Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/382

 366 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

out altogether. This flame (i.e., consciousness) atten- dant upon matter for a certain time between two infini- ties of time, is — nothing. And though consciousness perceives itself and the whole universe, and sits in, judg- ment on itself and on the universe, and sees the play of chance in this universe, and, above all, calls it a play of chance, in contradistinction to something which is not clmnce — this consciousness itself is only an outcome of lifeless matter — a phantom, appearing and vanishing without meaning or result. Everything is the outcome of ever-changing matter ; and what we call life is but a condition of dead matter.

That is one view of life. It is a perfectly logical view. According to this view, man's reasonable con- sciousness is but an accident incidental to a certain state of matter, and, therefore, what we in our con- sciousness call life, is but a phantom. Only dead matter exists. What we call life, is the play of death.

The other view of life is this. Life is only what I am conscious of in myself. And I am always conscious of my life, not as something that has been or will be (that is how I refect on my life), but when I am con- scious of it, I feel that — I am — never beginning any- where, never ending anywhere. With the conscious- ness of my life, conceptions of time and space do not blend. My life manifests itself in time and space, but that is only its manifestation. Life itself, as I am con- scious of it, is something I perceive apart from time and space. So that, in this view of life, we get just the contrary result : not that consciousness of life is a phantom, but that everything relating to time and space is of the nature of a phantom.

Therefore, in this view, the cessation of my physical existence in time and space has no reality, and cannot end, or even hinder, my true life. And, according to this view, death does not exist.

Matter is the Limit of Spirit.

The material form in which the awakening of our consciousness of true life finds us in this world, is, so