Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/151

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10
THOUGHTS ON GOD

reason, nor even through the heart, but through one's feeling of complete dependence on Him, akin to the feeling experienced by an unweaned child in the arms of its mother. It does not know who holds it, warms it, feeds it; but it knows that there is this someone; and more than knows—it loves that being.

.....

Formerly I witnessed the phenomena of life without thinking whence they came, or why I witnessed them.

Subsequently I realised that all that I see is the outcome of light, which is understanding. And I was so glad to have brought everything into harmony, that I was quite satisfied in acknowledging the understanding alone to be the source of everything.

But after that I saw that the understanding is a light which reaches me through a kind of dim glass. I see the light, but its source I do not know. Yet I know that the source exists.

This same source, which is the source of the light that enlightens me—a source I do not know, but the existence of which I do know—is God.

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To love means to desire that which the one we love desires. But men desire opposite things, whereas that only can be loved which desires one