A Confession

by Leo Tolstoy

I saw that this was the worthiest way of escape and I wished to adopt it.

The fourth way out is that of weakness. It consists in seeing the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. People of this kind know that death is better than life, but not having the strength to act rationally to end the deception quickly and kill themselves they seem to wait for something.

This is the escape of weakness,

Reason is not the creator of life you idiot

And I, their product, fed, supplied with drink, taught by them, thinking with their thoughts and words, have argued that they are an absurdity! "There is something wrong," said I to myself. "I have blundered somewhere." But it was a long

Reason worked, but something else was also working which I can only call a consciousness of life. A force was working which compelled me to

Got it

You are a genius

I instinctively felt that if I wished to live and understand the meaning of life, I must seek this meaning not among those who have lost it and wish to kill themselves, but among those milliards of the past and the present who make life and who support the burden of their own lives and of ours also.

appeared that reasonable knowledge does not give the meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed to life by milliards of people, by all humanity, rests on some despised pseudo-knowledge.

Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge.

that irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not but reject.

knew I could find nothing along the path of reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there in faith was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yet more impossible for me than a denial of life.

By faith it appears that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required

Either that which I called reason was not so rational as I supposed, or that which seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I supposed.

asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?"

"What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?"

Good

an indefinite reply.

So that philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but only replies that the question cannot be solved by it that for it the solution remains indefinite.

Cop out

Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible.

Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give, and to whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the finite existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death.

faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives.

If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live.

for man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

was studying the thoughts

part of the infinite.

Says who? And what does his mean?

All these conceptions in which the finite has been adjusted to the infinite and a meaning found for life -- the conception of God,

we see that life is an evil and yet continue to live. That is evidently stupid, for if life is senseless and I am so fond of what is reasonable, it should be destroyed, and then there would be no one to challenge it.

How romantic

You should get out more

I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly as because I lived badly.

The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life, while I had referred it to life in general.

"Life is evil and an absurdity," referred only to my life, but not to human life in general.

Cop out 2

I understood why I had so long wandered round so evident a truth, and that if one is to think and speak of the life of mankind, one must think and speak of that life and not of the life of some of life's parasites.

Sell off if you have the balls

is the use of my life? I got the reply: "No use." If the meaning of human life lies in supporting it, how could I who for thirty years had been engaged not on supporting life but on destroying it in myself and in others how could I obtain any other answer than that my life was senseless and an evil?

the conviction that knowledge of truth can only be found by living led me to doubt the rightness of my life;

Why not?

"The conception of God is not God,"

This guy is a genius

that the chief and only aim of my life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will, and I returned to the belief that I can find the expression of that Will in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from, has produced for its guidance: that is to say,

Every man has come into this world by the will of God. And God has so made man that every man can destroy his soul or save it.

No it doesn’t

"Why do I live and what will result from my life?"

the fundamental dogma of our faith is the infallibility of the Church.

Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the rites of the Church you transgress against love;

When fulfilling the rites of the Church I humbled my reason and submitted to the tradition possessed by all humanity. I united myself with my forefathers: