A CONFESSION [23]
meaning in life than to live while life lasts, taking all one's
hands can seize. I saw this because if they had had a meaning
which destroyed the fear of loss, suffering, and death, they would
not have feared these things. But they, these believers of our
circle, just like myself, living in sufficiency and superfluity,
tried to increase or preserve them, feared privations, suffering,
and death, and just like myself and all of us unbelievers, lived to
satisfy their desires, and lived just as badly, if not worse, than
the unbelievers.
No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith.
Only deeds which showed that they saw a meaning in life making what
was so dreadful to me -- poverty, sickness, and death -- not
dreadful to them, could convince me. And such deeds I did not see
among the various believers in our circle. On the contrary, I saw
such deeds done [Footnote: this passage is noteworthy as being one
of the few references made by Tolstoy at this period to the
revolutionary or "Back-to-the-People" movement, in which many young
men and women were risking and sacrificing home, property, and life
itself from motives which had much in common with his own
perception that the upper layers of Society are parasitic and prey
on the vitals of the people who support them. -- A.M.] by people of
our circle who were the most unbelieving, but never by our so-
called believers.
And I understood that the belief of these people was not the
faith I sought, and that their faith is not a real faith but an
epicurean consolation in life.
I understood that that faith may perhaps serve, if not for a
consolation at least for some distraction for a repentant Solomon
on his death-bed, but it cannot serve for the great majority of
mankind, who are called on not to amuse themselves while consuming
the labour of others but to create life.
For all humanity to be able to live, and continue to live
attributing a meaning to life, they, those milliards, must have a
different, a real, knowledge of faith. Indeed, it was not the fact
that we, with Solomon and Schopenhauer, did not kill ourselves that
convinced me of the existence of faith, but the fact that those
milliards of people have lived and are living, and have borne
Solomon and us on the current of their lives.
And I began to draw near to the believers among the poor,
simple, unlettered folk: pilgrims, monks, sectarians, and peasants.
The faith of these common people was the same Christian faith as
was professed by the pseudo-believers of our circle. Among them,
too, I found a great deal of superstition mixed with the Christian
truths; but the difference was that the superstitions of the
believers of our circle were quite unnecessary to them and were not
in conformity with their lives, being merely a kind of epicurean
diversion; but the superstitions of the believers among the
labouring masses conformed so with their lives that it was
impossible to imagine them to oneself without those superstitions,
which were a necessary condition of their life. the whole life of
believers in our circle was a contradiction of their faith, but the
whole life of the working-folk believers was a confirmation of the
meaning of life which their faith gave them. And I began to look
well into the life and faith of these people, and the more I
considered it the more I became convinced that they have a real
faith which is a necessity to them and alone gives their life a
meaning and makes it possible for them to live. In contrast with
what I had seen in our circle -- where life without faith is
possible and where hardly one in a thousand acknowledges himself to
be a believer -- among them there is hardly one unbeliever in a
thousand. In contrast with what I had seen in our circle, where
the whole of life is passed in idleness, amusement, and
dissatisfaction, I saw that the whole life of these people was
passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life. In
contradistinction