A Confession

: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

I was bap­tized and brought up in the Ortho­dox Chris­tian faith. I was taught it in child­hood and through­out my boy­hood and youth. But when I aban­doned the second course of the uni­ver­sity at the age of eight­een I no longer be­lieved any of the things I had been taught.

Judging by cer­tain memor­ies, I never ser­i­ously be­lieved them, but had merely re­lied on what I was taught and on what was pro­fessed by the grown-up people around me, and that re­li­ance was very un­stable.

He reaches a glade, climbs a tree, and clearly sees the lim­it­less dis­tance, but sees that his home is not and can­not be there; then he goes into the dark wood and sees the dark­ness, but there also his home is not.

That there is truth in the teach­ing is to me in­dubit­able, but it is also cer­tain that there is false­hood in it, and I must find what is true and what is false, and must dis­en­tangle the one from the other. I am set­ting to work upon this task. What of false­hood I have found in the teach­ing and what I have found of truth, and to what con­clu­sions I came, will form the fol­low­ing parts of this work, which if it be worth it and if any­one wants it, will prob­ably some day be prin­ted some­where.

I shall not seek the ex­plan­a­tion of everything. I know that the ex­plan­a­tion of everything, like the com­mence­ment of everything, must be con­cealed in in­fin­ity. But I wish to un­der­stand in a way which will bring me to what is in­ev­it­ably in­ex­plic­able. I wish to re­cog­nize any­thing that is in­ex­plic­able as be­ing so not be­cause the de­mands of my reason are wrong (they are right, and apart from them I can un­der­stand noth­ing), but be­cause I re­cog­nize the lim­its of my in­tel­lect. I wish to un­der­stand in such a way that everything that is in­ex­plic­able shall present it­self to me as be­ing ne­ces­sar­ily in­ex­plic­able, and not as be­ing some­thing I am un­der an ar­bit­rary ob­lig­a­tion to be­lieve.

On this teach­ing re­li­gious doc­trine rests, or at least with it the only know­ledge of the mean­ing of life that I have found is in­sep­ar­ably con­nec­ted.

Both the false­hood and the truth were con­tained in the so-called holy tra­di­tion and in the Scrip­tures. Both the false­hood and the truth had been handed down by what is called the Church.

And though I saw that among the peas­ants there was a smal­ler ad­mix­ture of the lies that re­pelled me than among the rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Church, I still saw that in the people’s be­lief also false­hood was mingled with the truth.

And I ceased to doubt, and be­came fully con­vinced that not all was true in the re­li­gion I had joined.

And I took note of all that is done by men who pro­fess Chris­tian­ity, and I was hor­ri­fied.