X.
I understood that, but that did not make it easier for me.
I was prepared now to accept any faith, so long as it did not demand from me a direct denial of reason, which would have been a lie. And so I studied Buddhism and Mohammedanism from books, and, more still, Christianity both from books and from living men who were about me.
Naturally I first of all turned to believing men of my own circle, to learned men, to Orthodox theologians, to old monks, to theologians of the new shade, and even to so-called new Christians, who professed salvation through faith in redemption. I clung to these believers and questioned them about their beliefs, and tried to find out in what they saw the meaning of life.
Although I made all possible concessions and avoided all kinds of disputes, I was unable to accept the faiths of those men,—I saw that what they gave out as faith was not an explanation, but an obfuscation of the meaning of life, and that they themselves affirmed their faith, not in order to answer that question of life which had brought me to faith, but for some other aims which were foreign to me.
I remember the agonizing feeling of terror lest I return to my former despair after hope, which I experienced many, many a time in my relations with these people.
The more they went into details in order to expound to me their doctrines, the more clearly did I see their
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