Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/60

 way out but those four. The one way out was not to understand that life was meaningless, vanity, and an evil, and that it was better not to live. I could not help knowing it and, having once learned it, I could not shut my eyes to it. The second way out was to make use of life such as it is, without thinking of the future. I could not do that either. Like Sakya-Muni, I could not go out hunting, when I knew that there was old age, suffering, death. My imagination was too vivid. Besides, I could not enjoy the accident of the moment, which for a twinkling threw enjoyment in my path. The third way out was, having come to see that life was an evil and a foolishness, to make an end of it and kill myself. I comprehended that, but for some reason did not kill myself. The fourth way out was to live in the condition of Solomon, of Schopenhauer,—to know that life was a stupid joke played on me, and yet to live, wash and dress myself, dine, speak, and even write books. That was repulsive and painful for me, but still I persisted in that situation.

Now I see that if I did not kill myself, the cause of it was a dim consciousness of the incorrectness of my ideas. No matter how convincing and incontestable seemed to me the train of my thoughts and of the thoughts of the wise men who had brought us to recognize the meaninglessness of life, there was left in me an obscure doubt of the correctness of my judgment.

It was like this: I, my reason, have discovered that life is unreasonable. If there is no higher reason (there is none, and nothing can prove it), reason is the creator of life for me. If there were no reason, there would be no life for me. How then does this reason negate life, since it is itself the creator of life? Life is everything. Reason is the fruit of life, and this reason denies life itself. I felt that something was wrong there.

Life is a meaningless evil,—that was incontestable, I said to myself. But I have lived, still live, and all hu-