Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/80

 —he must procure it not for himself, but for everybody. When he does so, I have the firm consciousness that he is happy and that his life is rational. What had I been doing during my thirty years of conscious life? Not only had I procured no sustenance for everybody, but not even for myself. I had lived as a parasite and, upon asking myself why I lived, I had received the answer: “For no reason.” If the meaning of life consisted in sustaining it, how could I, who for thirty years had busied myself not with sustaining life, but with ruining it in myself and in others, have received any other answer than that my life was an absurdity and an evil? It really was an absurdity and an evil.

The life of the world goes on by somebody’s will,—somebody is doing some kind of work with the life of this world and with our lives. In order to have the hope of understanding the meaning of this will, it is first of all necessary to fulfil it, to do that which is wanted of us. If I am not going to do what is wanted of me, I shall never be able to understand what is wanted of me, and much less, what is wanted of all of us and, of the whole world.

If a naked, starving beggar is picked up on a crossroad, is brought under the roof of a beautiful building, is given to eat and drink, and is made to move a certain stick up and down, it is evident that before the beggar is to discuss why he has been taken up, why he should move that stick, whether the arrangement of the whole building is sensible, he must first move the stick. When he does so, he will comprehend that the stick moves a pump, that the pump raises the water, and that the water flows down the garden beds. Then he will be taken out of the covered well and will be put to do some other work, and he will garner the fruit and will enter into the joy of his master, and, passing from the lower to the higher work, comprehending more and more the arrange-