it will be the same: the beginning of my thought, of my reason, is God; the beginning of my love is he again; the beginning of materiality is he again. But when I am told that God has fourteen attributes, mind and will, persons, or that God is good and just, or that God created the world in six days, I no longer believe in God. The same is true of the conception of the soul. When I turn to my striving after truth, I know that this striving after truth is the immaterial foundation of myself, my soul; when I turn to the feeling of my love of the good, I know that it is my soul which loves. But the moment I am told that this soul was placed in me by God from the souls of my parents, when I was in the womb of my mother, and my body was able to receive it, I do not believe in the soul and ask, as ask the materialists: “Show me that of which you speak! Where is it?”