Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/149

Rh This reason, as far as I can understand it from reading about this subject and observations on other men, and especially on myself when I used to drink wine and smoke tobacco—this reason, according to my observations, is as follows:—

During the period of conscious life a man can frequently detect in himself two separate beings: one blind, physical, and the other gifted with sight, spiritual. The blind animal being eats, drinks, rests, sleeps, propagates, and moves about like a machine wound up; the seeing spiritual being, connected with the animal, itself does nothing, but only estimates the activity of the living being by coinciding with it when it approves of this activity, and by being indignant with it when it does not approve.

This seeing being may be compared to the needle of a compass, which points with one end to the north, with the other in the opposite direction, to the south; and, being protected in its whole extent by a strip, is invisible as long as the thing that carries the needle moves in its direction, but comes out and becomes visible as soon as that which carries the needle turns from the direction indicated.

In exactly the same way the seeing spiritual being, the manifestation whereof in common language we call conscience, always points with one pole toward the right, and with the other, its opposite, toward the wrong, and is not noticed by us until we turn aside from the direction given to us—that is to say, from wrong to right. But it requires to perform some action contrary to the direction of conscience for the consciousness of the spiritual being to appear, showing the deviation of the animal activity from the direction indicated by conscience. And as a sailor could not continue to work with oars, machinery, or sails, if he knew that he was going in the wrong direction, until he gave his course the direction indicated by the needle of the compass, or else hid from himself the deviation; just exactly so every man who is conscious of the duality of his conscience and his animal activity cannot continue this