Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/22

 the conviction that mathematics is unreliable and worthless for purposes of measurement has taken root among illiterate workmen, and become for the majority of them an unquestioned fact.

A similar opinion has obtained among men, who, I will boldly say, are bereft of true religious feelings, that reason is unequal to the solution of religious questions, that the application of reason to such questions is the most fruitful source of error, and that the solution of such questions by the aid of reason is sinful pride.

I mention this because the doubt expressed in the question, whether it be needful to strive for distinct consciousness in one’s religious convictions, may be merely the outcome of the belief that reason cannot be applied to the solution of religious questions.

Man has been given by God one single instrument to attain knowledge of self, and of one’s relation to the universe: there is no other—and that one is reason.

Yet he is informed that he may use his reason to solve domestic, family, commercial, political, scientific, artistic questions, but not for the elucidation of the problem for which especially it was given him; and, that, for the solution of the most important truths, of those on acquaintance with which hangs all his life, man must on no account employ his reason, but must acquiesce in their truth