The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

by David Brooks

Tolstoy had thus far bet his life on the enlightenment project, on reason, progress, intellectuals, public approval, and progress. And now he lost faith in that project. What was the point of life? My life came to a stop. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep; indeed, I could not help but breathe, eat, drink, and sleep. But there was no life in me because I had no desires whose satisfaction I would have found reasonable. If I wanted something, I knew beforehand that it did not matter whether or not I got it. Life began to feel absurd and useless. He removed all the ropes from his room so he would not hang himself. He kept himself away from his hunting rifles so he would not shoot himself. He began to regard his former writing intellectual life as a form of madness. Who could really care if he got a good review in this or that journal? It now seemed that he and his cronies hadn’t been improving the world, just writing to become rich and famous. Tolstoy was sick of life and saw no point in it. He was in the valley. If this sense of lostness can happen to a Tolstoy, then it can happen to anybody. After all, the rest of us can be haunted by the idea that we haven’t accomplished as much as we could. But Tolstoy was one of the greatest writers who ever lived and knew it. Wealth and fame and accomplishment do not spare anybody from the valley.