Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/46

 30 domain of consciousness, boundless results of unimaginable importance may follow.

Do not let it be supposed that what I am saying has anything to do with the question of free-will or determinism. Discussion on that question is superfluous for my purpose, or for any other for that matter. Without deciding the question whether a man can, or cannot, act as he wishes to (a question, in my opinion, not correctly stated), I am merely saying that since human activity is conditioned by infinitesimal alterations in consciousness, it follows (no matter whether we admit, or do not admit, the existence of free-will) that we must pay particular attention to the condition in which these minute alterations take place, just as one must be specially attentive to the condition of scales on which other things are to be weighed. We must, as far as it depends on us, try to put ourselves and others in conditions which will not disturb the clearness and delicacy of thought necessary for the correct working of conscience, and must not act in the contrary manner: trying to hinder and confuse the work of conscience by the use of stupefying substances.

For man is a spiritual as well as an animal being. Man may be moved by things that influence his spiritual nature, or may be moved by things that influence his animal nature, as a clock may be moved by its hands or by its main wheel. And just as it is best to regulate the movement of a clock by means of its inner mechanism, so a man—one's self or another—is best regulated by means of his consciousness. And as with a clock one has to take special care of the thing by means of which one can best move the inner mechanism, so with a man, one must attend most of all to the cleanness and clearness of consciousness; consciousness being the thing that best moves the whole man. To doubt this is impossible; every one knows it. But a need to deceive one's self arises. People are not as anxious that consciousness should work correctly, as they are that it should seem to them that what they are doing is right, and they knowingly make use of substances that disturb the proper working of their consciousness.