Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/26

 reason, not to deny reason, religiously to guard one’s reason, and to rely on it alone.

If the meaning of life is obscure, one must not therefore conclude that reason is unequal to elucidate that meaning, but merely that too much of what is unreasonable has been admitted, on 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—not by the divine finger inscribing it on stone, not by the Holy Ghost composing an infallible book, not 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