Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/314

 298 ESSAYS AND LEITERS

him what he ought to do. Sometimes, and most fre- quently, man acts because he liimself lias, or other people have, suggested an activity to him, and he un- consciously submits to the suggestion. Under normal conditions of life all three influences play their part in prompting a man's activity. Feeling draws him towards a certain activity ; reason judges of this activity in the light of present circumstances, as well as by past experience and future exj»ectation ; and suggestion causes a man, apart from feeling and reason, to carry out the actions evoked by feeling and approved by reason. V'^ere there no feeling, man would under- take nothing ; if reason did not exist, man would yield at once to many contradictory feelings, harmful to him- self and to others ; were there no capacity of yielding to one's own or other people's suggestion, man would have unceasingly to experience the feeling that promj>- ted him to a particular activity, and to keep his reason continually intent on the verification of the expediency of that feeling. And, therefore, all tiiese three in- fluences are indispensable for even the simplest human activity. If a man walks from one place to another, this occurs because feeling has impelled him to move from one place to another ; reason lias approved of this intention and dictated means for its accomplishment (in this case — stepping along a certain road}, and the muscles of the body obey, and the man moves along the road indicated. 'hile he is going along, botli hi3 feeling and his reason are freed for other activity, which could not be the case but for his capacity to submit to suggestion. This is what happens with all human activities, and among the rest with the most important of them : religious activity. Feeling evokes the need to establish a man's relation to God ; reason de tines that relation ; and suggestion impels man to the activity flowing from that relation. But this is so, only as long as religion remains unperverted. As soon as perversion commences, the part played by suggestion grows ever stronger and stronger, and the activity of feeling and of reason weakens. The methods of suggestion are