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 ageof 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 wasprofessed 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 andannounced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his school.
This discovery was that there is no God and that all we are taughtabout Him is a mere invention (this was in 1838). I remember how
interested my elder brothers were in this information. They calledme 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 tohim, devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church
services, to fast and to lead a pure and moral life, we all -- evenour 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 theinvitation) by the argument that even David danced before the Ark.
I sympathized with these jokes made by my elders, and drew fromthem the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the
catechism and go to church, one must not take such things tooseriously. I remember also that I read Voltaire when I was very
young, and that his raillery, far from shocking me, amused me verymuch.
My lapse from faith occurred as is usual among people on ourlevel of education. In most cases, I think, it happens thus: a
man lives like everybody else, on the basis of principles notmerely having nothing in common with religious doctrine, but
generally opposed to it; religious doctrine does not play a part inlife, in intercourse with others it is never encountered, and in a
man's own life he never has to reckon with it. Religious doctrineis professed far away from life and independently of it. If it is
encountered, it is only as an externalphenomenon disconnected fromlife.
Then as now, it was and is quite impossible to judge by aman's life and conduct whether he is a believer or not. If there
be a difference between a man who publicly professes orthodoxy andone who denies it, the difference is not in favor of the former.
Then as now, the public profession and confession of orthodoxy waschiefly 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 havingreceived communion. But a man of our circle who has finished his
education and is not in the government service may even now (andformerly it was still easier for him to do so) live for ten or
twenty years without once remembering that he is living amongChristians and is himself reckoned a member of the orthodox
Christian Church. So that, now as formerly, religious doctrine, accepted on
trust and supported by externalpressure, thaws away graduallyunder the influence of knowledge and experience of life which
conflict with it, and a man very often lives on, imagining that hestill holds intact the religious doctrine imparted to him in
childhoodwhereas in fact not a trace of it remains. S., a clever and truthful man, once told me the story of how
he ceased to believe. On a huntingexpedition, when he was alreadytwenty-six, he once, at the place where they put up for the night,
knelt down in the evening to pray -- a habit retained fromchildhood. His elder brother, who was at the hunt with him, was
lying on some hay and watching him. When S. had finished and wassettling down for the night, his brother said to him: "So you
still do that?" They said nothing more to one another. But from that day S.
ceased to say his prayers or go to church. And now he has notprayed, received communion, or gone to church, for thirty years.
And this not because he knows his brother's convictions and hasjoined him in them, nor because he has decided anything in his own
soul, but simply because the word spoken by his brother was likethe push of a finger on a wall that was ready to fall by its own
weight. The word only showed that where he thought there wasfaith, in reality there had long been an empty space, and that
therefore the utterance of words and the making of signs of thecross and genuflections while praying were quite senseless actions.
Becoming conscious of their senselessness he could not continuethem.
So it has been and is, I think, with the great majority ofpeople. I am speaking of people of our educational level who are
sincere with themselves, and not of those who make the professionof faith a means of attaining worldly aims. (Such people are the
most fundamental infidels, for if faith is for them a means ofattaining any worldly aims, then certainly it is not faith.) these
people of our education are so placed that the light of knowledgeand life has caused an artificialerection to melt away, and they
have either already noticed this and swept its place clear, or theyhave not yet noticed it.
The religious doctrine taught me from childhood disappeared inme as in others, but with this difference, that as from the age of
fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my rejection of thedoctrine became a conscious one at a very early age. From the time
I was sixteen I ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to churchor to fast of my own volition. I did not believe what had been
taught me in childhood but I believed in something. What it was Ibelieved in I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or
rather I did not deny God -- but I could not have said what sort ofGod. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his
teaching consisted in I again could not have said. Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith --
my only real faith -- that which apart from my animal instinctsgave impulse to my life -- was a belief in perfecting myself. But
in what this perfecting consisted and what its object was, I couldnot have said. I tried to perfect myself mentally -- I studied
everything I could, anything life threw in my way; I tried toperfect my will, I drew up rules I tried to follow; I perfected
myself physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sortsof exercises, and accustoming myself to endurance and patience by
all kinds of privations. And all this I considered to be thepursuit of perfection. the beginning of it all was of course moral
perfection, but that was soon replaced by perfection in general: by the desire to be better not in my own eyes or those of God but
in the eyes of other people. And very soon this effort againchanged into a desire to be stronger than others: to be more
famous, more important and richer than others. II
Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive historyof my life during those ten years of my youth. I think very many
people have had a like experience. With all my soul I wished to begood, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when
I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sinceredesire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and
ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praisedand encouraged.
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride,anger, and revenge -- were all respected.
Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk andfelt that they approved of me. The kind aunt with whom I lived,
herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothingshe so desired for me as that I should have relations with a
married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaisonavec une femme comme il faut'. [Footnote: Nothing so forms a
young man as an intimacy with a woman of good breeding.] Anotherhappiness she desired for me was that I should become an aide-de-
camp, and if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor. But thegreatest happiness of all would be that I should marry a very rich
girl and so become possessed of as many serfs as possible. I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and
heartache. I killed men in war and challenged men to duels inorder to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the
peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, anddeceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds,
drunkenness, violence, murder -- there was no crime I did notcommit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my
contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparativelymoral man.
So I lived for ten years. During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness,
and pride. In my writings I did the same as in my life. to getfame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to
hide the good and to display the evil. and I did so. How often inmy writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference, or
even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness which gavemeaning to my life! And I succeeded in this and was praised.
At twenty-six years of age [Footnote: He was in fact 27 at thetime.] I returned to Petersburg after the war, and met the writers.
They received me as one of themselves and flattered me. And beforeI had time to look round I had adopted the views on life of the set
of authors I had come among, and these views completely obliteratedall my former strivings to improve -- they furnished a theory which
justified the dissoluteness of my life. The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship,
consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and inthis development we -- men of thought -- have the chief part; and
among men of thought it is we -- artists and poets -- who have thegreatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest
the simple question should suggest itself: What do I know, and whatcan I teach? it was explained in this theory that this need not be
known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I wasconsidered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very
natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote andtaught without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I