Leo Tolstoy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love [seen in the sense of things like the laws of physics], which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death)

"I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen

Confession

What I Believe

The Gospel in Brief

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Tolstoy Wasn't What We Now Call "Religious," He Believed in the Value and Potential of the Knowledge Within Religion, Not Dogma or "Miracles": https://lemmy.world/post/44866402

Tolstoy's Personal, Social, and Divine Conceptions of Life: https://lemmy.world/post/44903802

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Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

"Are you acquainted with Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive... If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person." - Ludwig Wittgenstein https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/the-logical-mystic

"Tolstoy's religious writings, such as the Gospel in Brief and A Confession, clearly had an enormous influence on Wittgenstein especially at the time he was writing the Tractatus. Strange then that so few commentators have even acknowledged, let alone attempted to account for, Tolstoy's influence on Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is therefore especially worth considering the extent to which the Gospel in Brief specifically influenced the outlook of the Tractatus. Indeed, as his friend and correspondent, Paul Engelmann put it, out of all Tolstoy's writings Wittgenstein had an especially high regard for the Gospel in Brief. Yet it often appears to be simply assumed that the Gospel in Brief had a profound effect on Wittgenstein. Why this might be so is never clearly explained. That the book does not seem to be readily available or very well known in the English-speaking world may partly explain why its influence on Wittgenstein may have been neglected. But in this article we attempt to explain the impact of the Gospel in Brief upon Wittgenstein's philosophy (especially the later passages of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and his general view of ethics." - http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/2001/04/wittgenstein-tolstoy-and-the-gospel-in.html?m=1

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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Mahatma Gandhi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

"Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into insignificance." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

"His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention." - Mahatma Gandhi, A Letter to a Hindu

The Story of My Experiments With Truth

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Martin Luther King Jr.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

"Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

King graduated high school at fifteen, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Morehouse college at nineteen, and went on to earn his Bachelor of Divinity from Crozier Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of philosophy from Boston University. He read Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, Locke and even Marx, to "better understand the appeal of communism for many people," along with many others. He obviously read Leo Tolstoy considering Gandhi's profound influence upon him; according to Gandhi's autobiography, he named his Shakram in South Africa "Tolstoy's Farm," as Tolstoy was debately Gandhi's greatest influence.

"The measured words of Leo Tolstoi’s confession in My Religion [that's a mistranslation of the American edition of the book, it's really What I Believe] reflect an experience many have shared: ‘Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right… My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings.' " Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Thirteen, "The Answer to a Perplexing Question"

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Strength to Love

Ｔｏｌｓｔｏｙ（ｓ）：

• Wasn't What We Now Call "Religious," He Believed in the Value and Potential of the Knowledge Within Religion, Not Dogma or "Miracles"

• Personal, Social, and Divine Conceptions of Life

• "Seductions of Power and Wealth Seem a Sufficient Aim Only so Long as They Are Unattained"

• "The Intoxication of Power"

• Thoughts on Infinite Time and "Faith"

• "People Come to a Farm"

• Evidence Regarding the "Evil" of Life Not Being a Result of "Delusion or the Morbid State of Mind"

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Ｇａｎｄｈｉ＇ｓ：

• "Acquaintance With Religions"

• Thoughts on "Ahimsa"

• "Successful Search For Truth Means Complete Deliverance From the Dual Throng of Love and Hate"

• Thoughts on Narayan Hemchandra — a Friend He Met in England

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Ｋｉｎｇ＇ｓ：

• Thoughts on the Philosophy of Pacifism

• Thoughts on Power

• Thoughts on Hope and Despair

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Ｃｏｄｒｕｓ：

• An Allegorical, More Philosophical Interpretation of the Story of the Garden of Eden

• The Salt Is Selflessness

• The Consequence of Consciousness: To Know Is to Not Know

Tolstoy: "I am a man [human]. How should I live? What do I do?"

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“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet." - Matt 5:13

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The Salt

We're humans. Therefore, how should we live? What do we do? Well, what good is salt if it's lost the reason for its existence — to preserve foods or make them taste better? Considering a humans unparalleled potential and ability for selflessness in contrast to any other living thing that's ever existed — as far as we know, of course — wouldn't it become incredibly obvious what the reason for a creature as conscious and capable as a human is made to live for? Objectively, God or not: to strive to be as selfless as possible; to be capable of acknowledging any of its more barbaric and selfish thoughts or behaviors — at all in the first place — and abstain from them, for a purpose outside of itself. This is the "salt": selflessness; what good is a human that's lost its purpose? What good are humans as a whole if we've lost our purpose as a whole? Crippling ourselves, defiling our own minds from the images of our past or potential futures we create in our heads via the double-edged sword that is our imagination, governing so much over how we feel and behave today; our desires and vanities for the sake of ourselves taking precedence over our design, i.e., building your house (your life) on the sand, on what's as temporary as "breath" or "vapor" ("spirit"), like most people. Rather than on the rock, on what can withstand the tides of time, like Jesus or Socrates did; what will ultimately reveal itself to be the truest life or the "true life."

Why don't we ever see birds, for example, sitting around all day, stimulating their sense organs or crippling themselves by how they didn't fulfill xyz desire or vanity for the sake of themselves via the way mankind has presently manipulated its environment and organized itself? Because the extent of how much less conscious birds (nature in general) are of themselves. Could you imagine what would happen if bees stopped doing what they were made to do? In favor of what they want out of their lives? Life on Earth, yet again, would be led to be extinguished, as it did roughly six other times over the last five billion years. Is there anything unique that humans as a whole bring to the table, similar to how the species of bees do for all life on Earth?

"Happy the meek — because they shall inherit the land." - Matt 5:5 YLT

A day, even millenniums from now, where violence, at the very least, is considered a laughable part of our past as the idea of a King is to us now for example; not by supernatural means, but seen in the sense of Tolstoy's personal, social, and divine conceptions of life. Through a painfully slow millenniums long transitioning into it. Without humans, life on Earth continues as it did for the last five billion years, with no great potential for anything to act upon itself or everything else — selfishness or selflessness (morality) upon an environment. This is what makes more conscious, capable beings — on any planet, unique: Its capacity for morality in contrast. But what if these beings begin to do the opposite of what they were designed for? As salt is useless without its taste, so would humans — from the point of view of an unimaginable God(s) or creator(s) of some kind, even from an atheist's point of view — be useless without its purpose: Selflessness, to even and especially, the most extreme degrees. Rather than incessantly choosing itself all throughout its life as — out of inherency — a more conscious monkey would; and when the storm of death begins to slowly creep toward the shore of your conscience, where will you have built your house (your life)? Out on the sand? As most people would be inherently drawn to? "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” - Matt 7:27

"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction [selfishness], and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life [selflessness], and those who find it are few." - Matt 7:13

Ahimsa: Respect for all living things and avoidance of violence towards others.

Gandhi participated in war as medical support. He raised and organized 1,100 volunteers to serve in the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps.

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"As soon as the news reached South Africa that I along with other Indians had offered my services in the war, I received two cables. One of these was from Mr. Polak who questioned the consistency of my action with my profession of ahimsa. I had to a certain extent anticipated this objection, for I had discussed the question in my Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, and used to discuss it day in and day out with friends in South Africa. All of us recognized the immorality of war. If I was not prepared to prosecute my assailant, much less should I be willing to participate in a war, especially when I knew nothing of the justice or otherwise of the cause of the combatants. Friends of course knew that I had previously served in the Boer War, but they assumed that my views had since undergone a change.

As a matter of fact the very same line of argument that persuaded me to take part in the Boer War had weighed with me on this occasion. It was quite clear to me that participation in war could never be consistent with ahimsa. But it is not always given to one to be equally clear about one's duty. A votary [a devoted follower, adherent, or advocate of someone or something] of truth is often obliged to grope in the dark.

Ahimsa is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals caught in the conflagration of himsa [to injure or harm]. The saying that life lives on life has a deep meaning in it. Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward himsa. The fact of his living — eating, drinking and moving about — necessarily involves some himsa, destruction of life, be it ever so minute. A votary of ahimsa therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of himsa. He will be constantly growing in self-restraint and compassion, but he can never become entirely free from outward himsa.

Then again, because underlying ahimsa is the unity of all life, the error of one cannot but affect all, and hence man cannot be wholly free from himsa. So long as he continues to be a social being, he cannot but participate in the himsa that the very existence of society involves. When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary ahimsa is to stop the war. He who is not equal to that duty, he who has no power of resisting war, he who is not qualified to resist war, may take part in war, and yet wholeheartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Four, Chapter Thirty-Nine, "A Spiritual Dilemma"

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel in Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/44903802

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"State violence can only cease when there are no more wicked men in society,' say the champions of the existing order of things, assuming in this of course that since there will always be wicked men, it can never cease. And that would be right enough if it were the case, as they assume, that the oppressors are always the best of men, and that the sole means of saving men from evil is by violence. Then, indeed, violence could never cease. But since this is not the case, but quite the contrary, that it is not the better oppress the worse, but the worse oppress the better, and since violence will never put an end to evil, and there is, moreover, another means of putting an end to it, the assertion that violence will never cease is incorrect. The use of violence grows less and less and evidently must disappear. But this will not come to pass, as some champions of the existing order imagine, through the oppressed becoming better and better under the influence of government (on the contrary, its influence causes their continual degradation), but through the fact that all men are constantly growing better and better of themselves, so that even the most wicked, who are in power, will become less and less wicked, till at last they are so good as to be incapable of using violence.

The progressive movement of humanity does not proceed from the better elements in society siezing power and making those who are subject to them better, by forcible means, as both conservatives and revolutionists imagine. It proceeds first and principally from the fact that all men in general are advancing steadily and undeviantingly toward a more and more conscious assimilation of the Christian theory of life; and secondly, from the fact that, even apart from conscious spiritual life, men are unconsciously brought into a more Christian attitude to life by the very process of one set of men grasping the power, and again being replaced, by others.

The worse elements of society, gaining possession of power, under the sobering influence which always accompanies power, grow less and less cruel, and become incapable of using cruel forms of violence. Consequently others are able to seize their place, and the same process of softening and, so to say, unconscious Christianizing goes on with them. It is something like the process of ebullition [the action of bubbling or boiling]. The majority of men, having the non-Christian view of life, always strive for power and struggle to obtain it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest, the least Christain elements of society over power the most gentle, well-disposed, and Christian, and rise by means of their violence to the upper ranks of society. And in them is Christ's prophecy fulfulled: "Woe to you that are rich! Woe unto you that are full! Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you!" For the men who are in possession of power and all that results from it — glory and wealth — and have attained the various aims they set before themselves, recognizing the vanity of it all and return to the position from which they came. Charles V., John IV., Alexander I., recognizing the emptiness and evil of power, renounced it because they were incapable of using violence for their own benefit as they had done.

But they are not the solitary examples of this recognition of the emptiness and evil of power. Everyone who gains a position of power he has striven for, every general, every minister, every millionaire, every petty official who has gained the place he has coveted for ten years, every rich peasant who had laid by some hundred rubles, passes through this unconscious process of softening. And not only individual men, but societies of men, whole nations, pass through this process.

The seductions of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it gives, seem a sufficient aim for men's efforts only so long as they are unattained. Directly a man reaches them and sees all their vanity, and they gradually lose all their power of attraction. They are like clouds which have form and beauty only from the distance; directly one ascends into them, all their splendor vanishes. Men who are in possession of power and wealth, sometimes even those who have gained for themselves their power and wealth, but more often their heirs, cease to be so eager for power, and so cruel in their efforts to obtain it.

Having learnt by experience, under the operation of Christian influence, the vanity of all that is gained by violence, men sometimes in one, sometimes in several generations lose the vices which are generated by the passion for power and wealth. They become less cruel and so cannot maintain their position, and are expelled from power by others less Christian and more wicked. Thus they return to a rank of society lower in position, but higher in morality, raising thereby the average level of Christian conciousness in men. But directly after them again the worst, coarsest, least Christian elements of society rise to the top, and are subjected to the same process as their predecessors, and again in a generation or so, seeing the vanity of what is gained by violence, and having imbibed [absorb or assimilate (ideas or knowledge)] Christianity, they come down again among the oppressed, and their place is again filled by new oppressors, less brutal than former oppressors, though more so than those they oppress. So that, although power remains externally the same as it was, with every change of the men in power there is a constant increase of the number of men who have been brought by experience to the necessity of assimilating the Christian conception of life, and with every change — though it is the coarsest, cruelest, and least Christian who come into possession of power, they are less coarse and cruel and more Christian than their predecessors when they gained possession of power.

Power selects and attracts the worst elements of society, transforms them, improves and softens them, and returns them to society. Such is the process by means of which Christianity, in spite of the hinderances to human progress resulting from violence of power, gains more and more hold of men. Christianity penetrates to the consciousness of men, not only in spite of the violence of power, but also by means of it. And therefore the assertion of the champions of the state, that if the power of government were suppressed the wicked would oppress the good, not only fails to show that that is to be dreaded, since it is just what happens now, but proves, on the contrary, that it is governmental power which enables the wicked to oppress the good, and is the evil most desirable to suppress, and that it is being gradually suppressed in the natural course of things." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom Of God Is Within You, Chapter Ten: “Evil Cannot Be Suppressed by the Physical Force of the Government — The Moral Progress of Humanity Is Brought About, Not Only by Individual Recognition of the Truth, but Also Through the Establishment of a Public Opinion.”

"Before this century, virtually all revolutions have been based on hope and hate. The hope was expressed in the rising expectation of freedom and justice. What was new about Mahatma Gandhi's movement in India was that he mounted a revolution on hope and love, hope and nonviolence. This same new emphasis characterized the civil rights movement in our country dating from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 to the Selma movement of 1965. We maintained the hope while transforming the hate of traditional revolutions into positive nonviolent power. As long as the hope was fulfilled there was little questioning of nonviolence. But when the hopes were blasted, when people came to see that in spite of progress their conditions were still insufferable, when they looked out and saw more poverty, more school segregation, and more slums, despair began to set in.

But revolution, though born of despair, cannot long be sustained by despair. This was the ultimate contradiction of the Black Power movement. It claimed to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States. Yet it rejected the one thing that keeps the fire of revolutions burning: the ever-present flame of hope. When hope dies, a revolution degenerates into an undiscriminating catchall for evanescent and futile gestures. The Negro cannot entrust his destiny to a philosophy nourished solely on despair, to a slogan that cannot be implemented into a program.

Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy. Their Bible was Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. This black psychiatrist from Martinique, who went to Algeria to work with the National Liberation Front in its fight against the French, argued in his book — a well-written book, incidentally, with many penetrating insights — that violence is a psychologically healthy and tactically sound method for the oppressed. And so, realizing that they are a part of that vast company of the "wretched of the earth," young American Negroes, who were involved in the Black Power movement, often quoted Fanon's belief that violence is the only thing that will bring about liberation.

The plain, inexorable fact was that any attempt of the American Negro to overthrow his oppressor with violence would not work. We did not need President Johnson to tell us this by reminding Negro rioters that they were outnumbered ten to one. The courageous efforts of our own insurrectionist brothers, such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, should be eternal reminders to us that violent rebellion is doomed from the start. Anyone leading a violent rebellion must be willing to make an honest assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority population confronting a well armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that would delight in exterminating thousands of black men, women, and children." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

"God has the light that can shine through all the darkness. We have experiences when the light of day vanishes, leaving us in some dark and desolate midnight — moments when our highest hopes are turned into shambles of despair or when we are victims of some tragic injustice and some terrible exploitation. During such moments our spirits are almost overcome by gloom and despair, and we feel that there is no light anywhere. But ever and again, we look toward the east and discover that there is another light which shines even in the darkness, and the 'spear of frustration' is transformed 'into a shaft of light.' " - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Thirteen, "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence"

"In my search for the answers to the question of life ["I am a human, therefore, how should I live? What do I do?"] I had exactly the same feeling as a man who has lost his way in a forest. He has come out into a clearing, climbed a tree, and has a clear view of limitless space, but he sees that there is no house there and that there cannot be one; he goes into the trees, into the darkness, and sees darkness, and there too there is no house. In the same way I wandered in this forest of human knowledge between the rays of light of the mathematical and experimental sciences, which opened up clear horizons to me but in a direction where there could be no house, and into the darkness of the speculative sciences, where I was plunged into further darkness the further I moved on, and finally I was convinced that there was not and could not be any way out.

As I gave myself up to the brighter side of the sciences, I understood that I was only taking my eyes off the question. However enticing and clear the horizons opening upon before me, however enticing it was to plunge myself into the infinity of these sciences were, the less they served me, the less they answered my question. 'Well, I know everything that science so insistently wants to know,' I said to myself, 'but on this path there is no answer to the question of the meaning of my life.' In the speculative sphere I understood that although, or precisely because, sciences aim was directed straight at the answer than the one I was giving myself: 'What is the meaning of my life?' 'None.' Or: 'What will come out of my life?' 'Nothing.' Or: 'Why does everything exist that exists, and why do I exist?' 'Because it exists.'

Asking questions on one side of human science, I received a countless quantity of precise answers to questions I wasn't asking: about the chemical composition of the stars; the movement of the sun toward the constellation Hercules; the origin of species and of man; the forms of infinitely small atoms; the vibration of infinitely small, weightless particles of ether — but there was only one answer in this area of science to my question, 'In what is the meaning of my life?': 'You are what you call your life; but you are an ephemeral, casual connection of particles. The interaction, the change of these particles produces in you what you call your life. This connection will last some time; then the interaction of these particles will stop — and what you call your life will stop and all your questions will stop too. You are a lump of something stuck together by chance. The lump decays. The lump calls this decay its life. The lump will disintegrate and the decay and all its questions will come to an end.' That is the answer given by the bright side of science, and it cannot give any other if it just strictly follows its principles. With such an answer it turns out the answer doesn't answer my question. I need to know the meaning of my life, but it's being a particle of the infinite not only gives it no meaning but destroys any possible meaning.

The other side of science, the speculative, when it strictly adheres to its principles in answering the question directly, gives and has given the same answer everywhere and in all ages: 'The world is something infinte and unintelligible. Human life is an incomprehensible piece of this incomprehensible 'whole'.' Again I exclude all the compromises between speculative and experimental sciences that constitute the whole ballast of the semi-sciences, the so-called jurisprudential, political, and historical. Into these sciences again one finds wrongly introduced the notions of development, of perfection, with the difference only that there it was the development of the whole whereas here it is of the life of people. What is wrong is the same: development and perfection in the infinite can have neither aim nor direction and in relation to my question give no answer.

Where speculative science is exact, namely in true philosophy — not in what Shopenhauer called "professorial philosophy" which only serves to distribute all existing phenomena in neat philosophical tables and gives them new names — there where a philosopher doesn't lose sight of the essential question, the answer, always one and the same, is the answer given by Socrates, Solomon, Buddha...

• 'The life of the body is evil and a lie. And therefore the destruction of this life of the body is something good, and we must desire it,' says Socrates.
• 'Life is that which ought not to be — an evil — and the going into nothingness is the sole good of life,' says Shopenhauer.
• 'Everything in the world — folly and wisdom and riches and poverty and happiness and grief — [vanity of vanities; doing of doings] all is vanity and nonsense. Man will die and nothing will remain. And that is foolish,' says Solomon.
• 'One must not live with the awareness of the inevitability of suffering, weakness, old age, and death — one must free oneself from life, from all possibility of life,' says Buddha.

And what these powerful intellects said was said and thought and felt by millions and millions of people like them. And I too thought and felt that. So that my wanderings in science not only did not take me out of despair but only increased it. One science did not answer the question of life; another science did answer, directly confirming my despair and showing that the view I had reached wasn't the result of my delusion, of the morbid state of mind — on the contrary, it confirmed for me what I truly thought and agreed with the conclusions of the powerful intellects of mankind. It's no good deceiving oneself. All is vanity. Happy is he who was not born; death is better than life; one needs to be rid of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Six

The simple yet profound meaning Tolstoy found within our knowledge of morality, however: https://lemmy.world/post/44866402

"I must skip many of the recollections of South Africa. At the conclusion of the Satyagraha struggle in 1914, I received Gokhale's instructions to return home via London. So in July Kasturbai [Gandhi's wife], Kallenbach and I sailed for England. During Satyagraha I had begun travelling third class. I therefore took third class passages for this voyage. But there was a good deal of difference between third class accommodation on the boat on this route and that provided on Indian coastal boats or railway trains. There is hardly sufficient sitting, much less sleeping, accommodation in the Indian service, and little cleanliness. During the voyage to London, on the other hand, there was enough room and cleanliness, and the steamship company had provided special facilities for us. The company had had provided reserved closet accommodation for us, and as we were fruitarians, the steward had orders to supply us with fruits and nuts. As a rule third class passengers get little fruit or nuts. These facilities made our eighteen days on the boat quite comfortable.

Some of the incidents during the voyage are well worth recording. Mr. Kallenbach was very fond of binoculars, and had one or two costly pairs. We had daily discussions over one of these. I tried to impress on him that this possession was not in keeping with the ideal of simplicity that we aspired to reach. Our discussions came to a head one day, as we were standing near the porthole of our cabin. 'Rather than allow these to be a bone of contention between us, why not throw them into the sea, and be done with them?' said I.

'Certainly throw the wretched things away,' said Mr Kallenbach.

'I mean it,' said I.

'So do I,' quickly came the reply. And forthwith I flung them into the sea. They were worth some £7, but their value lay less in their price than in Mr. Kallenbach's infatuation for them. However, having got rid of them, he never regretted it. This is but one out of the many incidents that happened between Mr. Kallenbach and me.

Every day we had to learn something new in this way, for both of us were trying to tread the path of Truth. In the march towards Truth, anger, selfishness, hatred, etc., naturally give way, for otherwise Truth would be impossible to attain. A man who is swayed by passions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth. A successful search for Truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng such as of love and hate, happiness and misery." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Four, Chapter Thirty-Seven, "To Meet Gokhale"

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/44903802

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"The Church says that the doctrine of Jesus cannot be literally practiced here on earth, because this earthly life is naturally evil, since it is only a shadow of the true life. The best way of living is to scorn this earthly existence, to be guided by faith (that is, by imagination) in a happy and eternal life to come, and to continue to live a bad life here and to pray to the good God. Philosophy, science, and public opinion all say that the doctrine of Jesus is not applicable to human life as it is now, because the life of man does not depend upon the light of reason, but upon general laws; hence it is useless to try to live absolutely conformable to reason; we must live as we can with the firm conviction that according to the laws of historical and sociological progress, after having lived very imperfectly for a very long time, we shall suddenly find that our lives have become very good.

𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗳𝗮𝗿𝗺; they find there all that is necessary to sustain life, a house well furnished, barns filled with grain, cellars and storerooms well stocked with provisions, implements of husbandry, horses and cattle, in a word, all that is needed for a life of comfort and ease. Each wishes to profit by this abundance, but each for himself, without thinking of others, or of those who may come after him. Each wants the whole for himself, and begins to seize upon all that he can possibly grasp. Then begins a veritable pillage; they fight for the possessions of the spoils; oxen and sheep are slaughtered; wagons and other implements are broken up into firewood; they fight for the milk and grain; they grasp more then they can consume. No one is able to sit down to the tranquil enjoyment of what he has, lest another take away the spoils already secured, to surrender them in turn to someone stronger. All these people leave the farm, bruised and famished. There upon the Master puts everything to rights, and arranges matters so that one may live there in peace. The farm is again a treasury of abundance. Then comes another group of seekers, and the same struggle and tumult is repeated, till these in their turn go away brushed and angry, cursing the Master for providing so little and so ill. The good Master is not discouraged; he again provides for all that is needed to sustain life, and the same incidents are repeated over and over again.

Finally, amongst those who come to the farm, is one who says to his companions: 'Comrades, how foolish we are! See how abundantly everything is supplied, how well everything is arranged! There is enough here for us and for those who come after us; let us act in a reasonable manner. Instead of robbing each other, let us help one another. Let us work, plant, care for the dumb animals, and everyone will be satisfied.' Some of the company understand what this wise person says; they cease from fighting and from robbing one another, and begin to work. But others, who have not heard the words of the wise man, or who distrust him, continue their former pillage of the Master's goods. This condition of things last for a long time. Those who have followed the counsels of the wise man say to those about them: 'Cease from fighting, cease from wasting the Master's goods; you will be better off by doing so; follow the wise man's advice.' Nevertheless, a great many do not hear and will not believe, and matters go on very much as they did before.

All this is natural [ignorance (lack of knowledge) being an inevitability], and will continue as long as people do not believe the wise man's words. But, we are told, a time will come when everyone on the farm will listen to and understand the words of the wise man, and will realize that God spoke through his lips, and that the wise man was himself none other than God in person; and all will have faith in his words. Meanwhile, instead of living according to the advice of the wise man, each struggles for his own, and they slay each other without pity, saying, 'The struggle for existence is inevitable; we cannot do otherwise.'

What does it all mean? Even the beasts graze in the fields without interfering with each other's needs, and men, after having learned the conditions of the true life, and after being convinced that God himself has shown them how to live the true life, follow still their evil ways, saying that it is impossible to live otherwise. What should we think of the people at the farm if, after having heard the words of the wise man, they had continued to live as before, snatching the bread from each other's mouths, fighting, and trying to grasp everything, to their own loss? We should say that they misunderstood the wise man's words, and imagined things to be different from what they really were. The wise man says to them, 'Your life here is bad; amend your ways, and it will become good.' And they imagined that the wise man had condemned their life on the farm, and had promised them another and a better life somewhere else. This is the only way in which we can explain the strange conduct of the people on the farm, of whom some believed that the wise man was God, and others that he was a man of wisdom, but all continued to live as before in defiance of the wise man's words." - Leo Tolstoy, 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘉𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦, Chapter Seven

"Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

There's nothing essentially wrong with power. The problem is that in America power is unequally distributed. This has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It has led a few extremists to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"

Faith: the will to believe in a truth; "the knowledge of the meaning of [a] man's life," that he gives to it.

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"There arose a contradiction from which there were two ways out: either what I called rational wasn't as rational as I thought; or what seemed to me irrational wasn't as irrational as I thought. And I started to test the line of reasoning of my rational knowledge. Testing the line of reasoning of rational knowledge, I found it quite correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was unavoidable, but I saw an error. The error lay in the fact that my thinking didn't correspond to the question I had asked. The question was this: why do I live, that is, what is real and lasting that will come out of my illusory and impermanent life, what meaning does my finite existence have in this infinite world? And to answer this question I studied life.

The answering of all possible questions about life obviously could not satisfy me because my question, however simple it might appear at the beginning, included a requirement for the explanation of the finite by the infinite and the reverse. I was asking, "What is the meaning of my life outside time, outside cause, outside space?" But I was asking the question, "What is the meaning of my life within time, within cause, and within space?" The result was that after a long labor of thought, I answered, "None." In my reasoning I constantly equated — I couldn't do otherwise — finite with finite and infinite with infinite, and so the result I got was what it had to be: a force is a force, a substance is a substance, will is will, infinity is infinity, nothing is nothing, and there could be no further result.

Something like this happens in mathematics when, thinking you are solving an equation, you produce a solution of identity. The line of reasoning is correct but in the result you get the answer a = a or x = x or o = o. The same happened with my reasoning about the question of the meaning of my life. The answers given by the whole of science to the question only produced identities.

And indeed strictly rational science, which begins like Descartes with completely doubting everything, rejects all the knowledge recognized by faith and constructs everything anew on the laws of reason and experience, and cannot give any other answer to the question of life but the very one I received — an indeterminate [not exactly known, established, or defined] answer. It was only at the start that science seemed to me to give a positive answer — the answer of Schopenhauer: life has no meaning; it is evil. But having looked into the matter I understood that the answer isn't positive, but was just my feeling expressing it as such. A strictly expressed answer, as articulated by the Brahmins and Solomon and Schopenhauer, is only an indeterminate answer or an identity, o = o; life appearing to me as nothing is nothing. So philosophical science denies nothing but only answers that it cannot solve this question, that for it the solution remains indeterminate.

Having answered this, I understood that it was impossible to look for the answer to my question in rational science, and that the answer given by rational science is only an indication that the answer can only be given with the question being put differently, only when there is introduced into the reasoning the question of the relationship of the finite to the infinite. I also understood that however irrational and distorted the answers given by faith, they have the advantage that into every answer they introduce the relationship of the finite to the infinite, without which there cannot be an answer. However I might put the question, "How should I live?" the answer is "By God's law." "What that is real will come out of my life?" "Eternal suffering or eternal bliss." "What meaning of life is there that is not destroyed by death?" "Union with the infinity of God, paradise."

So apart from rational science, which previously seemed to me the only one, I was inescapably led to recognize that the whole of living mankind has another irrational science — faith, which gives the possibility of living. All the irrationality of faith remained the same for me as before but I couldn't fail to recognize that it alone gives mankind answers to the questions of life and consequently the possibility of living. Rational science had led me to recognize that life is meaningless; my life stopped and I wanted to destroy myself. Looking around at people, at the whole of mankind, I saw that people do live and affirm that they know the meaning of life. I looked at myself: I did live as long as I knew the meaning of life. Like others I too was given the meaning of life and the possibility of life by faith. Looking further at people from other countries, at my contemporaries, and at those who lived before us, I saw one and the same thing. Where there is life, ever since mankind has existed faith gives the possibility of living, and the main features of faith are everywhere and always one and the same.

Whatever the faith and whatever the answers and to whomever it might give them, every answer from faith gives the finite existence of man a meaning of the infinite — a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, privations and death. That means in faith alone can one find the meaning and potential of life. And I understood that faith in its most essential meaning is not just "the unveiling of unseen things" and so forth, it isn't revelation (that is only a description of one of the signs of faith), it's not just the relationship of man to God (one needs to define faith and then God, but not to define faith through God), it's not agreement with what one has been told by someone (as faith is most often understood) — faith is the knowledge of the meaning of man's life, as a result of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the life force. If a man lives, then he believes in something. If he didn't believe that one must live for something, then he wouldn't live. If he doesn't see and doesn't understand the illusoriness of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he does understand the illusoriness of the finite, he must believe in the infinite without which one cannot live.

And I remembered the whole course of my mental labors and I was horrified. It was now clear to me that for a man to be able to live he either had not to see the infinite or have an explanation of the meaning of life in which the finite was equated with the infinite. I had such an explanation but I had no need for it while I believed in the finite, and I began to test it by reason. And with the light of reason I found the whole of my previous explanation to dissolve in dust. But there came a time when I stopped believing in the finite. And then I began to construct out of what I knew, on rational foundations, an explanation that would give the meaning of life; but nothing got constructed. Together with mankind's best minds I came to o = o and was very surprised to get such a solution when nothing else could come of it.

What was I doing when I looked for an answer in the experimental sciences? I wanted to learn why I lived and for that I studied everything outside myself. Clearly I was able to learn a great deal, but nothing of what I needed. What was I doing when I looked for an answer in the philosophical sciences? I studied the thoughts of those people who were in the same position as myself, who had no answer to the question, "Why do I live?" Clearly I could learn nothing other than what I myself knew: that one can know nothing. "What am I?" "Part of the infinite." Now in those few words lies the whole problem. Can mankind have asked this question of itself only yesterday? And really did no one ask himself this question before me — such a simple question coming to the tip of the tongue of any clever child? This question has been asked ever since man has existed; and ever since man has existed, it has been understood that for the question to be answered it has been just as inadequate to equate finite to finite and infinite to infinite, and ever since man has existed, the relationship of finite to infinite has been looked for and expressed.

All these concepts, in which the finite is equated to the infinite and the result is the meaning of life, concepts of God, freedom, good, we submit to logical analysis. And these concepts do not stand up to the criticism of reason. If it weren't so terrible, it would be funny to see the pride and complacency with which like children we take to pieces a watch, remove the spring, make a toy of it, and then are surprised that the watch stops working. The solution of the contradiction between finite and infinite is necessary and valuable, providing an answer to the question whereby life is made possible. And this is the only solution, one we find everywhere, always and among all peoples — a solution coming down out of time in which the life of man has been lost to us, a solution so difficult that we could make nothing like it — this solution we carelessly destroy in order to ask again that question inherent in everyone to which there is no answer. The concepts of infinite God, of the divinity of the soul, of the link between the affairs of man and God, the concepts of moral good and evil, are concepts evolved in the distant history of man's life that is hidden from our eyes, are those concepts without which life and I myself would not be, and rejecting all this labor of all mankind, I want to do everything by myself, alone, anew, and in my own way.

I didn't think so then, but the germs of those thoughts were already in me. I understood firstly that for all our wisdom my position alongside Schopenhauer and Solomon was a stupid one: we understand that life is evil and still we live. This is clearly stupid because if life is stupid — and I do so love all that is rational — then I should clearly destroy life, and no one would be able to challenge this. Secondly I understood that all our reasoning was going around in a vicious circle, like a wheel that has come off its gear. However much, however well we reason, we cannot give an answer to the question, and it will always be o = o, and so our path is likely to be the wrong one. Thirdly, I began to understand that the answers given to faith enshrine the most profound wisdom of mankind, and that I didn't have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason, and that, most importantly, these answers do answer the question of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Nine