Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/157

 RELIGION AND MORALITY HI

attach a mystic meaning to the word ' revelation/ tiiat term is quite correct ; for this knowledge is not ob- tained by study, nor by the efforts of one man or of many men, but only by one man or many men accept- ing that manifestation of infinite wisdom, which is gradually revealing itself to mankind.

Wliy, 10,000 years ago, were people unable to understand that the meaning of life is not limited to the welfare of one's personality, and why did a time come when a higher understanding of life — the family, social, national. State understiinding of life — was re- vealed to them? ^^'hy, within historic memory, was the Christian view of life disclosed to men? And why was it disclosed to this man or that people in particular ; and why precisely, at such a time, in one and not in another form? To try to an^^wer these (juesitions by seeking for reasons in the historic conditions of the time, life, and cliaracter and special qualities of those who tirst made tliis view of life their own, and first expressed it, is like trying to answer tlie question, ' ^Vhy does the rising sun liglit up some objects before reaching others?' The sun of truth, rising higher and higher over the world, lights up more and more of it, and is reflected first by those objects which are first reached by its illuminating rays, and which are best fitted to reflect them. But the qualities which make some men more suited to receive the rising truth are not any special, active qualities of mind, but, on the contrary, are passive (qualities of heart, rarely coin- ciding with great and inquisitive intellect : renunciation of the cares of the world, consciousness of one's own material insignificance, and great sincerity, as we see ex- emplified by all the founders of religion, wlio were never remarkable eitlier for philosophic or scientific erudition.

In my opinion the chief mistake, and the one which more than any other hinders the true progress of our Christian branch of humanity, lies in the fact that the scientists (who now occupy the seat of Moses) — guiding themselves by the pagan view of life re-established at the time of the Renaissance, and accepting as the