A CONFESSION [0]
A Confession
by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
I
I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith.
I was taught it in childhood and throughout my boyhood and youth.
But when I abandoned the second course of the university at the age
of eighteen I no longer believed any of the things I had been
taught.
Judging by certain memories, I never seriously believed them,
but had merely relied on what I was taught and on what was
professed by the grown-up people around me, and that reliance was
very unstable.
I remember that before I was eleven a grammar school pupil,
Vladimir Milyutin (long since dead), visited us one Sunday and
announced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his school.
This discovery was that there is no God and that all we are taught
about Him is a mere invention (this was in 1838). I remember how
interested my elder brothers were in this information. They called
me to their council and we all, I remember, became very animated,
and accepted it as something very interesting and quite possible.
I remember also that when my elder brother, Dmitriy, who was
then at the university, suddenly, in the passionate way natural to
him, devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church
services, to fast and to lead a pure and moral life, we all -- even
our elders -- unceasingly held him up to ridicule and for some
unknown reason called him "Noah". I remember that Musin-Pushkin,
the then Curator of Kazan University, when inviting us to dance at
his home, ironically persuaded my brother (who was declining the
invitation) by the argument that even David danced before the Ark.
I sympathized with these jokes made by my elders, and drew from
them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the
catechism and go to church, one must not take such things too
seriously. I remember also that I read Voltaire when I was very
young, and that his raillery, far from shocking me, amused me very
much.
My lapse from faith occurred as is usual among people on our
level of education. In most cases, I think, it happens thus: a
man lives like everybody else, on the basis of principles not
merely having nothing in common with religious doctrine, but
generally opposed to it; religious doctrine does not play a part in
life, in intercourse with others it is never encountered, and in a
man's own life he never has to reckon with it. Religious doctrine
is professed far away from life and independently of it. If it is
encountered, it is only as an external phenomenon disconnected from
life.
Then as now, it was and is quite impossible to judge by a
man's life and conduct whether he is a believer or not. If there
be a difference between a man who publicly professes orthodoxy and
one who denies it, the difference is not in favor of the former.
Then as now, the public profession and confession of orthodoxy was
chiefly met with among people who were dull and cruel and who
considered themselves very important. Ability, honesty,
reliability, good-nature and moral conduct, were often met with
among unbelievers.
The schools teach the catechism and send the pupils to church,
and government officials must produce certificates of having
received communion. But a man of our circle who has finished his
education and is not in the government service may even now (and
formerly it was still easier for him to do so) live for ten or
twenty years without once remembering that he is living among
Christians and is himself reckoned a member of the orthodox
Christian Church.
So that, now as formerly, religious doctrine, accepted on
trust and supported by external pressure, thaws away gradually
under the influence of knowledge and experience of life which
conflict with it, and a man very often lives on, imagining that he
still holds intact the religious doctrine imparted to him in
childhood whereas in fact not a trace of it remains.
S.,