I turned from the life of our circle, acknowledging that ours

is not life but a simulation of life — that the conditions of

superfluity in which we live deprive us of the possibility of

understanding life, and that in order to understand life I must

understand not an exceptional life such as our who are parasites on

life, but the life of the simple labouring folk — those who make

life — and the meaning which they attribute to it. The simplest

labouring people around me were the Russian people, and I turned to

them and to the meaning of life which they give. That meaning, if

one can put it into words, was as follows: 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. The aim of man in life is to

save his soul, and to save his soul he must live “godly” and to

live “godly” he must renounce all the pleasures of life, must

labour, humble himself, suffer, and be merciful. That meaning the

people obtain from the whole teaching of faith transmitted to them

by their pastors and by the traditions that live among the people.

This meaning was clear to me and near to my heart. But together

with this meaning of the popular faith of our non-sectarian folk,

among whom I live, much was inseparably bound up that revolted me

and seemed to me inexplicable: sacraments, Church services, fasts,

and the adoration of relics and icons. The people cannot separate

the one from the other, nor could I. And strange as much of what

entered into the faith of these people was to me, I accepted

everything, and attended the services, knelt morning and evening in

prayer, fasted, and prepared to receive the Eucharist: and at first

my reason did not resist anything. The very things that had

formerly seemed to me impossible did not now evoke in me any

opposition.

My relations to faith before and after were quite different.

Formerly life itself seemed to me full of meaning and faith

presented itself as the arbitrary assertion of propositions to me

quite unnecessary, unreasonable, and disconnected from life. I

then asked myself what meaning those propositions had and,

convinced that they had none, I rejected them. Now on the contrary

I knew firmly that my life otherwise has, and can have, no meaning,

and the articles of faith were far from presenting themselves to me

as unnecessary — on the contrary I had been led by indubitable

experience to the conviction that only these propositions presented

by faith give life a meaning. formerly I looked on them as on some

quite unnecessary gibberish, but now, if I did not understand them,

I yet knew that they had a meaning, and I said to myself that I

must learn to understand them.

I argued as follows, telling myself that the knowledge of

faith flows, like all humanity with its reason, from a mysterious

source. That source is God, the origin both of the human body and

the human reason. As my body has descended to me from God, so also

has my reason and my understanding of life, and consequently the

various stages of the development of that understanding of life

cannot be false. All that people sincerely believe in must be

true; it may be differently expressed but it cannot be a lie, and

therefore if it presents itself to me as a lie, that only means

that I have not understood it. Furthermore I said to myself, the

essence of every faith consists in its giving life a meaning which

death does not destroy. Naturally for a faith to be able to reply

to the questions of a king dying in luxury, of an old slave

tormented by overwork, of an unreasoning child, of a wise old man,

of a half-witted old woman, of a young and happy wife, of a youth

tormented by passions, of all people in the most varied conditions

of life and education — if there is one reply to the one eternal

question of life: “Why do I live and what will result from my

life?” — the reply, though one in its essence, must be endlessly

varied in its presentation; and the more it is one, the more true

and profound it is, the more strange and deformed must it naturally

appear in its attempted expression, conformably to the education

and position of each person. But this argument, justifying in my

eyes the queerness of much on the ritual side of religion, did not

suffice to allow me in the one great affair of life — religion —

to do things which seemed to me questionable. With all my soul I

wished to be in a position to mingle with the people, fulfilling

the ritual side of their religion; but I could not do it. I felt

that I should lie to myself and mock at what was sacred to me, were

I to do so. At this point, however, our new Russian theological

writers came to my rescue.

According to the explanation these theologians gave, the

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

From the admission of that dogma follows inevitably the truth of

all that is professed by the Church. The Church as an assembly of

true believers united by love and therefore possessed of true

knowledge became the basis of my belief. I told myself that divine

truth cannot be accessible to a separate individual; it is revealed

only to the whole assembly of people united by love. To attain

truth one must not separate, and in order not to separate one must

love and must endure things one may not agree with.

Truth reveals itself to love, and if you do not submit to the

rites of the Church you transgress against love; and by

transgressing against love you deprive yourself of the possibility

of recognizing the truth. I did not then see the sophistry

contained in this argument. I did not see that union in love may

give the greatest love, but certainly cannot give us divine truth

expressed in the definite words of the Nicene Creed. I also did

not perceive that love cannot make a certain expression of truth an

obligatory condition of union. I did not then see these mistakes

in the argument and thanks to it was able to accept and perform all

the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding most of

them. I then tried with all strength of my soul to avoid all

arguments and contradictions, and tried to explain as reasonably as

possible the Church statements I encountered.

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: the father, mother, and grandparents I

loved. They and all my predecessors believed and lived, and they

produced me. I united myself also with the missions of the common

people whom I respected. Moveover, those actions had nothing bad

in themselves (“bad” I considered the indulgence of one’s desires).

When rising early for Church services I knew I was doing well, if

only because I was sacrificing my bodily ease to humble my mental

pride, for the sake of union with my ancestors and contemporaries,

and for the sake of finding the meaning of life. It was the same

with my preparations to receive Communion, and with the daily

reading of prayers with genuflections, and also with the observance

of all the fasts. However insignificant these sacrifices might be

I made them for the sake of something good. I fasted, prepared for

Communion, and observed the fixed hours of prayer at home and in

church. During Church service I attended to every word, and gave

them a meaning whenever I could. In the Mass the most important

words for me were: “Let us love one another in conformity!” The

further words, “In unity we believe in the Father, the Son, and

Holy Ghost”, I passed by, because I could not understand them.