A Confession

Tolstoy says he realized that reason is unable to answer questions like “Why should I live?” or “What kind of meaning can my finite existence have in this infinite universe?” (58). He found that his questions searched for meaning “beyond space, time, and causation” (58), while the answers proposed by reason relate to meaning within space, time, and causation. In the end, Tolstoy’s reason could not provide an answer to the question of life but only a declaration that the answer “remains indefinite” (60) from the point of view of reason.

A proper solution would find a relationship between the finite and the infinite, and only answers provided by faith, an irrational type of knowledge, can do that. Tolstoy concluded that denying faith on the grounds of reason was unhelpful and that only faith had a chance of providing an adequate response to life’s most urgent questions.

The author studied various faiths, especially the Christianity typical of well-to-do believers, and concluded that their faith was unacceptable. It was based on motivations outside of the need to answer Tolstoy’s burning questions and revealed no meaning. These Christians were even more greedy and fearful of death than nonbelievers. If these believers’ actions revealed something about the meaning of life, Tolstoy might have been convinced, but he found nothing.