Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/78



I considered that this belief repelled me and seemed meaningless when it was professed by people who lived contrary to this belief, and that it attracted me and appeared rational when I saw that men lived by it,—I understood why I had rejected that belief and had found it meaningless, while now I accepted it and found it full of meaning. I saw that I had erred and how I had erred. I had erred not so much because I had reasoned incorrectly as because I had lived badly. I saw that the truth had been veiled from me not so much by the aberration of my mind as by my life itself in those exclusive conditions of Epicureanism, of the gratification of the appetites, in which I had passed it. I saw that the question of what my life was, and the answer to it, that it was an evil, were quite correct. What was incorrect was that the answer, which had reference to me only, had been transferred by me to life in general. I asked myself what my life was, and received as an answer: “An evil and an absurdity.” And indeed, my life—that life of pampered appetites and whims—was meaningless and evil, and so the answer, “Life is evil and meaningless,” had reference only to my life, and not to human life in general. I comprehended the truth, which I later found in the gospel, that men had come to love the darkness more than the light because their deeds were bad, for those who did bad deeds hated the light and did not go to it, lest their deeds be disclosed. I saw that in order to comprehend the meaning of life it was