THOUGHTS ON GOD[1]
I
GOD is for me what I strive for—what as I strive for it constitutes my life, and therefore for me He is; but He is necessarily such that I cannot comprehend or name Him.
If I understood Him, I should have reached Him, and there would be nothing to strive after and there would be no life. But, and this seems a contradiction, though I cannot understand or name Him, yet at the same time I know Him and the direction toward Him, and even of all my knowledge this is the most certain.
I do not comprehend Him, yet at the same time I am always anxious when I am without Him, and only when I am with Him am I not anxious. What is stranger still is that to know Him more and better than I do at present is not my desire now in this present life, neither is it necessary. I can draw nearer to Him, and I wish
- ↑ The first six sections of this article are taken from the work published in Geneva under the title Ponyatiye o Boge—"The Conception of God." The rest is a collection of extracts from his diaries, private letters, notebook jottings, draught manuscripts of unfinished papers, and various writings of the same kind.
Mr. V. Tchertkof, Tolstoi's former secretary, who has put them together, says:—
"The reader is requested to bear in mind that the thoughts here presented, not being originally intended by the author for publication, are not expressed as precisely and carefully as they would have been had he been preparing them for the general public; and also that the translation of writings of this character affords special difficulties, owing to their rough and unfinished form.
"In order, therefore, that the reader may both do justice to these expressions of thought and himself fully profit by them, it is desirable that he should endeavor to understand any verbal imperfections according to the spirit of the whole paper, and to fill up, in the sense most advantageous for the thought expressed, any omission he may remark."
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