The key ideas

A Confession

Leo Tolstoy, 1884

Tolstoy has a family, wealth and literary fame, yet one question, "why?", brings his familiar life to a halt. He tests the answers of science, philosophy and religion until he notices people he had never thought of as his teachers. This is the story of a return to faith that silenced neither reason nor hard questions for the church.

Who it is for

For anyone who wants to understand Tolstoy's spiritual turning point and see why success could not answer his deepest question.

Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?

A happy man who could not go on living

He is not yet fifty. He has a kind and beloved wife, good children and a large estate that grows without any work from him. Strangers praise his books, and he is full of strength. And it is exactly then that Leo Tolstoy hides thoughts of suicide from himself. His life has ground to a halt on two short questions: "Why? And what then?"

The questions come in the middle of ordinary business. He is thinking about the estate and suddenly asks himself: all right, I'll have a huge estate in the Samara province and three hundred horses, and what then? He thinks about fame and hears: you'll be more famous than all the writers in the world, and so what?

Tolstoy wrote A Confession between 1879 and 1882 and published it in 1884. He does not spare himself in it. He is sure that for the great majority of people of his class, faith melts away just as his own did, only not everyone notices.

He will look for an answer in science and philosophy, among the sages and among people like himself. And he will find it where he least meant to look. The answer itself will fit into one short line, and we'll get there.

One sentence was enough to end a man's prayers

An acquaintance of Tolstoy's is spending the night out hunting, and out of a childhood habit he kneels down to pray in the evening. His older brother lies on the hay and watches him. When he finishes, the brother asks: "So you still do that?" They say nothing more. From that day on, the man does not pray or go to church for thirty years.

Tolstoy explains: the brother's words were like a push of a finger against a wall that was ready to fall under its own weight. They only showed that where the man thought he had faith, there had long been an empty space. Faith taken on trust quietly melts away, while the ritual lives on out of habit for a long time.

For Tolstoy himself it happened earlier. As a child he was expected to know the catechism, the textbook of the basics of the faith, and to go to church. But when his brother Dmitry began to fast in earnest and attend every service, the whole family laughed at him. The boy drew his conclusion: you have to learn it, but you shouldn't take it seriously. At sixteen he stopped praying.

The young Tolstoy's real faith was faith in self-improvement. At first he was guided by morality, a simple wish to be good. But soon the wish to be better in his own eyes and in God's gave way to the wish to be better in the eyes of others. And then to the wish to be stronger than others: more famous, more important, richer.

Read in Livria

About the author

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer, the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In A Confession he examines his own spiritual crisis and the beginning of his religious search.

All books by this author: Leo Tolstoy

Terms from the book

  • Socrates
  • Schopenhauer
  • dogma
  • Kant
  • Solomon
  • Buddha
  • Parable
  • Morality
  • Metaphysics
  • Confession: A frank account of a person's inner life and mistakes; in Christianity, also the admission of sins before a priest. Here it is the title of Tolstoy's autobiographical work.
  • Catechism: A short statement of the basics of Christian doctrine, often in the form of questions and answers.
  • Progress: Movement toward a better state. Tolstoy calls the belief that any development justifies life by itself "the superstition of progress".
  • Half-sciences: Tolstoy's own word, not a scientific term: his name for the legal, social and historical sciences when they set out to settle the question of the meaning of a person's life.
  • Ecclesiastes: A book of the Bible about the futility of human labour, traditionally linked to Solomon. The words "vanity of vanities" come from it.
  • Epicureanism: Here Tolstoy's word for living for whatever pleasures are within reach while knowing that life ends. It is his own usage, not a full account of Epicurus's ancient teaching.
  • Schismatics: In Russia, the name for Old Believers and members of other groups that split from the official Orthodox Church after the reforms of the seventeenth century.
  • Tradition: Religious beliefs, stories and examples of how to live, passed down from generation to generation.
  • Theology: The study and explanation of religious teaching about God and his relation to people and the world.
  • Sophism: An argument that looks sound but hides a logical error or a sleight of hand.
  • Communion: The Christian sacrament of receiving the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine.
  • Old Believers: Orthodox Christians who rejected the church reforms of the seventeenth century and kept the earlier rites.
  • Denomination: The religious teaching a person or community holds, such as Orthodoxy or Catholicism.
  • Heretics: People whose teaching the church declares a departure from the true faith.
  • Sectarians: Members of religious groups that broke away from the dominant church. In the book, the word names those the church persecuted for holding a different faith.

All terms

Similar books