Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/156

 140 ESSAYS AND LETIERS

it, and you will do for yourself the best it is possible for you to do.'

To understand the statements of philosophy and science, preparation and study are necessary, but for religious comprehension they are not necessary : it is given to everyone, even to the most limited and ignorant of men.

For a man to know his relation to the world around him or to its source, he needs neither philosonhic nor scientific knowledge (an abundance of knowled;ie bur- dening the con.sciousness is ratlier a liindrance), but he needs, if but for a time, to renounce tlie cares of the world, to have a consciousness of his material insig- nificance, and to have sincerity — conditions most often met with (as is said in the Gospels) among children and among the plainest, unlearned folk. 'Hiat is why we often see that the plaine>t, least-learned, and least-educated people quite clearly, consciously, ami easily, assimilate tiie highest Christian understanding of life, while very learned and cultured men continue to stagnate in crude paganism. So, for instance, there are most refined and highly educated people who see the meaning of life in personal enjoyment or in avoidance of sutlering, as did the very wise and highly educated Schopenhauer, or in the salvation of the soul by Sacraments and means of grace, as hiiihly educated Bishops have done ; while an almost illiterate Russian peasant sectarian sees the meaning of life, without any nientil etfort, as it was seen by the greatest sages of the world (Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca) — in acknowledging one's self an instrument of God's will, a son of God.

But you will ask me : * N iat is the essence of this non-philosophic, non-scientific kind of knowledge ? If it is neither philosophic nor scientific, what is it.-^ How is it definable ?' To these questions I can only reply that, as religious knowledare is that on which all other knowledge rests, and as it precedes all other know- ledge, we cannot define it, for we have no means enabling us to do so. In theological language this knowledge is called revelation, and, if one does not