homework

I.

THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION OF HUMAN LIFE

EVERY man lives only that he may feel well,—for his

own good. If he does not feel the desire of good for him

self, he does not feel himself living. Man cannot present

to himself life without the desire of good for himself.

To live is for every man the same as to wish and obtain

the good; to wish and obtain the good is the same as to

live.

Man feels life only in himself, in his personality, and

so man imagines at first that the good which he wishes

is only the good of his personality. At first it seems to

him that only he lives, lives truly. The life of other

beings does not at all present itself to him like his own,

—it presents itself to him only as a semblance of life;

the life of other beings man knows only from observation,

and only through observation does he know that they live.

Of the life of other beings man knows when he wants

to think of them; but of himself he knows at all times,

and so each man sees his own life only as the real life.

The life of other beings, which surround him, presents

itself to him only as one of the conditions of his exist

ence. If he does not wish others any evil, he refrains

from doing so because the sight of the sufferings of others

impairs his welfare. If he wishes others well, he does

not do so in the same way as to himself,–not that he

whom he wishes well may fare well, but that the good of

the other beings may increase the good of his own life.

What is important and necessary for man is the good in

that life which he feels his own, that is, his good. 239

Leo Tolstoy, On Life, selections

240 ON LIFE

Now, while striving to attain his good, man observes

that this good depends on other beings, and, observing

these other beings, he sees that all of them—both men

and animals —have precisely the same conception of life

which he has. Each of these beings, like him, feels only

its own life and its own good, and regards only its own

life as important and real, and the life of all the other

beings only as a means for its own good. Man sees that

each of the living beings must be prepared, like himself,

for the sake of its little good, to deprive of a greater good

and even of life all the other beings, and among them

him, as a reasoning man. Having comprehended this, man

involuntarily reflects that if this is so,–and he knows

that it is indubitably so,– not one being, and not a

dozen beings, but all the endless creatures of the world

are prepared, each for the attainment of its own good, at

any moment to destroy him, for whom alone life exists.

Having comprehended this, man sees that his personal

good, in which alone he understands his life, is not only

not easy of acquisition, but will certainly be taken from

him.

The longer a man lives, the more this reflection is con

firmed by experience, and he sees that the life of the

world, in which he takes part, and which is composed of

interrelated individuals that wish to destroy and devour

one another, not only cannot be a good for him, but cer

tainly is a great evil.

More than this: even if a man is placed in such

favourable conditions that he can successfully struggle

against other individuals, without fearing for himself,

reason and experience will show him very soon that even

those semblances of good which he snatches away from

life, in the form of enjoyments of personality, are not any

good, but, as it were, only samples of good, given to him

solely that he may the more sensibly feel the sufferings

which are always connected with the enjoyments. The

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longer a man lives, the more clearly does he see that the

enjoyments grow less and less, and the ennui, satiety,

labours, and sufferings more and more.

More than this: as he begins to experience a weakening

of his forces and diseases, and contemplates the sickness,

old age, and death of other men, he cannot fail to observe

that his own existence, in which alone he feels real, full

life, is with every hour, with every motion approaching

debility, old age, and death; that his life, in addition to

being subject to thousands of casualties of destruction by

other beings that are struggling with him, and to ever

increasing sufferings, by its very essence is only an un

ceasing approach to death, to that condition in which,

together with the life of the individual, there will cer

tainly be destroyed every possibility of any good of per

sonality whatsoever.V. Man sees that he, his personality,–

that in which alone he feels life,–does nothing but

struggle against what it is impossible to struggle against,

against the whole world; that he is seeking enjoyments

which give only a semblance of good and always end in

suffering, and wishes to retain life, which it is impossible

to retain. He sees that he himself, his personality,— that

for which alone he wishes the good and life,–can have

neither good nor life. And that which he wishes to have,

the good and life, is possessed only by those beings, for

eign to him, whom he does not feel and cannot feel, and

of whose existence he neither can nor wishes to know.

What is most important to him and what alone he needs,

what, as he thinks, lives the only real life, his personality,

will perish and be bones and worms,– not he; and what

he does not need and is of no importance to him, what he

does not feel as living, all that world of struggling and

alternating beings, is the real life, and will remain and live

for ever. Thus the only life of which man is conscious,

for which all his activity takes place, turns out to be de

lusive and impossible, while the life outside him, which

242 ON LIFE

he does not love or feel, and which is unknown to him,

is the one true life.

Only what he does not feel has those properties which

he would like to have. And this is not something which

so presents itself to man in the bad moments of his gloomy

mood, it is not a conception without which one can get

along, but, on the contrary, such an obvious, indubitable

truth that, as soon as this thought strikes a man, or is

explained to him by others, he never gets rid of it, and

will never eradicate it from his consciousness.

XXVII.

THE DREAD OF DEATH IS ONLY THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF

THE UNSOLVED CONTRADICTION OF LIFE

“THERE is no death,” the voice of truth tells people.

“I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in

me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever

liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest

thou this?”

“There is no death,” all the great teachers of the world

have said, and millions of people, who have compre

hended the meaning of life, have borne witness to it with

their lives. The same is felt in his soul by every living

man, in a moment of enlightenment of his consciousness.

But men who do not understand life cannot help but fear

death. They see it and believe in it.

“What, there is no death ?” these men cry, with indig

nation and malice. “This is a piece of sophistry. Death

is before us: it has mowed down millions, and it will

mow us down, too. No matter how you may insist that

it is not, it will remain. Here it is !”

They are speaking of what they see, just as a deranged

person sees the vision which terrifies him. He cannot

feel the vision, for the vision has never touched him; he

knows nothing of its intention, but he is so afraid of this

imaginary vision and suffers from it so much that he is

deprived of the possibility of life. The same is true of

death. Man does not know his death and can never

know it: it has never touched him, and of its intentions

he knows nothing. So what is he afraid of ?

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ON LIFE 347

“It has never seized me yet; but it will seize me, I am

sure of that, — it will seize me, and will destroy me.

And that is terrible,” say people who do not understand

life.

If men with a false conception of life were able to

reflect calmly, and reasoned correctly on the basis of that

conception which they have of life, they would have to

come to the conclusion that there is nothing disagreeable

or terrible in this, that in my carnal existence there will

take place that change which, I see, unceasingly takes

place in all beings, and which I call death.

I shall die. Where is the terror in this? Have not

very many changes taken place in my carnal existence

without causing me fear? Why, then, am I afraid of this

change, which has not yet taken place and in which there

is not only nothing contrary to my reason and experience,

but which is so intelligible, familiar, and natural to me

that in the course of my life I have constantly made com

binations, in which the death both of animals and men

has been accepted by me as a necessary and often as an

agreeable condition of life? Where is here the terror?

There are only two strictly logical views of life: one,

the false view, by which life is understood as those visible

phenomena which take place in my body from birth to

death, and the other, the true view, by which life is un

derstood as that invisible consciousness of life which I

bear in myself. One view is false, the other true, but

both are logical, and men may have the one or the other,

but with neither is the dread of death possible.

The first, the false view, which understands life as the

visible phenomena in the body from birth until death, is

as old as the world. It is not, as many think, a view of

life which has been worked out by the materialistic science

and philosophy of our time: the science and philosophy

of our time have only carried this conception to its

farthest limits, where it has become more obvious than

- 348 ON LIFE

ever that this view is not compatible with the funda

mental demands of human nature; this is an old, primi

tive view of those people who stood on a lower level of

development: it is expressed by the Chinese, by the

Buddhists, by the Jews, in the book of Job, and in the

expression, “Dust thou art, and to dust returnest.”

This view, in its present expression, is as follows: life

is an accidental play of forces in matter, as manifested in

time and space. But that which we call our conscious

ness is not life: it is a certain deception of the sensations,

which makes us believe that life consists in this conscious

ness. Consciousness is a spark which under certain con

ditions bursts into fire on the matter. This spark bursts

into fire, flames up, goes out, and finally is no more. This

spark, that is, consciousness, which is experienced by matter

in the course of a definite period of time between two infin

ities, is nothing. And although consciousness sees itself

and all the infinite world and all the play of accidents of

this world, and, what is most important, in contradistinc

tion to something not accidental, calls this game acciden

tal, this consciousness is in itself nothing but the product

of dead matter, a phantom, which rises and disappears

without any residue or meaning. Everything is the prod

uct of endlessly changing matter, and what is called life

is only a certain condition of dead matter.

Such is one view of life. This view is quite logical.

According to this view, man's rational consciousness is

only an accident which is concomitant with a certain con

dition of matter; and so that which in our consciousness

we call life is a phantom. There exists nothing but what

is dead. What we call life is the play of death. With

such a view of life, it is not death that ought to be terri

ble, but life, as something unnatural and irrational, as is

the case with the Buddhists and the modern pessimists,

Schopenhauer and Hartmann.

The other view of life is as follows: life is only what I

ON LIFE 349

am conscious of in myself. Now, I do not cognize my

life as that I was or shall be (thus I reflect on life), but

as that I am, –never beginning anywhere and never end

ing anywhere. With the consciousness of my life the

concept of time and space is not compatible. My life is

manifested in time and space, but that is only its mani

festation. Life itself, as cognized by me, is cognized by

me outside time and space. Thus, with this view it turns

out, on the contrary, that it is not the consciousness of

life which is a phantom, but that everything spatial and

temporal is phantasmal. Consequently, the temporal and

spatial cessation of bodily existence has with this view

nothing that is real, and so cannot cut off, nor even impair,

my true life. With this view death does not exist.

Neither with the one view of life nor with the other

could there be any dread of death, if men strictly adhered

to one of these two views.

Neither as an animal nor as a rational being can man

fear death: the animal, having no consciousness of life,

does not see death, and a rational being, having the con

sciousness of life, cannot see in animal death anything

but the natural, never ceasing motion of matter. But if

man is afraid, he is not afraid of death, which he does not

know, but of life, which alone his animal and his rationa.

being know. The feeling which in men is expressed as

the fear of death is only the consciousness of the inner

contradiction of life, even as the dread of visions is only

the consciousness of a diseased state of the mind.

“I shall cease to exist,— I shall die, and everything in

which I take my life to be will die,” one voice says to

man. “I am,” says another voice, “and cannot and must

not die. I must not die, and yet I am dying.”

Not in death but in this contradiction is the cause of

all that terror which seizes man at the thought of carnal

death: the dread of death does not consist in this, that a

man is afraid of the cessation of the existence of his ani

350 ON LIFE

mal, but in this, that he supposes that that which cannot

and must not die is dying. The thought of future death

is only a transference into the future of death which is

accomplished in the present. The phantom of the future

carnal death is not an awakening of thought in regard to

death, but, on the contrary, an awakening of thought in

regard to the life which man ought to have, but has not.

This feeling is similar to what a man must experience

who awakens to life in the grave, underground. There

is life, and I am in death, there it is, death ! It appears

to him that what is and ought to be is being destroyed.

And the human mind is beside itself and terrified. The

best proof that the terror of death is not the terror of

death, but of the false life, is this, that people frequently

kill themselves out of the terror of death.

Men are not terrified at the thought of the carnal death

because they are afraid lest their life may end with

it, but because the carnal death shows them clearly the

necessity for the true life, which they have not. And for

this reason people who do not understand life do not like

to mention death. To think of death is for them the

same as admitting that they do not live as the rational

consciousness demands that they shall.

People who are afraid of death fear it, because it appears

to them as emptiness and darkness; but they see empti

ness and darkness, because they do not see life.