Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/34

 spiritual being that is bound up with the animal does nothing of itself, but only appraises the activity of the animal being ; coinciding with it when approving its activity, and diverging from it when disapproving.

This observing being may be compared to the arrow of a compass, pointing with one end to the north and with the other to the south, but screened along its whole length by something not noticeable so long as it and the arrow both point the same way; but which becomes obvious as soon as they point different ways.

In the same manner the seeing, spiritual being, whose manifestation we commonly call conscience, always points with one end towards right and with the other towards wrong, and we do not notice it while we follow the course it shows: the course from wrong to right. But one need only do something contrary to the indication of conscience, to become aware of this spiritual being, which then shows how the animal activity has diverged from the direction indicated by conscience. And as a navigator, conscious that he is on the wrong track, cannot continue to work the oars, engine, or sails, till he has adjusted his course to the indications of the compass, or has obliterated his consciousness of this divergence—each man who has felt the duality of his animal activity and his conscience, can continue his activity only by adjusting that activity to the demands of conscience, or by hiding from himself the indications conscience gives him of the wrongness of his animal life.

All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one's activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from one's self the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before.

Some do the first, others the second. To attain the first there is but one means: moral enlightenment—the increase of light in one's self and attention to what it shows; for the second—to hide from one's self the indications of conscience—there are two means: one external and the other internal. The external means