Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/371

 AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 355

and will come from there to judge all mankind iu their bodies, does not prove that you really believe that the things mentioned have occurred, or will occur. You believe you ought to say that you believe these things happened. But you do not believe them ; for the assertions that God is One and Three ; that Jesus flew up into the sky and will come back from there to judge those who will rise in their bodies — have, for you, no meaning. One may utter words that have no sense, but one cannot believe what has no sense. It is possible to believe that the souls of the dead will pass into other forms of life, pass into animals, or that the anniliilation of the passions, or the attainment of love, is the destiny of man ; or it is possible to believe simply that God has forbidden us to kill men, or even that He forbids us to eat — and many other things may be believed that do not involve self-contradiction : but one cannot believe that God is, at the same time, both One and also Three, or that the sky — which for us is no longer a thing that exists — opened, etc.

The people of former ages, who framed these dogmas, could believe in them, but you can no longer do so. If you say you have faith in them, you say so only because you use the word ' faith ' in one sense, while you apply to it another. One meaning of the word ' faith ' refers to a relation adopted by man towards God, which enables him to define the meaning of his whole life, and guides all his conscious actions. Another meaning of the word ^ faith ^ is the credulous accept- ance of assertions made by a certain person or persons.

In the first sense, the objects of faith — though the definition of man^s relation to God and to the world is generally accepted as framed by those who lived pre- viously — are verified and accepted by reason.

But in the second sense, the objects of faith are not only accepted independently of reason, but are accepted on the absolute condition that reason is not to be allowed to question what is asserted.

On this double meaning of the word ^ faith' is founded that misunderstanding which enables people to

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