Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/83

 proving the existence of God (for Kant had proved it to me, and I fully comprehended his statement that it was not possible to prove it), I nevertheless tried to find God, hoped to find him, and, following my old habit, turned with prayers to him whom I was looking for and could not find. Now I tried to verify in my mind the proofs of Kant and of Schopenhauer about the impossibility of proving the existence of God, and now I refuted them. Cause, I said to myself, is not such a category of reasoning as space and time. If I am, there is a cause for it, and a first cause. And this first cause of all is what is called God. I stopped at this thought and tried with my whole being to recognize the presence of this cause. The moment I recognized that there was a force in the power of which I was, I felt the possibility of living. But I asked myself: “What is this cause, this force? How am I to think of it? In what relation shall I stand to that which I call God?” and nothing but familiar answers occurred to me: “He is the creator, the provider.” These answers did not satisfy me, and I felt that what was necessary for life was being lost in me. I was horrified and began to pray to him whom I was searching after to help me, and the more I prayed, the more evident it became to me that he did not hear me and that there was nobody to turn to. With despair in my heart because there was no God, I said: “O Lord, have mercy on me! Save me! O Lord my God, teach me!” And nobody had mercy on me, and I felt that my life was stopping.

Again and again I arrived from various sides at the same recognition that I could not have appeared in the world without any cause or reason or meaning, that I could not be such a callow bird that has tumbled out of its nest, as I felt myself to be. Let me, fallen bird, lie on my back and pipe in the high grass,—I am piping because I know that my mother carried me in her womb, hatched and warmed me, fed and loved me. Where is she, that