Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/189

Rh, or rather in order to conceal them from oneself, much mental capacity and special talent is indeed necessary; but in order to learn the law of one's life, or, as already expressed, to bring one's faith into complete consciousness, no special mental capacity is required; one has but to refuse to admit anything contrary to reason, not to deny reason, religiously to guard one's reason, and to rely on it alone.

If the meaning of life is obscure to any one, one must not therefore conclude that reason is unequal to elucidating that meaning, but merely that too much of what is unreasonable has been admitted upon faith, and that everything uncorroborated by reason must be set aside.

Hence my answer to the question, whether one should try to attain complete consciousness in one's inner spiritual life, is, that this is precisely the most needful and important business of our lives. Most needful and important, because the only reasonable conception of life is the accomplishment of the will of Him who sent us into the world—that is, the will of God. And His will is revealed to us, not by any extraordinary miracle, nor by the divine finger inscribing it on stone, nor by the Holy Ghost composing an infallible book, nor by the infallibility of any special holy person or collection of persons, but by the working of the reason of all men, who pass on to each other by word and deed the truths which are ever becoming more evident to their consciousness.

This knowledge never has been, and never will be, complete, but augments continually as the life of mankind advances. The longer we live the more clearly and fully do we learn the will of God, and in consequence what we must do to fulfil it.

Therefore, I am firmly convinced that the elucidation and verbal expression (which is an unmistakable token of clearness of idea) of all religious truth accessible to him by every man, however small he may think himself or others may consider him—the least being essentially the greatest—are of the most sacred and most essential duties of man.