Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/89

 one from the other, nor could I. No matter how strange seemed to me much of what entered into the faith of the masses, I accepted everything, attended services, stood up in the morning and in the evening to pray, fasted, prepared myself for the communion, and at first my reason did not revolt against all that. What formerly had seemed impossible to me, now did not provoke any opposition in me.

My relations toward the faith now and then were quite different. Formerly life itself had appeared to me full of meaning, and faith had appeared to me as an arbitrary assertion of certain entirely unnecessary and irrational principles which were not connected with life. I had asked myself then what meaning these principles had, and, on convincing myself that they had none, I had rejected them. But now, on the contrary, I knew firmly that my life had no meaning and could have none, and the principles of faith not only did not appear to me as unnecessary, but I had been brought by incontestable experience to the conviction that only those principles of faith gave a meaning to life. Formerly I used to look upon them as upon an entirely useless, confused mass of writing, but now, though I did not understand them, I knew that there was a meaning in them, and I said to myself that I must learn to understand them.

I made the following reflection: I said to myself that the knowledge of faith flowed, like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious beginning. This beginning is God, the beginning of the human body and of man’s reason. Just as my body has devolved to me from God, thus my reason and my comprehension of life have reached me, and so all those stages of the development of the comprehension of life cannot be false. Everything which people believe sincerely must be the truth; it may be differently expressed, but it cannot be a lie, and so, if it presents itself to me as a lie, it means only that I do