Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/172

 156 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

(the two always accord), should exert the whole strength of his mind to elucidate for himself the religious founda- tions on which he rests ; that is to say, he should clear up the purpose of his life.

Among uneducated navvies, whose work is paid for by the cubic fathom, I have often met with a prevalent conviction that mathematical calculations are decep- tive and should not be trusted. VVhether this is because they do not know mathematics, or because those who calculate the earth they have dug up often intentionally or unintentionally cheat them, the fact remains that disbelief in the sufficiency or applicability of mathematics to estimate quantities, has firmly estab- lished itself among these uneducated labourers, and for most of them has become an unquestioned verity, which they do not even consider it necessary to prove. A similar opinion has established itself among people whom I may safely call irreligious — an opinion to the effect that reason cannot solve religious questions ; that the application of reason to these questions is the chief source of errors, and that to solve religious questions by reason is an act of wicked pride.

I mention this because the doubt expressed in your questions as to whether one should try to attain full and clear understanding, can only arise from the sup- position that reason cannot be applied to the solution of religious questions. Yet that supposition is as strange and as obviously false as the supposition that calculation cannot solve mathematical questions.

Man has received direct from God only one instrument wherewith to know himself and to know his relation to the universe — he has no other — and that instrument is reason : but suddenly he is told that his reason may be used to elucidate his home, family, business, political, scientific or artistic problems, but may not be used to clear up the very thing for which it was chiefly granted him. 1 1 would seem that to clear up the most important truths, those on which his whole life depends, man must on no account use his reason, but must recognise such trutlis apart from his reason, though apart from