,, ^ x :$ %, o>' 5> * » % * y a- -*, ■^ 'oo l \^ \> * %, » ,^ v «$». <** % > V * ^'V v tft> "%u v^> v t 1 ? "V > * o v % .# A^ ^ ^ •%. a*' % v* ^ k N - v o X . Such was my life during ten years. During that time I began to write, out of vanity, love of gain, and pride. I followed as a writer the same path which I had chosen as MY CONFESSION. 11 a man. (in order to obtain the fame and the money for which I wrote, I was obliged to hide what was good and bow down before what was evil!) How often while writing have I cudgelled my brains to conceal under the mask of indifference or pleasantry those yearnings for something better which formed the real problem of my life ! I succeeded in my object, and was praised. At twenty-six years of age, on the close of the war, I came to St. Petersburg and made the acquaintance of the authors of the day. I met with a hearty reception and much flattery. Before I had time to look around, the preju- dices and views of life common to the writers of the class with which I associated became my own, and completely put an end to all my former struggles after a better life. These views, under the influence of the dissipation into which I plunged, issued in a theory of life which justified it. The view of life taken by these my fellow-writers was that life is a development, and the principal part in that development is played by ourselves, the 12 MY CONFESSION. thinkers, while among the thinkers the chief influence is again due to ourselves, the poets. Our vocation is to teach mankind. In order to avoid answering the very natural question, "What do I know, and what can I teach ? " the theory in question is made to contain the formula that such is not required to be known, but that the thinker and the poet teach unconsciously. I was myself con- sidered a marvellous litterateur and poet, and I therefore very naturally adopted this theory. Meanwhile, thinker and poet though I was, I wrote and taught I knew not what. For doing this I received large sums of money ; I kept a splendid table, had an excellent lodging, asso- ciated with loose women, and received my friends handsomely ; moreover, I had fame. It would seem, then, that what I taught must have been good; the faith in poetry and the development of life was a true faith, and I was one of its high priests, a post of great impor- tance, and of profit. I long remained in this belief, and never once doubted its truth. In the second, however, and especially in the third year of this way of life, I began to M Y CONFESSION. 13 doubt the infallibility of the doctrine, and to examine it more closely. (The first doubtful fact which attracted my attention was that the apostles of this belief did not agree among themselves. Some proclaimed that they alone were good and useful teachers, and all others worthless ; while those opposed to them said the same of themselves. They disputed, quar- relled, abused, deceived, and cheated one another.} .Moreover, there were many among us who, quite indifferent to right or wrong, only cared for their own private interests. All this forced on me doubts as to the truth of our belief. Again, when I doubted this faith in the influ- ence of literary men, I began to examine more closely into the character and conduct of its chief professors, and I convinced myself that these writers were men who led immoral lives, most of them worthless and insignificant indi- viduals, and far beneath the moral level of those with whom I had associated during my former dissipated and military career; these men, however, had none the less an amount of self-confidence only to be expected in those who 14 MY CONFESSION. are conscious of being saints, or in those for whom holiness is an empty name^ I grew disgusted with mankind and with my- self, and I understood that this belief which I had accepted was a delusion. The strangest thing in all this was that, though I soon saw the falseness of this belief and renounced it, I did not renounce the position I had gained by it ; I still called myself a thinker, a poet, and a teacher. (I was simple enough to imagine that I, the poet and thinker, was able to teach other men without knowing myself what it was that I attempted to teach; I had only gained a new vice by my companionship with these men ; it had developed pride in me to a morbid extreme, and my self-confidence in teaching what I did not know amounted almost to insanity. When I now think over that time, and remember my own state of mind and that of these men (a state of mind common enough among thousands still), it seems to me pitiful, terrible, and ridic- ulous ; it excites the feelings which overcome us as we pass through a madhouse. We were all then convinced that it behooved us to speak, to write, and to print as fast as we could, as much MY CONFESSION. 15 as we could, and that on this depended the wel- fare of the human race. Hundreds of us wrote, printed, and taught, and all the while confuted and abused each other. Quite unconscious that we ourselves knew nothing, that to the simplest of all problems in life — (what is right, and what is wrong V- we had no answer, we all went on talking together without one to listen, at times abetting and praising one another on condition that we were abetted and praised in turn, and again turning upon each other in wrath — in short, we reproduced the scenes in a madhouse. Hundreds of exhausted laborers worked day and night, putting up the type and printing millions of pages to be spread by the post all over Russia, and still we continued to teach, unable to teach enough, angrily complaining the while that we were not listened to. A strange state of things indeed, but now it is clear enough. The real motive that inspired all our reasoning was the desire for money and ; praise7 to obtain which we knew of no other means than writing books and newspapers. In order, however, while thus uselessly employed, to hold fast to the conviction that we were 16 MY CONFESSION. really of importance to society, it was neces- sary to justify our occupation to ourselves by another theory, and the following was the one we adopted : (Whatever is, is right ; everything that is, is due to development, and the latter again to civilization ; the measure of civilization is the figure to which the publication of books and newspapers reaches ; we are paid and honored for the books and newspapers which we write, and we are therefore the most useful and best of all citizens^) This reasoning might have been conclusive, had we all been agreed ; but, as for every opinion expressed by one of us there instantly appeared from another, one diametrically op- posite, we had to hesitate before accepting it. But this we passed over ; we received money, and were praised by those who agreed with us, consequently we were in the right. \It is now clear to me that between ourselves and the in- habitants of a madhouse there was no differ- ence : at the time I only vaguely suspected this, and, like all madmen, thought all were mad except myself. III. I lived in this senseless manner another six years, up to the time of my marriage. During the interval I had been abroad. My life in Europe, and my acquaintance with many emi- nent and learned foreigners, confirmed my belief in the doctrine of general perfectibility, as I found the same theory prevailed among them. This belief took the form which is com- mon among most cultivated men of the day. It may be summed up in the word " prog- ress." It then appeared to me this word had a real meaning. I did not under- stand that, tormented like other men by the question, "(How was I to better my life^? " when I answered that I must live for progress, I was only repeating the answer of a man carried away in a boat by the waves and the vfojh w h° to the one important question for him, " Wliere are we to steer?" should ansv> 3r, saying, "We are being carried somewhere.' This I then did not see ; it was only at rare 17 18 MY CONFESSION. intervals that my feelings, and not my reason, were roused against the common superstition of our age,(which leads men to ignore their own ignorance of life^ Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of a public execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious belief in progress. (When I saw the head divided from the body, and heard the sound with which they fell separately into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all established things, nor of prog- ress, could justify such an act ; and that if all the men in the world from the day of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing neces- sary, it was not so ; it was a bad thing, and that therefore I must judge of what was right and necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress, but what I felt to be true in my hearts Another instance of the insufficiency of this superstition of progress as a rule for life was the death of my brother. He fell ill while still young, suffered much during a whole year, and died in great pain. He was a man of good MY CONFESSION-. 19 abilities, of a kind heart, and of a serious temper,(jput he died without understanding why- he had lived, or what his death meant for him. No theories could give an answer to these questions, either to him or to me, during the whole period of his long and painful lingering. Then occasions for doubt, however, were few and far between ; on the whole, I continued to live in the profession of the faith of progress. ''Everything develops, and I myself develop as well ; and why this is so will one day be ap- parent," was the formula I was obliged to adopt. On my return from abroad I settled in the country, and occupied myself with the organ- ization of schools for the peasantry. This occupation was especially grateful to me, be- cause it was free from the spirit of falseness so evident to me in the career of a literary teacher. Here again I acted in the name of progress, but this time I brought a spirit of critical in- quiry to the system on which the progress rested. I said to myself that progress was often attempted in an irrational manner, and 20 MY CONFESSION. that it was necessary to leave a primitive people and the children of peasants perfectly free to choose the way of progress which they thought best. In reality I was still bent on the solution of the same impossible problem, how to teach without knowing what I had to teach. In the highest sphere of literature I had understood that it was impossible to do this because I had seen that each taught dif- ferently, and that the teachers quarrelled among themselves, and scarcely succeeded in concealing their ignorance. Having now to deal with peasants' children, I thought that I could get over this difficulty by allowing the children to learn what they liked. It seems now absurd when I remember the expedients by which I carried out this whim of mine to teach, though I knew in my heart that I could teach nothing useful, because I myself did not know what was necessary. After a year spent in this employment with the schools, I again went abroad, for the pur- pose of finding out how I was to teach under these conditions. I believed that I had found a solution abroad, MY CONFESSION. 21 and, armed with that conviction, I returned to Russia, the same year in which the peasants were freed from serfdom ; and, accepting the office of a country magistrate or arbitrator, I began to teach the uneducated people in the schools, and the educated classes in the jour- nals which I published. Things seemed to be going on well, but I felt that my mind was not in a normal state and that a change was near. I might then, perhaps, have come to that state of absolute despair to which I was brought fifteen years later, if it had not been for a new experience in life which promised me safety — the home life of a family man. For a year I occupied myself with my duties as arbitrator, with the schools, and my newspaper, and got so involved that I was harassed to death ; my arbitration was. one continual struggle, what to do in the schools became less and less clear, and my newspaper shuffling more and more repugnant to me, always the same thing — try- ing to teach without knowing how or what — so that I fell ill, more with a mental than phy- sical sickness, gave up everything, and started for the steppes to breathe a fresher air, to 22 MY CONFESSION. drink mare's milk, and live a mere animal life. Soon after my return I married. The new circumstances of a happy family life by which I was now surrounded completely led my mind away from the search after the meaning of life as a whole. My life was concentrated in my family, my wife, and children, and consequent- ly in the care for increasing the means of sup- porting them. The effort to effect my own individual perfection, already replaced by the striving after general progress, was again changed into an effort to secure the particular happiness of my family. In this way fifteen years passed. Notwithstanding that during these fifteen years I looked upon the craft of authorship as a very trifling thing, I continued all the time to write. I had experienced the seductions of authorship, the temptations of an enormous pecuniary reward and of great ap- plause for valueless work, and gave myself up to it as a means of improving my material position, and of stifling all the feelings which led me to question my own life and that of society for the meaning in them. In my MY CONFESSION. 28 writings I taught what for me was the only truth, that the object of life should be our own happiness and that of our family. By this rule I lived ; but five years ago, a strange state of mind-torpor began at times to grow upon me. I had moments of perplexity, of a stoppage, as it were, of life, as if I did not know how I was to live, what I was to do. I began to wander, and was a victim to low spirits. This, however, passed, and I continued to live as before. Later, these periods of per- plexity grew more and more frequent, and in- variably took the same form. During their con- tinuance the same questions always presented themselves to me : "Why ? " and "What after ? " At first it seemed to me that these were empty and unmeaning questions, that all they asked about was well known, and that when- ever I wished to find answers to them I could do so without much trouble — then I had no time for it. But these questions presented themselves to my mind with ever-increasing fre- quency, demanding an answer with still great- er and greater persistence, grouping themselves into one dark and ominous spot. It was with me 24 MY CONFESSION. as in every case of a hidden, mortal disease — at first the symptoms, as to its position, are slight, and. are disregarded by the patient, while later they are repeated more and more frequently, till they end in a period of uninter- rupted suffering. (The sufferings increase, and the patient, before he has time to seek a remedy, is confronted with the fact that what he took for a mere indisposition has become more important to him than anything else on earth, that he is face to face with deatli^ \This is exactly what happened mentally to myself.]} I became aware that this was not a mere passing phase of mental ill-health, that the symptoms were of the utmost importance, and that if these questions continued to recur, I must find an answer to them. I tried to an- swer them. The questions seemed so foolish, so simple, so childish; but no sooner had I begun my attempt to decide them than I was convinced that they were neither childish nor silly, but were concerned with the deepest problems of life, and again that I was, think of them as I would, utterly unable to find an answer to them. MY CONFESSION. 25 Before occupying myself with my estate, with the education of my son, with the writing of books, I was bound to know why I did these things. vTill I know the reasons for my own acts, I can do nothing, I cannot live> While thinking of the details of the management of my household and estate, which in these days occupied much of my time, the following ques- tion came into my head : " Well, I have now six thousand ' desatins ' in the government of Samara, and three hundred horses — what then ? " I was quite disconcerted, and knew not what to think. Another time, dwelling on the thought of how I should educate my chil- dren, I asked myself, "Why?" Again, when considering by what means the well-being of the people might best be promoted, I suddenly exclaimed, " But what concern have I with it ? " When I thought of the fame which my works had gained me, I used to say to myself, "(Well, what if I should be more famous than Gogol, Poushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere — than all the writers of the world — well, and what then ?J" I could find no reply. Such questions demand an answer, and an immediate one ; without one it is impossible to live, but answer there was none. IV. My life had come to a sudden stop. I was able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I could not, indeed, help doing so ; but there was no real life in me. I had not a single wish to strive for the fulfilment of what I could feel to be reasonable. If I wished for anything, I knew beforehand that, were I to satisfy the wish, nothing would come of it, I should still be dissatisfied. Had .a fairy appeared and offered me all I desired, I should not have known what to say. If I seemed to have, at a given moment of excitement, not a wish, but a mood resulting from the tendencies of former wishes, at a calmer moment I knew that it was a delusion, that I really wished for nothing. I could not even wish to know the truth, because I guessed what the truth was. \The truth lay in this, that life had no mean- ing for me.* Every day of life, every step in it, brought me nearer the edge of a precipice, 26 MY CONFESSION. 27 whence I saw clearly the final ruin before me. To stop, to go back, were alike impossible ; nor could I shut my eyes so as not to see the suffer- ing that alone awaited me, the death of all in me, even to annihilation. Thus I, a healthy and a happy man, was brought to feel that I could live no longer, that an irresistible force was dragging me down into the grave.) I do not mean that I had an intention of committing suicide. The force that drew me away from life was stronger, fuller, and concerned with far wider consequences than any mere wish ; it was a force like that of my previous attachment to life, only in a contrary direction. \The idea of suicide came as naturally to me as formerly that of bettering my life. It had so much attrac- tion for me that I was compelled to practise a species of self-deception, in order to avoid carrying it out too hastily. I was unwilling to act hastily, only because I had determined first to clear away the confusion of my thoughts, and, that once done, I could always kill myself. I was happy, yet I hid away a cord, to avoid being tempted to hang myself by it to one of the pegs between the cupboards of my study, 28 MY CONFESSION. where I undressed alone every evening, and ceased carrying a gun because it offered too easy a way of getting rid of life. I knew not what I wanted ; I was afraid of life ; I shrank from it, and yet there was something I hoped for from it. Such was the condition I had come to, at a time when all the circumstances of my life were pre-eminently happy ones, and when I had not reached my fiftieth year. I had a good, a lov- ing, and a well-beloved wife, good children, a fine estate, which, without much trouble on my part, continually increased my income; I was more than ever respected by my friends and ac- quaintances; I was praised by strangers, and could lay claim to having made my name famous without much self-deception* More- over, my mind was neither deranged nor weak- ened ; on the contrary, I enjoyed a mental and physical strength which I have seldom found in men of my class and pursuits : I could keep up with a peasant in mowing, and could continue mental labor for ten hours at a stretch, without any evil consequences. The mental state in which I then was seemed MY CONFESSION. 29 to me summed up in the following : my life was a foolish and wicked joke played upon me by I knew not whom. Notwithstanding my rejection of the idea of a Creator, that of a be- ing who thus wickedly and foolishly made a joke of me seemed to me the most natural of all conclusions, and the one that threw the most light upon my darkness. I instinctively rea- soned that this being, wherever he might be, was one who was even then diverting himself at my expense, as he watched me, after from thirty to forty years of a life of study and development, of mental and bodily growth, with all my powers matured and having reached the point at which life as a whole should be best understood, standing like a fool with but one thing clear to me, that there was nothing in life, that there never was anything, and never will be. "To him I must seem ridic- ulous. . . . But was there, or was there not, such a being?" Neither way could I feel it helped me. I could not attribute reasonable motive to any single act, much less to my whole life. I was only astonished that this had not occurred to me before, from premises 30 MY CONFESSION. which had so long been known. Illness and death would come (indeed they had come), if not to-day, then to-morrow, to those whom I loved, to myself, and nothing would remain but stench and worms. All my acts, whatever I did, would sooner or later be forgotten, and I myself be nowhere. Why, then, busy one's self with anything ? How could men see this, and live ? It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us ; as soon as we are sober again we see that it is all a delusion, and a stupid one ! In this, indeed, there is nothing either ludicrous or amusing; it is only cruel and absurd. There is an old Eastern fable about a trav- eller in the steppes who is attacked by a furi- ous wild beast. To save himself the traveller gets into a dried-up well ; but at the bottom of it, he sees a dragon with its jaws wide-open to devour him. The unhappy man dares not get out for fear of the wild beast, and dares not descend for fear of the dragon, so he catches hold of the branch of a wild plant growing in a crevice of the well. His arms grow tired, and he feels that he must soon perish, death MY CONFESSION. 31 awaiting him on either side, but he still holds on ; and then he sees two mice, one black and one white, gnawing through the trunk of the wild plant, as they gradually and evenly make their way round it. The plant must soon give way, break off, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveller sees this, and knows that he must inevitably perish ; but, while still hanging, he looks around him, and, finding some drops of honey on the leaves of the wild plant, he stretches out his tongue and licks them. Thus do I cling to the branch of life, know- ing that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand why such tortures have fallen to my lot. I also strive to suck the honey which once comforted me, but it palls on my palate, while the white mouse and the black, day and night, gnaw through the branch to which I cling. I see the dragon too plainly, and the honey is no longer sweet. I see the dragon, from whom there is no escape, and the mice, and I cannot turn my eyes away from them. It is no fable, but a living, undeniable truth, to 32 MY CONFESSION. be understood of all men. The former delu- sion of happiness in life which hid from me the horror of the dragon, no longer deceives me. However I may reason with myself that I cannot understand the meaning of life, that I must live without(thinkingJ I cannot again begin to do so, because I have done so too long already. I cannot now help seeing that each day and each night, as it passes, brings me nearer to death. I can see but this, because this alone is true — all the rest is a lie.* The two drops of honey, which more than anything else drew me away from the cruel truth, my love for my family and for my writings, to which latter I gave the name of art, no longer taste sweet to me. " My family," thought I; "but a family, a wife and children, are also human beings, and subject to the same conditions as myself; they must either be living in a lie, or they must see the terrible truth. (Why should they live? Why should I love, care for, bring up, and watch over them? To bring them to the despair which fills myself, or to make dolts of them ? As I love them, I can- not conceal from them the truth ) — every step MY CONFESSION. 33 they take in knowledge leads them to it, and that truth is death.*? But art, then; but poetry? Under the influ- ence of success and flattered by praise, I had long persuaded myself that these were things worth working for, notwithstanding the ap- proach of death, the great destroyer, to anni- hilate my writings, and the memory of them ; but now I soon saw that this was only another delusion, I saw clearly that art is only the ornament and charm of life. Life having lost its charm for me, how could I make others see a charm in it? While I was not living my own life, but one that was external to me, as long as I believed that life had a meaning, though I could not say what it was, life was reflected for me in the poetry and art which I loved, it was pleasant to me to look into the mirror of art ; but when I tried- to discover the meaning of life, when I felt the necessity of living myself, the mirror became either unnec- essary or painful. I could no longer take com- fort from what I saw in the mirror — that my position was a stupid and desperate one. lit warmed my heart when I believed that 34 MY CONFESSION. life had a meaning^ when the play of the light on the glass showed me all that was comic, tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible in life, and comforted me!) but when I knew that life had no meaning at all, and was only terrible, the play of the light no longer amused mew No honey could be sweet upon my tongue when I saw the dragon, and the mice eating away the stay which supported me. Nor was that all. Had I simply come to know that life has no meaning, I might have quietly accepted it as my allotted portion. I could not, how- ever, remain thus unmoved. Had I been like a man in a wood, out of which he knows that there is no issue, I could have lived on ; but I was like a man lost in a wood, and who, terri- fied by the thought, rushes about trying to find a way out, and, though he knows each step can only lead him farther astray, cannot help run- ning backwards and forwards^ It was this that was terrible, this which to get free from I was ready to kill myself. I felt a horror of what awaited me ; I knew that this horror was more terrible than the position itself, but I could not patiently await the end. MY CONFESSION. 35 However persuasive the argument might be that all the same something in the heart or elsewhere would burst and all be over, still I could not patiently await the end. The horror of the darkness was too great to bear, and I longed to free myself from it by a rope or a pistol ball. (This was the feeling that, above all, drew me to think of suicide. V. It was possible, however, that I had over- looked something, that I had failed to under- stand something, and I often asked myself, if such a state of utter despair could be, (what / man was born to. I sought an explanation of the questions which tormented me in every branch of human knowledge ; I sought that explanation painfully and long, not out of mere curiosity nor apathetically, but obstinately day and night f> I sought it as a perishing man seeks safety, and I found nothing.^ My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing con- viction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this — that life is without a meaning. I sought in all directions, and, thanks to a life of study, and also to the foot- ing which I had gained in learned society, all the sources of knowledge were open to me, not 36 MY CONFESSION. 37 merely through books, but through personal intercourse. I had the advantage of all that learning could answer to the question, "What is life?" ^It was long before I could believe that human learning had no clear answer whatever to this question.^ It seemed to me, when I con- sidered the importance which science attributed to so many theories unconnected w T ith the problem of life, and the serious tone which pervaded her inquiries into them, that I must have misunderstood something. For a long time I was too timid to oppose the learning of the day, and I fancied that the insufficiency of the answers which I received was not its fault, but was owing to my own gross ignorance ; but this thing was not a joke to pass the time with me, but the business of my life, and I was at last forced to the conclusion that these ques- tions were just and necessary ones underlying all knowledge, and that it was not I that was in fault in putting them, but^sciencejin pretend- ing to have an answer to them. The question, which in my fiftieth year had brought me very close to suicide, was the sim- 38 MY CONFESSION. plest of all questions, one to make itself heard in the heart of every man from undeveloped childhood to wisest old age ; a question without which, as I had myself experienced, life became impossible. That question was as follows : "\jVhat result will there be from what I am doing now, and may do to-morrow? what will be the issue of my life??" Otherwise expressed, it may run: 4 \Why should I live ? why should I wish for anything? why should I do anything?" Again, in other words it is : "(Is there any meaning in my life which can overcome the inevitable death awaiting me ?]" To this question, one and the same though variously expressed, I sought an answer in human knowledge, and I found that with respect to this question all human knowledge may be divided into two opposite hemispheres, with their respective poles, the one negative, the other affirmative,(^but that at neither end is to be found an answer to the problem of life?j One system of knowledge seems to deny that there is such a question, but, on the other hand, has a clear and exact answer to all its MY CONFESSION. 39 own independent inquiries : it is the system of experimental science, at the extreme end of which is mathematics. Another system ac- cepts the question, but does not answer it ; it is that of theoretic philosophy, and at its ex- tremity is metaphysics. I had been addicted from my youth to theoretical study; later, mathematics and the exact sciences had at- tracted me ; and till I came to put clearly to myself this question as to the meaning of life, until it grew up in me, as it were, of itself, and till I felt that it demanded an immediate an- swer, I was content with the artificial and con- ventional answers given by learning. For the practical side of life I used to say to myself, "All is development and differentia- tion, all tends to complication and perfection, and there are laws which govern this process. You are yourself a part of the whole. Learn as much as possible of this whole, and learn the law of its development; you will then know your own place in the great unity, and know yourself as well." Though I feel shame in confessing it, I must needs own that there was a time when I was myself developing — when 40 MY CONFESSION. my muscles and memory were strengthening, my power of thinking and understanding on the increase — that I, feeling this, very natu- rally thought that the law of my own growth was the law of the universe and explained the meaning of my own life. But there came another time when I had ceased to grow, and I felt that I was not developing but drying up ; my muscles grew weaker, my teeth began to fall out, and I saw that this law of growth not only explained nothing but that such a law did not and could not exist ; that I had taken for a general law what only affected myself at a given age. On looking more closely into the nature of this pretended law, it was clear to me that there could be no law of eternal development ; that to say everything in infinite space and time is developed, complicated, differentiated, and perfected, is to talk nonsense. Such words have no meaning, for the infinite can know nothing of simple and compound, of past and future, of better and worse*.* It was a personal question that was of such importance to me, and which remained without an answer: MY CONFESSION. 41 "What am I myself with all my desires?" I understood that the acquirement of knowl- edge was interesting and attractive, but that it could only give clear and exact results in pro- portion to its inapplicability to the question of life. The less it had to do with these ques- tions, the clearer and more exact it was; the more it took the character of a solution of these questions, the obscurer and less attractive they became. (If we turn to those branches of knowledge in which men have tried to find a solution to the problem of life, to physiology, psychology, biology, sociology, we meet with a striking poverty of thought, with the greatest (obscurityPwith an utterly unjustifiable preten- sion to decide questions beyond their compe- tence, and a constant contradiction of one thinker by another, and even by himself. Tf we turn to the branches of knowledge which are not concerned with the problem of life, but find an answer to their own particular scien- tific questions, we are lost in admiration of man's mental powers ; (but we know before- hand that we shall get no answer to our questions about life itself,; for these branches 42 MY CONFESSION. of knowledge directly ignore all questions concerning iO Those who profess them say, "We cannot tell you what you are and why you live ; such questions we do not study?) But if you wish to know the laws of light, of chemical affinities, of the development of organisms ; if you wish to know the laws that govern different bodies, their form, and relations to number and size ; if you wish to know the laws of your own mind, we can give you clear, exact, and absolutely certain answers on every point." The relation of experimental science to the question of the meaning of life may be put as follows : Ques- tion, 4 Thus my wanderings over the fields of knowledge not only failed to cure me of my despair, but increased it. One branch of knowledge gave no answer at all to the prob- lem of life, another gave a direct answer which confirmed my despair, and showed that the state to which I had come was not the result of my going astray, of any mental disorder, but, on the contrary, of my thinking rightly, of my being in agreement with the conclusions of the most powerful intellects among man- kind. I could not be deceived. All was vanity. A misfortune to be born. Death was better than life, and life's burden must be got rid of. VII. Having failed to find an explanation in knowledge, I began to seek it in life itself, hop- ing to find it in the men who surrounded me ; and I began to watch men like myself, to observe how they lived, and how they practi- cally treated the question which had brought me to despair. And this is what I found among those of the same social position and culture as myself. I found that for those who occupied the same position as myself there were four means of escape from the terrible state in which we all were. Crhe first means of escape is through (igno- rance.) It consists in not perceiving and under- standing that life is an evil and an absurdity. People of this class — for the greater part [women) or men who are either very young or very stupid — have not understood the problem of life as it presented itself to Schopenhauer, 62 MY CONFESSION. 63 to Solomon, and to Buddha^ They see neither the dragon awaiting them, nor the mice eating through the plant to which they cling, and they taste the drops of honey// But they only lick the honey for a time; something directs their attention to the dragon and the mice, and there is an end to their tasting>) (From these I could learn nothing: we cannot unknow what \^e do know. The second means of escape is the Epicu- rean. It consists in, while we know the hope- lessness of life, taking advantage of every good there is in it, in avoiding the sight of the dragon and mice, and in seeking the honey as best we can, especially wherever there is most of it. Solomon points out this issue from the difficulty thus : " Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labor the days of his life, which God giveth him, under the sun. . . . Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart. . . . Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, 64 MY CONFESSIOX. which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goesfc" Such is the way in which most people, who belong to the circle in which I move, reconcile themselves to their fate, and make living possi- ble. They know more of the good than the evil of life from the circumstances of their position, and their blunted moral perceptions enable them to forget that all their advantages are accidental, and that all men cannot have harems and palaces, like Solomon ; that for one man who has a thousand wives, there are thou- sands of men who have none, and for each pal- ace there must be thousands of men to build it with the(sweat of their brow) and that the same chance which has made me a Solomon to-day may make me Solomon's slave to-morrow The dulness of their imagination enables these men to forget what destroyed the peace of Buddha, the inevitable sickness, old age, and MY CONFESSION. 65 death, which if not to-day, then to-morrow, must be the end of all their pleasures. fThus think and feel the majority of the men of our time of the u^per classes?) That some of them call their dulness of thought and imag- ination by the name of positive philosophy, does not, in my opinion, separate them from those who, in order not to see the real question, search for and lick the honey. I could not imitate such as these ; my imagination not being blunted like theirs, I could not artifi- cially prevent its action. Like every man who who really lives, I could not turn my eyes aside from the mice and the dragon, when I had once seen them.j (The third means of escape is through strength and energy of character. It consists in destroying life when we have perceived that^~ it is an evil and an absurdity. Only men of strong and unswerving character act thus. Understanding all the stupidity of the joke that is played with us, and understanding far better the happiness of the dead than of the living, they put an end at once to the parody of life, and bless any means of doing it — a 66 MY CONFESSION, rope round the neck, water, a knife in the heart, or a railway train. The number of those in my own class who thus act continu- ally (in creases,' and those who do this are gener- ally in the prime of life, with their physical strength matured and unweakened, and with but few of the habits that undermine man's intellectual powers yet formed. I saw that this means of escape was the worthiest, and wished to make use of it. \The fourth means of escape is through weak- ness. It consists, though the evil and absur- dity of life are well known, in continuing to drag on, though aware that nothing can come of it. People of this class of mind know that death is better than life, but' have not the strength of character to act as their reason dic- tates, to have done with deceit and kill them- selves ; they seem to be waiting for something to happen. This way of escape is due solely to weakness, for if I know what is better, and it is within my reach, why not seize it? (To this class of men I myself belonged^ Thus do those of my own class, in four differ- ent ways, save themselves from a terrible con- MY CONFESSION. 67 tradiction. With the most earnest intellectual efforts I could not find a fifth way. One way is to ignore life's being a meaningless jumble of vanity and evil, — not to know that it is better not to live. For me not to know this was im- possible, and when I once saw the truth, I could not shut my eyes to it. Another way is to make the best of life as it is without think- ing of the future. This, again, I could not do. /I, like Sakya Muni, could not drive to the pleasure-ground, when I knew of the existence of old age, suffering, and death.)) My imagina- tion was too lively for that. Moreover, my heart was ungladdened by the passing joys which fell for a few rare instants to my lot. The third way is, knowing that life is an evil and a foolish thing, to put an end to it, to kill one's self. I understood this, but still did not kill myself. The fourth way is to accept life as described by Solomon and Schopenhauer, to know that it is a stupid and ridiculous joke, and yet live on, to wash, dress, dine, talk, and even write books. This position was painful and disgusting to me, but I remained in it. I now see that I did not kill myself because 68 MY CONFESSION. Q had, in a confused sort of way, an inkling that my ideas were wrong^ However persua- sive and unanswerable the idea, which I shared with the wisest on earth, that life has no mean- ing, appeared to me, I still felt a confused doubt in the truth of my conclusions, which formed itself thus : " My reason tells me that life is contrary to reason. If there is nothing higher than reason (and there is nothing), reason is the creator of my life ; were there no reason, there would be no life for me. How can it be that reason denies life, and is at the same time its creator ? Again, from the other side, if there were no life, I should have no reason, consequently reason is born of life, and life is all. Reason is the product of life, and yet it denies life." I felt that something here was wrong. I said tomj^self: "Life undoubt- edly has no meaning, and is evil, but I have lived and am still alive, and so also have lived and are living the whole human race. How is it, then ? Why do all men live, when all men are able to die ? Is it that I and Schopenhauer alone are wise enough to have understood the unmeaning emptiness and evil of life ? " MY CONFESSION. 69 To see the inanity of life is a simple matter enough, and it has long been apparent to the simplest among us, but men still live on. Yes, men live on, and never think of calling in ques- tion the reasonableness of life ! My acquired knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the wisest of the world, showed me that everything on earth, organic or inorganic, was arranged with extraordinary wisdom, and that my own position alone was a foolish one. But, all the same, the enormous masses of those fools, my fellow-men, know nothing of the organic or inorganic structure of the world, but live on, and it seems to them that their lives are subjected to perfectly reasonable condi- tions ! Then I thought to myself: "feut what if there be something more for me to know?/ Surely this is the way in which ignorance acts. Why, it always saj^s exactly what I do now ! What men are ignorant of they say is stupid. It really comes to this, that mankind as a whole have always lived, and are living, as if they understood the meaning of life, for not doing so they could not live at all, and yet I say that 70 MY CONFESSION. all this life has no meaning in it, and that I cannot live." Nobody prevents our denial of life by suicide, but, then, kill yourself and you will no longer argue about it. If you dislike life, kill yourself. If in your life you cannot find a reason for it, put an end to it, and do not go on talking and writing about being unable to understand life. You have got into a gay company, in which all are well satisfied, all know what they are doing, and you alone are wearied and repelled ; then get out of it ! And after all, then, what are we who, per- suaded of the necessity of suicide, still cannot bring ourselves to the act, but weak, inconsist- ent men, — to speak more plainly, stupid men, who carry about with them their stupidity, as the fool carries his name written upon his cap ? Our wisdom, indeed, however firmly it be grounded on truth, has not imparted to us a knowledge of the meaning of life, yet all the millions that share in the life of humanity do not doubt that life has a meaning. It is certainly true that, from the far-distant time when that life began of which even I MY CONFESSION. 71, know something, men lived who, though they knew what proved to me that life had no mean- ing, the argument of its inanity, still lived on, and gave to life a meaning of their own. Since any sort of life began for men, they have had some conception of their own about it, and have so lived down to my own time. All that is in and around me, physical or immaterial, it is all the fruit of their knowledge of life. The very mental instruments which I have em- ployed against that life, to condemn it, were fashioned, not by me, but by them. I was born, and bred, and have grown up, thanks to them. They dug out the iron, taught how to hew r down the forests, to tame the cows and the horses, to sow corn, to live one with another; they gave order and form to our life ; moreover, they taught me how to think and how to speak. And I, the work of their hands, their foster- child, the pupil of their thoughts and sayings, have proved to them they themselves had no meaning! "There must be something here," said I, " that is wrong.] I have made some mis- take." I could not, however, discover where the mistake lay. VIII. All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or less clearly, I could not have then explained. I then only felt that, despite the logical certainty of my conclusions as to the inanity of life, and confirmed as they were by the greatest thinkers, there was something wrong in them. Whether in the conclusion itself, or in the way of putting the question, I did not know ; I only felt that, though my rea- son was entirely convinced, that was not enough. All my reasoning could not induce me to act in accordance with my convictions, L £., to kill myself. I should not speak the truth, if I said that my reason alone brought me to the position in which I was. Reason had been at work no doubt, but something else had worked too, something which I can only call an instinctive consciousness of life. There also worked in me a force, which determined my at- tention to one thing rather than to another, and 72 MY CONFESSION. 73 it was this that drew me out of my desperate position, and completely changed the current of my thoughts. This force led me to the idea that I, with thousands of other men like me, did not form the whole of mankind, —/that I was still ignorant of what human life wa?&; ^