Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/18

Rh other individuals, but solely to fulfil the will of Him who created this life.

This conception alone gives life a rational meaning, and makes its aim (which is to fulfil the will of God) attainable. And, most important of all, only when enlightened by this conception does man see clearly the right direction for his own activity. Man is then no longer destined to suffer and to despair, as was inevitable under the former conception.

"The universe and I in it," says a man of this conception to himself, "exist by the will of God. I cannot know the whole of the universe (for in its immensity it transcends my comprehension), nor can I know my own position in it, but I do know with certainty what God, who has sent me into the world (infinite in time and space, and therefore incomprehensible to me), demands from me. This is revealed to me (1) by the collective wisdom of the best men who have gone before me, i.e. by tradition, (2) by my own reason, and (3) by my heart, i.e. by the highest aspiration of my nature.

Tradition (the collective wisdom of my greatest forerunners) tells me