Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/308

 292 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

help wondering what the children whom he now feeds will become like — and much else. The most important questions of conduct in life cannot be solved con- clusively by a reasonable man, just because there is such a superabundance of possible consequences which he cannot but be aware of. Every rational man knows, or at least feels, that in the most important questions of life he can guide himself neither by personal impulses, nor by considerations of the immediate consequences of his activity — for the consequences he foresees are too numerous and too various, and are often contradic- tory one to another, being as likely to prove harmful as beneficial to himself and to other people. Tliere is a legend which tells of an angel who descended to earth and, entering a devout family, slew a child in its cradle ; when asked why he did so, he explained that the child would have become the greatest of male- factors, and would have destroyed the happiness of the family. But it is thus not only with the question, VVhich human lives are useful, useless, or harmful ? None of the most important questions of life can a reasonable man decide by considerations of their immediate results and consequences. A reasonable man cannot be satisfied with the considerations that guide the actions of an animal, A man may regard himself as an animal among animals — living for the passing day ; or he may consider himself as a member of a family, a society, or a nation, living for centuries ; or he may, and even must necessarily (for reason irre- sistibly prompts him to this) consider himself as part of the whole infinite universe existing eternally. And therefore reasonable men should do, and always have done, in reference to the infinitely small affairs of life afi'ecting their actions, what in mathematics is called integrate ; that is to say, they must set up, besides their relation to the immediate facts of life, a relation to the whole immense Infinite in time and space, conceived as one whole. And such establishment of man^s relation to that whole of which he feels himself to be a part, from which he draws guidance for his actions, is what