Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/208

Rh that no people have more entangled ideas as to the essence of true knowledge, religion, morality, and existence than men of science, and tiie yet more curious fact that the science of our time, despite all its successes in examining the phenomena of the material world, appears to be, as to human existence, either unnecessary or productive of merely pernicious results. And hence I hold that it is neither philosophy nor science which can determine the relation of man to the universe, but only religion.

And so I answer your first question, as to what I understand by the word "religion," thus—Religion is a certain relation of man to the eternal, infinite universe, its origin and source. Out of this reply to your first question follows naturally that to the second. If religion is a definite relation of man to the universe which determines the meaning of his life, morality is the index and explanation of man's activity which naturally flows from one or other perceived relation. And as we recognise only two of these perceptions, if we include the pagan-social as the enlargement of the personal relation, or three, if we consider it apart, so there exist but three moral teachings: the primitive, savage, individualistic; the pagan-family-State or social; and the Christian or godly, teaching man's subservience to the universe or to God.

From the first conception of man's relationship proceeds the morality common