Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/307

 WHAT IS RELIGION ? 293

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The learned men of our times have decided that religion is not wanted^ and that science will replace it, or has already done so ; but the fact remains that, now as formerly, no human society and no rational man has existed or can exist without a religion. I use the term rational man because an irrational man may live, as the beasts do, without a religion. But a rational man cannot live without one ; for only religion gives a rational man the guidance he needs, telling him what he should do, and what first and what next. A rational man cannot live without religion, precisely because reason is characteristic of his nature. Every animal is guided in its actions (apart from those to which it is impelled by the need to satisfy its immediate desires) by a consideration of the direct results of its actions. Having considered those results by such means of com- prehension as it possesses, an animal makes its actions conform to those consequences, and it always unhesita- tingly acts in one and the same way, in accord with those considerations. A bee, for instance, flies for honey and stores it in the hive because in winter it will need food for itself and for the young, and beyond these considerations it knows, and can know, nothing. So also a bird is influenced when it builds its nest, or migrates from the north to the south and back again. Every animal acts in a like way when it does anything not resulting from direct, immediate necessity, but prompted by considerations of anticipated results. With man, however, it is not so. The difi'erence between a man and an animal lies in the fact that the perceptive capacities possessed by an animal are limited to what we call instinct, whereas man^s fundamental perceptive capacity is reason. A bee, collecting honey, can have no doubts as to whether it is good or bad to collect honey ; but a man gathering in his corn or fruit cannot but consider whether he is diminishing the prospects of obtaining future harvests, and whether he is not depriving his neighbour of food. Nor can he

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