The ultimate goal of life

By V. N. Mallock. London, 1877 Among the many virtues they boast about, the preachers of modern progress put tolerance in the first place. Whether they really have tolerance can still be debated; but there is no doubt that in our so-called educated and learned world, a cool, calm attitude towards all kinds of beliefs now prevails. Not so long ago, about 30 years ago, for example, the appearance in literature of a work that boldly rejected all the foundations of accepted beliefs was considered a strange, extraordinary event, outraged minds, led to horror and indignation. Nowadays, works of this kind appear every day, are signed by big names of the authorities of science and literature, are calmly read and discussed by everyone, and do not surprise anyone except people who are backward from the mental movement in society. There is not a single creed that is not subject to merciless criticism: on its scales all beliefs are weighed indifferently, as if a calm, cold, inexorable trial was being carried out on them all, and all those present wait without emotion for the final verdict to be pronounced. Everyone, apparently, is looking for the naked truth, but no one is confused by the thought of where exactly this truth will be found and what it should consist of. At first glance, such tolerance seems like a wonderful quality, and many smart people assure us that this wonderful quality is a precious asset of our enlightened age. But you can look at this matter from the other side. One might argue that such tolerance is perhaps a sign not of enlightenment, but of ignorance. Is it not because we treat different and opposing opinions so calmly because we do not understand or recognize any of them fully and properly? A truly great struggle is taking place before us over the fundamental principles of life, such a great struggle as may never have happened before. Is it not because we treat it so calmly because we do not understand its full significance? Why don’t we understand? From indifference - and this does not do us credit. This struggle does not directly concern our everyday life, in which we are accustomed to live our lives. The questions that are discussed in it, at first glance, are far from us, abstract questions - about the union of the spirit with the body, about the foundations of moral feeling, about the origin of man, about the beginning of life, about the properties of matter, about the initial and final causes. All these questions appear to us and stop our attention only occasionally, in hours of solitude and leisure: in the heat of daily activity, in the whirlpool of current life, we do not stop at them and completely forget about them. But sooner or later all these questions will directly or indirectly affect our real life and turn into practical activity; Perhaps, unknown to us, their effect was already reflected in our home, in our children, in ourselves. The matter is, in essence, not about first causes, not about natural selection, etc. p.; it is about the meaning and character of the entire human existence, about what we live and move about - about our hopes, fears, affections, about our relationships with our wife, with father and mother, with the upbringing of our children. All this is now in dispute, all this is a struggle, in which we are so calmly present. One can get lost in the variety of opinions and teachings that are now preached around us and among us: so many theological systems, so many systems of moral philosophy and materialism, so many differences in them in general and in detail that thought cannot embrace everything and cope with them all. But in the midst of this confusion it is possible to distinguish two groups into which it is divided by a sharp line; there is no transition beyond this line, and there is no connection and sympathy between both groups. One resolutely affirms what is equally resolutely denied in the other—namely, the personal existence of God and the personal immortality of man. One group is associated with religious belief; to the other atheism or unbelief. These are the two extreme points of a certain thought, two decisive teachings striving to establish themselves in life and merge with it. True, between these two poles there are countless transitional shades, but all these are shades of doubt, oscillating between faith and unbelief; these shades, however, do not have practical significance, because the philosophy of doubt in itself is sterile and ineffective: it does not arouse the will to action and implementation in life, but weakens and stops all activity. In our time, atheism appears in a new form and acquires new strength. Sometimes he would hide, babble vague, fragmentary, impulsive speeches, and wherever he appeared, he aroused horror, indignation and anger everywhere: he was expelled and persecuted. Nowadays, atheism has already developed for itself a completely organized, firm and definitive teaching; it already appears everywhere with an open face, without shame, it is greeted without surprise, and its name has ceased to serve as a reproach. The world receives its preachers with honor, the very opponents listen to them with respectful attention, and often even the preachers of the faith give them a place next to them in the honest company of mentors and teachers. Today's atheism is not at all what it was before. It is established on new foundations and enlivened by a new spirit. It manifests itself not only in the impulses of a rebellious mind, not in the cries of a revolutionary crowd, intoxicated with political madness: it has become a science, based on experiments, on research, on evidence. His teachers, diligently avoiding boasting and arrogance, present their teaching with dignity, refer in everything to the highest authority of nature, to the history of the universe and the human race, and apart from this authority they do not recognize anything else. In his name they teach that there is no God and no future life, and the opposite teaching is called a dangerous and harmful delusion. They strive to eradicate it, turning not to the wild instincts of nature, not to self-will and unbridled passions, but to moral feeling, to the instincts of order and decency. The most serious representatives of this teaching show both in word and in life that they highly value human life and preach abstinence and internal discipline in life. They condemn an ​​easy, carefree attitude to life with the same severity as preachers of the faith. And the teachers of atheism say: human life is a subject of first importance, the most important question in life is how to spend it, how to live. A life lived badly is a wasted life; by living a good life the goal of life is achieved. Life is neither vanity nor confusion of spirit: it contains within itself a treasure that everyone who lives strives to find; whoever achieved it and mastered it did not live in vain, no matter what hardships he bore in life, and the mere desire for this treasure on the right path serves as its own reward. So, both opposing teachings recognize the great value of life, but what this price of life consists of and where it comes from - opinions differ on this issue. Only one subject, of the greatest importance for us believers, is left unattended by non-believers. Some do not seem to notice it at all; others, from a higher cultural point of view, do not attach any importance to it. Many of them get irritated when they are reminded of it. In general, they resolutely refuse to dwell on it or discuss it seriously. But it is completely impossible to bypass it. It conceals the decisive question of life, which sooner or later appears before us, no matter how much we hide it from ourselves. We all have moments of extreme decline and despondency, when life crumbles to dust before us, disappears under our feet. You can hear the noise of life in your ears, meaningless, like buffoonish and crazy chatter, without any meaning. Everything in the world and in its affairs seems dull, empty, flat, worn out, useless for anything, as if there is no reason to live under the sun, nothing to bother about, nothing to strive for. Knowledge, activity, love itself—everything loses its meaning for us and ceases to excite us. We feel that we can’t live like this, that we need to do something, but no matter what we do, what’s the point? does it matter? This condition drove some to suicide or madness, and in others it turned into a chronic illness. Sound minds reject it as absurdity, but they are not completely free from it. There were eras when it spread epidemically, degenerating into a fashionable affectation. But at all times and everywhere, the vanity of life and human affairs, the illusory nature of happiness in life, have been a theme for sages and preachers de contemptu mundi. But from this abyss of despondency into which the soul was plunging, there was an outcome: at its very depths lay a thought that, arising instantly, changed the hopeless state of the spirit, populated the desert and flooded the deplorable vale with sources of blessing. True, earthly life, when it measures itself by its own measure taken from itself, is nothing more than vanity of vanities and all sorts of vanity; but the true measure of earthly life is outside it. All its paths and paths break off into the abyss or are lost in the sandy desert - there is no end in sight where they lead. True, but they lead to an invisible goal - to eternal and spiritual destinies: anyone who wants to think about life can be convinced of this. As soon as our life is illuminated by this thought, everything in it acquires meaning, and the smallest and most insignificant of our daily affairs acquires immeasurably important significance, and our whole life ceases to seem to us like clownish chatter or an empty fairy tale. Non-believers also recognize the serious significance of life and rebel with indignation against those who reject this significance. We have a basis for this in faith. They still have to find a new foundation, because they reject ours, call it a harmful, immoral lie, and consider its overthrow the first condition for progress. Where do they place the great price of life on which they so insist? They place it exactly where no one has seen it until now, where all of humanity is burdened with sorrows, losses, untruths, violence and all sorts of troubles that destroy life and the truth in life. They believe it is not where, as we believe, all crookedness and untruth will be corrected, where there will be no vanity, illness and sadness, that is, in the future life, but in the same earthly life, in the space between the cradle and the grave, which disappears under our feet as soon as we build a home for ourselves in it: here or nowhere, they say, is the true value of life and its happiness. Who can accept and understand such a word? However, the unbelievers stubbornly stand on it, supporting it with amazing courage, which would frighten them themselves if they could see with their own eyes the complete realization of their thought. They themselves have taken out of life everything that until now redeemed its desperate vanity in the eyes of reasonable people, over whom life weighs, and in such and such a life they believe the only, exclusive beginning of truth and happiness. This position, of course, cannot be taken from them on faith, as the word of the supreme teaching: they must prove to the world, contrary to the general consciousness, contrary to the experience of centuries and millennia. They insist that it is not enough to just live, one must live well, therefore they recognize the beginning of morality in life. In order to establish this beginning, it is necessary to indicate its final goal. For something you need to live morally, and this something for which you need to live this way needs to be shown to people. But let us not forget that the ultimate goal of life can be something inconspicuous, not private and relative, incomprehensible only to a few, but only real, whole, absolute and accessible to the understanding of one and all, something that could embrace the entire soul and penetrate it with a decisive and whole consciousness. It is not enough if our new teachers show the ultimate moral goal, which only the good and strong can understand. This doesn't mean anything yet. A virtuous person is held together by his desire for good and his activity directed toward good: it more or less in itself satisfies him - he himself knows why he lives and acts this way. The main thing is not in those who know and are kind, but in those who are evil, in those who do not know, who did not seek or ask, but who need to be taught, aroused, directed to the goal, transformed from evil to good. So, the ultimate goal of life should be such that not only the good understand their virtue in it, but so that the evil, in view of it, recognize the madness of vice and untruth. This is who the preacher of the moral principle in atheism should have in mind: if he does not find for this mass of people a clear and understandable ultimate goal for them, he can only corrupt them, but will not introduce them into his thoughts and will not direct them to a moral life. It is not the healthy who require a doctor, but the sick. What kind of a doctor is he who only knows how to explain to the patient his own happiness and health! Every person seeks happiness in life, but everyone does not believe happiness in the same thing. Types of false, illusory happiness are as diverse as human passions and desires. But true happiness is one, and such that everyone can understand it and prefer it to everything else in the world: not only the good, strong and contented, but also the evil, and the weak, and the needy, and the burdened. It is inextricably linked with the moral principle. This is the task of moral teaching, that it teaches us to follow the upper right path, the royal path to the one true happiness. There are many lower paths that people take to happiness, which everyone imagines: the moral principle must illuminate these paths and show people that they lead away from the right path and from true happiness - show it so clearly that not only those who want to choose this path, but also those who do not want it, turn away from it, recognize in the depths of their conscience that there is truly one right path and one true happiness. Is the moral principle of atheism, without faith, able to show people with such indisputable clarity in obvious reality the one true happiness within one earthly life? If not, then he is unable to fulfill his task, and, therefore, there is no one happiness, no one morality without religion. Atheism is unable to present to people a clear and real image of such happiness; and such an image is unthinkable in the circle of earthly things and within the confines of earthly life. We hear only the following speeches from him: shouldn’t virtue serve as its own reward? Should people be kind, generous, truthful, courageous only because of the expectation of reward in the future life, or out of fear of punishment? Shouldn't these qualities be sought for their own sake, simply to possess them, and isn't their possession a bliss in itself? But all these speeches and similar ones only scatter with sound in space, explaining nothing, convincing no one. These speeches are idle; in them there is only an evasion of answering the request persistently offered to the new teaching by real life and the basic need of human moral nature. Let's take a closer look at the moral ideal of teachers of atheism. These are the expressions in which the highly talented poet of this teaching, Georges Eliot, describes it. 1 “Oh, when I could unite with the invisible choir of the immortal dead: they have died, but again receive life in minds that are perfected in their presence... To live with them is to live a heavenly life... We will pour unfading music into the world, and it will breathe into it the harmony of beauty and order and, growing in strength, will give the world the tone of growing human life. Thus, we will inherit that desired purity, for which we fought such a struggle, about which we sighed so much, looking back at the past with agonizing despair. This best self of the universe will live until time lowers its heavy eyelids... This is the future life; The martyrs of the human race perfected it, glorified it with new glory - for us who will follow them. ABOUT! I wish I could reach this purest heaven, serve as a cup of strengthening drink for other souls in moments of great agony, ignite generous jealousy, nourish pure love in souls, evoke clear smiles without an admixture of bitter feelings, spill out into everything and everywhere in an inexhaustible choir, whose undying music is the joy of the whole world! These wonderful verses contain all the ideal features of the moral teaching of atheists. The features are lofty: this teaching calls for self-sacrifice, for heroism, convinces one to forget one’s personal existence, to immerse it in the great, boundless life of the entire human race. These lessons should serve as a response to the needs of that minority who are not content with the flow of everyday life with the interests of the day and the minute, but are tormented by perplexity about what is the meaning and significance of life, and how to discover this meaning in it using their own means of reason? But will the minority be satisfied with these answers? Will he be satisfied with this ideal? The moralists of modern atheism boast of this ideal of theirs to believers. “We,” they say, “we were the first to put forward the ideal of pure selflessness, without selfish goals, while your ideal is selfish, associated with the thought of personal reward, with calculation and hope. We believe our immortality in the beneficial action of our entire life; we want to live not for ourselves personally, but in the higher life of all humanity.” It’s great, but ignorance or partiality alone can claim that the ideal of a believer is less exalted: self-denial, self-sacrifice is an essential feature of religious morality, only in it this feature is real, valid and therefore true, whereas in the morality of atheism this feature, for all its sublimity, is dreamy, illusory and therefore cannot serve as a solid basis for moral teaching. The atheist puts forward as the motivating reason for life the desire for the true happiness of mankind, but he places this happiness all within the limits of earthly life, which, in his opinion, contains all the conditions for achieving the height, completeness and purity that the most sublime human nature can achieve. The believer, in view of the obvious, real, irresistible imperfections of earthly existence, connects this happiness with that which is higher than earthly life, higher, purer, fuller than the conditional and limited existence of earthly existence. The believer seeks his heights above himself, feeling all his imperfections, for no human heights can satisfy him. The atheist raises his heights from the nature of daily human life on earth and indicates them with such vague features that thought cannot calm down on them and be satisfied with them. Self-sacrifice is preached - but what should it serve? This question stirs in the soul of every person. Moreover, the new teaching answers, to make people better than they were, to arouse unfading music of harmony in the world, to establish beauty and order, to spread purity, etc. We are not told that heroism, that self-sacrifice is in itself a virtue; we are told that we must sacrifice ourselves for the sake of something precious in the future. But show us this something, define it with features taken from life, from reality and activity; These features must be perceptible and understandable to everyone. Until they are revealed, expressions like “the best self of the universe,” beauty and order and harmony will remain a phrase that only seduces the mind, but does not capture the soul. To explain this, one cannot help but dwell on an instructive example in the life of the most remarkable, most serious and influential of atheists - John Stuart Mill. 2 This is what he says about himself in notes about his life. “In the winter of 1821, when I had the opportunity to read Bentham for the first time, 3 I had what can be called the goal of life: this goal is to be a transformer of the world. Everything else seemed unimportant, like flowers that a traveler plucks along the way: on this alone I established myself, in this alone I found for myself a serious, lasting work in life and personal satisfaction... And suddenly, one day all this disappeared: I woke up as if from a dream... Suddenly I asked myself the following question: what if all your tasks in life come true; If all the desired changes in institutions and in opinions that you foresee in the future actually take place immediately this very minute, will this give you great joy, complete happiness? To this question, the irresistible consciousness in the depths of my soul answered: No! Then my heart sank, the whole foundation on which I had established my life was suddenly overthrown... The goal lost all its attractiveness - after that, what interest could there be in the means for the goal? It seemed to me that there was nothing left in life that would make living worth living.” Then the author says: “Although my despair essentially came from an egoistic feeling and its cause was the destruction of the plan in which I believed my happiness, the fate of humanity did not leave my thoughts for a minute at all, and was not separated in the least from my personal fate. I felt that the crack in my life must be a crack in life in general, and that the question was presented in this form: when the reformers of society and government achieve their goal, when every member of society becomes free and comes to a state of physical contentment, the joys of life, not restrained by struggle and deprivation, will they not cease to be joys? And it became clear to me that until I had a more certain hope for human happiness in general, my despair would remain with me.” This confession of the most prominent of the representatives of unbelief speaks for itself. He tells his living experience, the bitterness of a personal, real feeling, which, according to his own testimony, echoed in him years of the darkest melancholy and almost drove him to suicide. This experience testifies that there must be a definite final goal of activity in mind, there must be a living image of prevailing happiness: only under this condition does human action receive serious meaning, and virtue becomes possible. Without this condition, one of two things: either a person lives like an animal, or a person despairs of life and does not see the meaning in it. What is the ultimate goal, the purpose of the matter - this is a vital question that must be answered, or not live. Avoiding a direct answer only means avoiding the question, and it will immediately appear from the other end again. Mill understood the difficulty of this task, but did not let it overcome him. He decided in his mind that he would overcome it, and finally convinced himself that he had overcome it: he discovered a means of making life bearable for himself and making sure that there was something in it to devote his activity to. This process of restoring Mill's moral strength is instructive: it shows, among other things, what subtle tricks of self-delusion non-believing people subject themselves to in order to close themselves off and divert aside the question that they so avoid putting directly before themselves. Mill is looking for a way out of his difficult situation. According to the nature of his mind, he needs a reasoning formula on which he could tie up the ends of his thoughts and calm his confused logic. And then he suddenly makes two discoveries. Firstly, while remaining with his basic idea that happiness serves as a test of the moral principle and the ultimate goal of life, Mill is convinced that this goal can only be achieved indirectly, only if a person does not think about it and does not act for it. “Those are only happy,” he says, “whose thought and will are directed to other objects besides their own happiness: to the happiness of others, to the improvement of humanity, even to this or that enterprise, or it would be not a means, but the ideal goal of life.” Here is one discovery that reassured the philosopher: obviously, he needed reassurance, but his discovery does not resolve anything, and the question remains as before, only with the addition of contradictions. Mill himself first of all believes that happiness should serve as a breakdown of every moral principle, therefore, it must be moral and must be the rule of life that leads to happiness. But the same Mill asserts: happy is he who has established his thought not on his own happiness, but on an enterprise that constitutes an ideal goal for him. How can one agree with the other, when, according to Mill’s other conviction, every business and enterprise is justified by the fact that it leads to happiness? Obviously, there is a fatal circle here in which thought revolves without a way out and without solid support. And one more thing: happy, in his opinion, is the one who has in the subject not his own personal happiness, but the happiness of others. Again the fatal question: what does a person imagine happiness for others when he has no clear concept of his own happiness? And in general, what is human happiness? This difficulty had to be resolved in order to finally calm down, and so Mill, having determined what a person should not have in the subject of his happiness, begins to explore what happiness is, what does it consist of? Here he makes another discovery, coming to the following conclusion. Constant happiness, for which all people live, for the sake of which life will become sweet when its main vices and disasters are eliminated, is “the state of feeling and thought, imbued with sensation, under the impression of beauty” (in the original, states of feeling and of thought colored by feeling, under the excitement of beauty). These are, in real words, everything that the great philosopher can tell us about what, in his own words, should serve as a test of any activity, of any moral principle, and because of what life receives value and meaning for a person. Mill turns out to have the same vague idea as the poet whose words are quoted above. Truly, after this discovery we remain in the same, if not more, darkness in which we sat before. If we must, as he says, live and act for happiness, if it serves as a moral assessment for us, then how is it possible for us not to know what happiness is, not to have a definite concept about it, not to be able to distinguish true happiness from false and illusory? And so, Mill was satisfied with his definition of happiness; it seemed to him quite definite and attractive to everyone. It was his will - no doubt he wanted to calm his embarrassment at all costs. Isn't this example a clear denunciation of all the newest teachers of atheism? Doesn't he clearly demonstrate the impossibility of establishing an atheistic moral principle on a solid foundation? Is it not clear from it that the most prominent, kindest representatives of this teaching, preaching about the serious meaning and great purpose of human life, are exhausted and lost in the labyrinth when they undertake to find the beginning and establish a solid foundation for a moral and serious life? And they will not achieve their goal as long as they contain the entire concept of life within the confines of human earthly existence. It’s even strange to see that people of great intelligence, enormous learning, and strict thinking calm all their perplexities on an empty formula or a dreamy idea, as if closing their eyes from the truth. With all this, we repeat, these people have acquired authority for themselves - many eagerly listen to them, they take their word for it, and accept the propositions or statements they make as the immutable truth. Many of them are distinguished by a strictly moral life and activity, therefore, their very deeds confirm the strictly preached view of life. Is it possible that they would carry the world along with them, and that their teaching would prevail over thought? We answer without hesitation: no, and for these reasons. Almost all the prominent representatives of unbelief, who laid the foundations for it with their speculations and discoveries in our time, were people of book learning, figures of science and literature. They gained authority through desk work, work and research in the laboratory, and the anatomical theater; from here they extracted and brought into the world those conclusions and provisions that, in their opinion, must necessarily suppress religious feelings and eradicate religion in humanity. Knowledge serves them as a weapon to destroy faith; but at the same time, recognizing the need to fill the gap left by faith in life, they promise to replace faith for us with the same knowledge. In this they are very mistaken. The force that helps them in destruction cannot do anything to recreate what was destroyed: this requires completely different forces. They have taken heavenly happiness from life and want to replace it with earthly happiness. But if heavenly happiness turns out to be a myth among them, then who can guarantee that their earthly happiness will not be the same? In this question of happiness, no amount of learning, no amount of fame acquired in an office or laboratory, can serve as an authority, no matter how enormous. The power that can be an authority in this matter is not acquired in one place, is not derived from one specialty; on the contrary, it can be said that a specialty in research and knowledge makes it impossible to acquire this power. In order to judge the happiness that life can give, it is necessary to live this life itself in all its diversity and study living people as they appear in life, with all their motives, desires and passions. Such study is not promoted in any way, but is hindered by special science, which requires solitude, isolation from life, exclusive occupation with one subject, to which all the energy of the mind is devoted; and therefore the exclusive pursuit of science, accessible only to a few, always directs thought in one direction and involuntarily disposes a person to exaggerate and generalize the meaning of everything that constitutes the personal motive and personal mental interest of his activity, prevents him from clearly seeing and recognizing the general motives and real moral goals of activity, as they appear in life. The interests that absorb the activities of these people and give meaning to their entire life seem to them to be the common interests for all of humanity, and they know for the most part only by name the real interests by which it moves, having only an abstract idea of ​​anxieties and joys, of the struggle with habits and passions from which their upbringing, temperament, way of life and activities protects them. And such and such a scientist from his office, straight from observing the wings of a butterfly, from research on the law of parallel lines, appears to living people, in an environment driven by the desires and passions of real life, agitated by love, hatred, ambition, vain vanity, appears to these people to preach to them the secret of life, the basic principles of activity, the law of happiness! He speaks to them about moral principles as a professor of science, as if for them the most important thing in life is scientific research, as if the mass of people can be imparted with a keen interest in science for the sake of science itself, as if living human life merges with science in one and all! It is also impossible to allow the interest of science to be the first basic interest and goal of life for everyone and for everyone; it is impossible to establish a moral principle on this basis: in this case, it would follow that everything that diverges from the scientific goal is immoral, and everything that contributes to it is moral. The ultimate goal of activity for everyone cannot be other than a single one, common to everyone, understandable to everyone, accessible to everyone. There can be no other goal in a moral sense. It should attract equally both the learned and the unlearned man, the simpleton and the highly educated, the rich and the poor, the politician as well as the artisan, the secular woman living in dispersion, as well as the solitary worker at a distance from worldly passions and worldly noise. It must be such that, in view of it, even the impassive nature is able to be animated, and the seething passion would decide to put a rein on itself. There must be such an irresistible force of attraction in it for everyone that before this force all the autocratic instincts of egoism in human nature could fall silent, the strongest stronghold of human pride could be humbled, the most fiery desires, the most indomitable impulses and passions would freeze. Whether such a force is possible for the world and people and what it consists of, only one who knows the world of human life can judge this in a human way. A believer, when judging the moral principle and the ultimate goal of life, has no need to cope with the world, because his moral principle is outside of earthly existence. But a preacher of morality - an unbeliever and atheist - must certainly be a man of real life, a participant in its entire movement, because he believes in this world the source and goal of his morality. He denies the first cause of the world and life, but this denial does not yet contain any positive conclusions or results. It remains for the unbelieving moralist to extract it from real life. He must enter with his whole being into all human motives and affairs and experience everything, without having the right to turn away from any of them: otherwise he is not able to judge the purpose of earthly life, the possibility of earthly happiness and what it consists of. So, while maintaining all due respect for the authority in science of scientists and thinkers, amazed at their discoveries in the field of their scientific activity, we refuse to take their word, no matter how virtuous they may be in themselves, when they are preachers of the moral principle and the ultimate goal of life. When atheists talk to us about morality, they apparently agree with us on its main features; their ideal images often bear the imprint of sublime purity, which cannot but attract us and arouse our sympathy. But there is an important circumstance that should be kept in mind and to which atheists themselves do not pay attention; and it is essential in this matter. When atheists tell us about morality as applied to life, they always mean life with its driving forces, completely cleared of the false, in their opinion, religious idea and religious motives. It is in this that they are extremely mistaken: to life, in its entirety, they cannot, unfortunately for themselves, apply any of those chemical or mechanical processes through which it is possible to decompose the objects of the material world, isolating or purifying certain elements from impurities. Atheists imagine religion as something special that can be isolated from life: religion appears to them only in its pure form, in the form of a special religious feeling or conscious perception of certain beliefs. And so they think and calculate that by removing this pure form of religion from life, they thereby disbelieve life and then can freely work over it as over a clean field from which faith has been weeded out. Isn't this similar to the fairy tale about the child who wanted to scoop up the sea with a cup? With the destruction of a certain form of belief, life cannot yet be called faithless: one can even say that from this moment the process of faithlessness in it barely begins, and can hardly ever be completely completed. The fact is that in life only the smallest share of religious sensation is presented in pure form. Religious feeling is united in an inseparable connection with all manifestations of life, with its most ordinary sensations and actions, giving each of them a special color, a special character, a special strength and tension. So, in order to deprive life, it is not enough to destroy pure belief and destroy prayer. It is necessary to decompose, distill every sensation, purify every movement of feeling, taking out from them what is inherent in faith and merged with it: until this process is completed, in every corner, in every beat of life, faith will still lurk, and it will be possible to sense and recognize it in the most ordinary phenomena, in movements of joy and grief, in activities, even in fun and entertainment: and if it were possible to completely take it out of them, they would present themselves in a completely different way. Even more palpable is the presence of faith in our characteristic feelings and movements - in generosity, in heroic deeds, in pure thought, in truthfulness - in everything in which atheists, along with believers, recognize the beauty and glory of human nature. Professor Tyndale 4, not without irony, says about theologians that these are all Jacobs, 5 taking away the birthright of matter. In response to this comparison, one could equate the learned professor with his companions to Rachel, 6 who fled, taking with her foreign gods, and placed them in her home, completely forgetting that she had kidnapped them. So, preachers of morality in godlessness can only show us their ultimate goal within the limits of earthly life when they first manage to seek out and diligently destroy in life everything that resonates with faith. When life will be decisively limited within its earthly limits and cut off, so to speak, from any hope for unearthly life and from any attraction to eternity; when all its ports and harbors are surrounded by such a tight blockade that nothing can be taken abroad, then only, but not earlier, will it be possible to judge whether this life really contains enough elements for such universal happiness on which a system of moral teaching can be established. So, this is the essence of that question, regarding which we are ready to boast of our tolerance, or, more correctly, calmness, reaching the point of indifference. This is the most important, this is the first and main question of our entire life. If we are not able to find for ourselves the supreme goal of our existence, a single, universal one in such clarity, strength and beauty that passion cannot overshadow it, so that reason cannot disabuse us of it, so that it always and everywhere shines for us as a guiding star and moves us to the pier with a fair wind, then we are left with one fate - to rush around on our broken ship without a rudder and without a sail. across the stormy and boundless sea until we all, one after another, perish in its waves... Our daily life consists of sensations; every hour of it is colored on the fly by one or another color of joy or sadness or the matter with which our attention was occupied; every year it wears thick colors - from our love, from ambition, from this or that interest with which it was filled. We have nowhere to escape from these sensations, we live and move in them, the essence of our life is in them; all our knowledge, all our mental efforts, all the reasonings of our wisdom either occupy a humble place in the series of these sensations, or tend towards one supreme goal - to guide them. Each of us, no matter who he is, a man of thought or action, an ascetic or a sensualist, must daily struggle with many conflicting impulses and take his course between different currents. If we do not want to give ourselves up to their will and swim wherever we want, we need simple, clear principles to rule us. And we all still had such beginnings, immediately understandable to everyone, immediately ready for action. In a moment of moral hesitation, these principles helped us decide without any doubt what we should do: and if we rejected such a decision, then at least we knew where we were going and what we were doing. Now times have changed. We are assured that the old principles have outlived their usefulness, have served their purpose, and we no longer need anything. They agree, however, that even now, as before, it is impossible to do without solid principles, but they offer us completely new ones. It is clear, however, that the new ones will serve no purpose if they do not take the place of the old principles for us. The new principles must be as clear, as definitive, as the old ones were. We do not find this quality in them. In a general sense, in a vague expression, they are perhaps tempting; but what is the use of them as long as they are presented in such a vague form? We get lost in them, we hear in them only general discussions about the properties of good and evil, coming from a scientist’s office, from a laboratory. But we need such principles so that we can immediately, without a doubt, apply them to any case and decide from them immediately what is good and what is bad. The answer to these questions must necessarily be simple; this business is not good, this custom is not good, this amusement, this occupation, this state of mind are not good, because they separate us from the one thing in which we recognize the only good. It is this single, integral good that our moralists must show us and put before us. This is how we pose the question, and our new teachers themselves often agree that it should be posed this way. I have already referred to Mill. And Professor Huxley 7 in one of his last speeches states that “the ultimate goal of education is the improvement of morality: it should teach a person how to manage himself, it should reveal to him the truth that one supreme good can satisfy a person; but it is inaccessible to people who dwell in the low and foggy valleys of sensuality: it is achieved only by those who incessantly strive for distant heights, where eternal peace reigns and where the mind can discern the formless but clear ideal of the supreme good, in the light of a cloud by day, in a pillar of fire by night.” These are Huxley's true words: they serve as an excellent example of the moral positions with which new teachers address us. Excellent speech; and one could be completely satisfied with it if there were not one flaw in it, which takes away from it all meaning for us. Perhaps there is a great and deep meaning hidden in it, but we are not able to understand it. Before we strive for the supreme good, we need to know what this supreme good consists of, to discern this “clear ideal.” If it is impossible for it to stand and unfold in front of us, if it dissipates in the fog as we approach it, or appears in a different form for each of us who moves away from it, if some can distinguish it, but for others it is completely invisible, then all that remains for us is to take it for one dream and put off all care about it. But our moralists consider it a dream. Eternal life, love for God - this is the dream, in their opinion, and these concepts are contrasted with the “supreme good” that they offer us, real, achievable for mortal people in this mortal life. They unanimously assure us that it consists in the happiness that results in this life from certain behavior, and this happiness, according to Huxley, does not depend in the least on the greater or lesser duration of our conscious existence. - In this case, it is permissible for us to demand an explanation of what kind of happiness this is, what it consists of, which of our teachers themselves, when and where achieved and experienced it? All the answers we are given to this question are extremely unsatisfactory. These answers are of a twofold nature - on two subjects that are usually confused among vaguely thinking people, but are themselves different and should not be confused. Let us first deal with answers of one kind: we will see that they contain absolutely no answer to our question. Prof. Huxley speaks of the “supreme good,” in other words, of happiness, which constitutes the hidden price of our entire life and the benchmark of our behavior. He divides this happiness into two types. When we talk about happiness, we mean either the happiness of the entire human society or the happiness of individual members of society. When we talk about morality, we can also mean either public morality, whose subject and measure is the happiness of society, or personal morality, whose subject and measure is personal happiness. It is necessary for us to keep in mind the difference between one and the other, it is necessary, because our new moralists constantly confuse both concepts in their answers, as if the answer to one serves as an answer to the other. They talk, for example, about life, presenting personal happiness as its supreme good, and then, when it is necessary to explain what it consists of, they immediately change the ground and tell us about the laws and conditions of happiness for society. So does Prof. Huxley begins with the general proposition that morality, both public and personal, is established on its own, independent principle of happiness, but he proves this proposition in relation to only one type of morality and does not care about the other, as if public and personal morality are one and the same. “Let us imagine,” he says, “a society of human beings under given circumstances, and at this moment let us pose the question: does this or that action of one of the members of this society serve to increase or decrease the general happiness? This is a matter of simple natural knowledge, subject to completely scientific research... And if, through observation or experience, it can be proven that theft, murder, adultery do not serve to diminish happiness for society, then, on the basis of simple considerations taken from nature, it should be recognized that these actions are not at all immoral from a social point of view.” Here is the clearest example of the reasoning with which the newest moralists address us. We ask: what should serve as a test measure of behavior, that is, what does happiness consist of? And they answer us: happiness is human happiness, that is, universal happiness, that is, the happiness of people in society, that is, happiness evenly distributed. But what follows from all this? The word “happiness” still remains sealed for us: its content is unknown to us. Social happiness is unthinkable without personal happiness - a happy society does not consist of unhappy people, of course. Tell us what makes each person happy, and we will know what happiness consists of for a society of people. Then, but only then, social morality will become, as Huxley says, a legitimate subject of scientific research. And our moralists, speaking about social happiness, lose sight of the happiness of the individual. The reason for this confusion is not difficult to recognize. It is true that observation and experience can provide us with some firm and clear rules of conduct for guidance; can show us that there are actions that cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, and to eliminate which we all need to act together. But what are these actions? Those by which only the negative conditions of all happiness are violated. In a positive sense, neither the acquisition nor the loss of one or another, definitive, known happiness depends on these actions. Such actions include theft and murder. Without a doubt, whatever our happiness consists of, it is necessary that our life and our property be secured. But providing us with both does not mean giving us happiness: it only gives us the opportunity to seek our happiness without hindrance. Perhaps, when we discover the real, authentic recipe, we will be able to establish ways and rules with the help of which it will be possible to achieve it. But until this recipe is found, the only achievable goal of social morality is not to bring a person any kind of happiness, but rather to eliminate those conditions under which no happiness is possible for a person. Let us imagine, in place of the human race, birds in a cage. You need to decide which seed to give them - hemp, flax, canary, or a mixture of all three. We are in a dilemma, and of course the advice on how to arrange a cage so that the birds do not peck each other’s eyes out, so that everyone has free access to food does not help us out of it: what is the use of this when there is no food and we do not know what it should be? Thus our moralists confuse the negative conditions of happiness with its positive content. Professor Huxley says, among other things, that the human condition “can reach normal life - civitas Dei, in which the moral capacity of each person will be quite sufficient for him to restrain in himself all desires incompatible with the good of humanity - a phrase that makes no sense unless by the good of humanity we mean the divine good of each individual person. Order alone, together with cooperation, is not enough to establish the kingdom of God - civitatem Dei - among us. Without a doubt, order and cooperation mean a lot and can take us far along the path, but still they will only take us halfway. Order is necessary not only for a society of honest people, but also for a company of thieves. Wherever an army goes - to a holy war or to robbery, without discipline it cannot move successfully. A certain order is assumed both in a well-appointed monastery and in a gambling house; it also presupposes cooperation; but you need to know the goal to which it should be directed. So, all this talk about public morality leads to nothing. Let us first of all be shown a purely personal goal, let us be shown the personal supreme good, when, in the words of Prof. Huxley, we must strive ceaselessly for the supreme good. This is the real question that needs an answer. What should I do? What awaits me, what is promised to me? What cannot be promised to anyone in particular, therefore cannot be promised to everyone. Instead of a direct answer, they tell me: work for others and in this you will find your happiness. But a person cannot be satisfied with such an answer and continues to ask: what kind of happiness can I bring to others? What kind of happiness will others bring me? What kind of happiness will it be, and is it worth the work? First of all, you need to be sure of this: without a doubt, it will not bring me any pleasure to give others what it will not bring me any pleasure to receive from others. Any coin must have intrinsic value. What answer do our moralists give us to the question of personal happiness? Let us remember that it is required to present to us a worthy goal, a worthy object of life and activity in such a state when we completely renounce the very concepts of God and the future life, when these concepts disappear even from our imagination. Many of our new teachers are ready to openly admit that the loss of faith in God and hope for a future life can truly be a deprivation for us. Others argue that this is not really a deprivation, but an acquisition. However, there is little difference between the two, because the former assure that the loss is not very important, and in any case not decisive, not fatal. Even without this, life retains its value: its goals, interests and pleasures remain essentially the same. The good remains our goal, and our devotion to the good will have even more dignity, since it will become selfless. Professor Tyndall assures that he has completely rejected the religion of his youth, and despite this he guarantees - unless his physical health fails him - that he will retain all the “spiritual sensations” that he previously experienced, that he is absolutely capable of a strong consciousness of duty and of acts of mercy and self-sacrifice, of serious contemplation of life, of all its joys and of living communication with nature, and, moreover, without the slightest regard for the expected personal reward or execution in the future. Huxley expresses himself in the same way, arguing that regardless of belief, the human soul can always be capable of understanding the beauty of purity and holiness and the abomination of vice, and whoever has eyes to see, for those it will be a deep and strong sensation, and not just a metaphor. It is obvious that all these arguments do not express any new system, but return our thoughts to the old system, point to old goals and rules of activity known by experience, only adding that these goals themselves contain their reward and their motivations. Besides this school, there is, however, another school of teachers who also want to give us rules for life, but these teachers cannot even be called moralists, and their teaching has not yet gained popularity. These are preachers of practical and subtle pleasure in life. They do not deny the difference between vice and virtue and recognize that the pleasures delivered by both are not the same; but in practice their virtue is no better than vice. They do not want to call anything low or unclean, and they allow one to eat from every fruit in the garden of life, as much as anyone can contain; The more variety in pleasure someone needs and has available, the better. They place the price of life in feelings and pleasures of only one kind, and set the condition for happiness to seek these sensations, abandoning others. These put the value of life in all kinds of pleasures indifferently and argue that happiness is an art - namely, the art - to choose one’s pleasure, the better, the greater the variety. Let us note first of all that both teachers equally fall into one fundamental mistake, which destroys all their subsequent conclusions and conclusions: both want to give us the rule of life without religion - without God, without the thought of doing His will here on earth and uniting with Him in eternity. But this task is not as simple as they imagine. It was as if they were planning to destroy God and share His inheritance for themselves. So, immediately erasing all beliefs from life, they at that very moment turn to that same life, distribute all its inventory, count all its riches and say: “Look - this is what and this is what else there is in life; see how beautiful purity is, how holiness shines, how delightful is pleasure. Isn’t it true - it’s worth looking for all this for the sake of what is in all this, without thinking about any retribution in the future? It’s as if all the feelings and all the interests of this life, all the light in it and all the shadows - all this is located in front of us, like colors on a painter’s palette, and they think that all that remains is to take these colors and use them for business. But is this true? They completely erased one color, the most important one, which gives the color of life, that is, religion. Let us suppose that they do not like it: but they themselves assure us that this paint is fragile, that it fades and comes off completely under the rays of the new sun - knowledge; that once it has faded, it is no longer possible to restore it, and one must be able to do without it, one must paint all new pictures without it: enough, they say, we no longer use this paint. What strange self-delusion! Our teachers imagine that this paint disappeared when they erased it from the palette; They don’t even suspect that this paint is part of all the others, that it is their whole secret, that it is what gives them shine and thickness of color. Taking a closer look, they themselves will be convinced that smoking religion out of life is not as easy as it seems at first glance. You can still get rid of dogmas, but you will not get rid of everything that these dogmas brought into life, produced in life over the centuries. They surround us from everywhere under different types; our whole life is imbued with them, and every single fruit in our garden has grown and ripened, feeding on their secret juices. So, if we want to determine the value and meaning of life regardless of religion, then we should not draw our conclusions and conclusions from the phenomena of life, which is still thoroughly imbued with religion; and our moralists take life as it is, and therefore all their conclusions are devoid of solid foundation. Their first premise is no good, because it is built on an error - on an assumption that is completely inconsistent with reality or completely denies reality. We heard from them such expressions as, for example, “the beauty of purity and holiness,” “the requirement of moral duty,” a reverent thought - an inner feeling, etc. Let them give themselves a clear account of what they mean by these expressions, let them subject them to careful spiritual analysis, let them apply to it at least a small share of the art and precision with which they begin to analyze material phenomena. Let us remember what subtle precautions were taken during the latest experiments under involuntary generation, how much ingenuity was put into purifying the liquid in which it was supposed to observe the origin of life, so that nothing resembling an embryo or seed remained in it, not one of the elements contributing to the preservation or development of the remains of a living organism. Of course, objects of spiritual interest would be worth no less careful study. It would be necessary to study not the lower forms of animal life, but the highest forms and types of human happiness. The old teaching placed them in a necessary connection with religion. The new teaching claims that they are possible without religion. Let them, in this case, try to take at least this “beauty of holiness” or this “demand of duty” and subject it to analysis, like Prof. Tyndale handled infusions in which he observed the origin of life. It would be worth the effort to subject this or that virtue, this or that vice, to such a process, to clear the environment of the slightest atoms of religion, and then find out whether happiness can arise in it. Only then will it be possible for us to find out with enthusiasm what materials for happiness we can have at our disposal, having become atheists, then only morality in atheism can acquire some meaning for us. Everything that happens to us in life, all its phenomena appear to our natural sensation, our imagination, our memory, in two forms. We consider some to be pleasant, others unpleasant and painful. And what a person by nature calls happiness, he is accustomed to measuring by these natural sensations, that is, by the sum of the pleasant and the negation of the unpleasant. But looking deeper into life, as it flows and moves around us, we notice that another, supernatural one is intertwined with this natural classification. Many things that we naturally turn away from turn out to be good and blessings in our lives; many things that we naturally enjoy turn out to be evil and bring a curse into our lives; what is considered by nature to be the greatest happiness, elements of evil and deprivation are hidden in it; what is considered the greatest disaster, contains elements of pleasure and good. So, if by nature happiness can serve as a test measure of happiness, then beyond nature truth serves as a test measure of happiness. This concept has taken root in the current consciousness of humanity so deeply that when we have to seriously think about life, each of us, the sinner along with the righteous, raises first of all the question of truth and untruth, and not about the happiness or misfortune of life. And indeed, the moral discussion of life and the phenomena surrounding us - not according to nature, but beyond nature - has become an accessory of our entire being and is expressed in us immediately unconsciously. Here is religious feeling in its simplest, concrete form. Everywhere and in everything that we pay attention to, this feeling of the supernatural accompanies us: it gives deep interest to every matter in our life, and in it is the source of its most vivid and sweetest impressions. The interests that fill life are so diverse that it is difficult to trace them. It will be enough here to refer to one of them, in which all the others, one might say, are collected and reflected. I mean art. What is art and why does it attract us so much? The pleasures it provides correspond to the pleasures of life. What we love in life is what we seek and what attracts us in art. Reflecting the phenomena of life, art turns us to them, stimulating and refreshing our receptivity to these very phenomena; but we also bring into art from real life those sensations that we seek to renew, deepen and strengthen in it. Art is the great builder of human happiness, because through art, simple ordinary people become participants in revelation, which constitutes the property of special, extraordinary chosen ones. Art is a mirror that reflects life in a way that only subtle vision can despise. This is the meaning and dignity of all his images. So, by studying the works of art, we study in it life itself, or better to say, the very essence of life, concentrated in a living image taken from life. Let us take the most defining of the arts, poetry in its most expressive form; Let's take drama, let's see how life appears to us in one of the great dramatic works, for example, in Sophocles, 8 in Shakespeare. 9 At first glance it is not difficult to recognize that all these creations appeal to a supernatural moral sense; it is constantly expressed in the drama itself, it is constantly presupposed in the reader or spectator. All these dramas portray to us people in a struggle or in avoiding the struggle - not for happiness by nature, but for a truth that exceeds nature; Moreover, it is always assumed that in the minds of the audience this struggle is a great cause, giving meaning and importance to the whole life. And this means, in its essence, it is expressed not in the consequences of an event or action for society, but in its consequences for the actor himself. In Macbeth 10, for example, the main event, the tragic moment of the drama, is the murder of Duncan; but the real tragic meaning is not that Duncan is killed, but that Macbeth is a murderer. What amazes us here, what shocks our passionate nature with pity and horror? Not the external, not the social significance of this event, but its internal, personal significance - for the killer. We see the same thing in Hamlet. 11 There is a struggle in his soul, on which the interest of the drama is concentrated, a struggle for the internal law of truth, which he strives to implement, without asking what will happen from this for others and how this will affect his personal happiness. During this struggle, Hamlet, through his actions, destroys all happiness around him, and because of this destruction, the overall picture of the struggle has an even more striking effect on the viewer. Despite all this, the viewer does not have indignation at Hamlet in his soul: on the contrary, the viewer would rather be indignant if the opposite happened, when Hamlet sacrificed his personal sense of truth to the peace and happiness of the public environment. Antigone 12 directly expresses the moral axiom on which this whole wonderful tragedy is built, namely, that the fundamental law that governs our lives, for which we sacrifice our very lives, is not a human law, not a rule created by us, and does not depend on any circumstances or conditions of our or other people’s happiness, but belongs to the unwritten and eternal laws of the Divine: “Its beginning is not yesterday and not today, but in eternity, and no one knows the secret his birth." So, we are convinced that high art, in its exemplary creations, addresses itself primarily to our moral sense, to supernatural moral judgment. Each of them indirectly expresses the following position. The first, basic relationship of a person is not to the person closest to him, but to something that exists above humanity: first of all, to this supreme power, and through it to his fellow people. We are not our own, we were bought at a price. Our bodies are churches of the Divine, and when this church is desecrated, a mysterious punishment falls on the perpetrator of the desecration. Such are the sacred and profound beliefs on which, consciously or unconsciously, the highest art in humanity is established from the beginning. From here arises all the height and depth of this art, in proportion to the strength and liveliness of the belief itself. And one should not think that this applies only to high and serious characters and types in art. The same applies to the low and cynical types. The character of the libertine also presupposes a necessary supernatural principle of moral judgment. The character of the libertine is negative. But in every negation something positive is presupposed, which is negated. He hates goodness and truth, the existence of this truth irritates him; but nevertheless there must be a consciousness in him that this truth exists. Just as Antigone believes her life is in accordance with the “unwritten and eternal laws of the Divine,” so the life of the libertine is based in violation of these very laws. For this, as well as for that, the existence of these laws is equally essential, and debauchery consists not simply in satisfying animal impulses, but in satisfying them at the expense of the law of truth, contrary to this law: animals that are outside this law cannot be depraved. Even in those cases when people strive to go beyond the ordinary line of depravity and plunge deeper and deeper into the most animal pleasures, a supernatural principle, unconscious to them, stands guard beside them; it gives their passion the properties of frantic debauchery, in which people seem to seek new types of pleasures not for the sake of a new revival of impressions, but for the sake of their new baseness and new desecration. So, looking at life as it is reflected in the mirror of art, we are convinced that a supernatural element is constantly present in it. Wherever we turn, we meet it everywhere: whether we ascend to heaven, it is there; Whether we go to hell - and there it is with us. We see it in the depths of each of human pleasures, no matter which of the two opposite categories this pleasure belongs to. The source of some pleasures is a passionate struggle over the supernatural principle of truth, and bliss is in achieving it; the source of others is a feeling of indignation against this principle, a feeling that in many respects is against this principle, a feeling that in many respects is tempting to the human soul. In both cases, the thorn that excites the soul is the supernatural principle of moral judgment. It gives color to all the life around us: when it is torn out of life, weakened, then all life changes its appearance for us. I will explain why I call this beginning of moral judgment supernatural. Because no natural knowledge can give it to us; no tests of nature or investigations of natural forces can either deduce the basis for it, or verify it; on the contrary, as soon as a scientific test taken from the world of real phenomena is applied to it, it dissipates in the air like smoke, disappears like a dream. And no wonder. Firstly, this is the beginning of moral judgment unconditional; it judges truth from untruth dogmatically, menacingly and imperiously, measuring all people with one, the same standard, and there is no appeal to its verdict. Secondly, the difference he posits between truth and untruth is a difference of kind, not degree, and in this sense the difference is infinite. Let us take for example the moral judgment about purity. First of all, at this court it is recognized that the pure, in any case and for all people, is better than the unclean, whatever personal dispositions or personal temperaments. Further, it is recognized in court that the choice between this better and the worse is a decisive choice and that its consequences for each person are incalculable. Our new moralists, rejecting God, want to retain the principle of morality, but this principle, according to their own consciousness, is devoid of both of the above-mentioned qualities, which they are unable to give to it. While admitting this shortcoming, they, however, completely lose sight of it in their teaching. Thus, virtue is positively reduced to the level of taste or personal predisposition, but when they talk about virtue, they mean in it something more than personal taste; Obviously, they remain in their souls with an idea or sensation for which they simply do not find a place in the system they have invented. They feel that not only the greatest happiness, but the most righteous happiness should serve as the true measure of activity; and they offer people this supreme good as if every person is able to discern and comprehend such a good on his own. Let us at least refer to Prof. Huxley: the above are his actual words, which condemn the “low and foggy valleys of sensuality.” He expresses himself as if he had in mind some standard of happiness, independent of the varied and changeable taste of the people to whom his word is addressed. All atheistic preachers of morality express themselves in the same way. It is clear what they mean, and their reasoning is clear; but what they mean has no direct connection with their reasoning. They themselves feel that this reasoning is unstable, and if necessary, they are ready to leave their previous support and look for a new one. At the very beginning, they set it as an axiom that happiness should serve as a measure of activity, but when this measure turns out to be clearly untenable, they seize on something else and assume that objective truth also serves as a measure of activity. But here's the question. Is the virtue of truth that it leads to happiness, or is the whole price of happiness that it is based on truth? If the latter is true, then truth, and not happiness, serves as a measure of activity. In this case, this criterion must be accepted, and the other one must be discarded: both cannot be together. Truth does not merge into one with happiness. It happens that the truth contributes to human happiness, but it also happens that it is completely opposite to happiness. And what does truth mean, according to our new teachers? They call truth the knowledge of facts and phenomena, the causes and consequences of the natural order of things, as indicated by observations and experience—in a word, knowledge of nature. But what is this nature from their point of view! Mill explains to us that nature is a force unworthy of either our reverence or approval. Nature, from a purely human point of view, appears to be a monster. There is no such terrible crime among people that nature does not commit daily on an enormous scale. She knows neither a sense of justice nor a sense of compassion. How can the study of the ways and laws of this monster be recognized as a holy, sublime, moral matter? Is it possible to admit that our happiness, which serves as the measure of all morality, depends on communication with this eternally criminal and monstrous force? This is how an atheist should reason. A believer, of course, knows that truth is a sacred matter, and believes that truth can never diverge from supreme happiness, but always leads to it. But such a belief is affirmed on a basis that atheists absolutely reject. The believer values ​​the truth because wherever it directs him, this direction leads him to God. Nature, however, is inexorable and cruel in itself, when nothing further is visible beyond nature. But the believer sees behind nature the all-merciful God, in whose person all contradictions are mysteriously reconciled. Nature, in his eyes, is not God, but the work of God. “Non enim vasa,” he says in the words of Augustine, 13, “quae te plena sunt, stabilem te faciunt; Quia etsi frangantur, non effunderis. "Ubique totus es et res nulla te totum capit." (The vessels that are filled with You are not the ones that contain You; even if they break, You will not be spilled... Everywhere You are completely, and nothing in the world embraces You). “Even though God strikes me,” says the believer, “I trust in Him.” Such confidence is achieved only by faith and nothing else. No observation, no experience can give it; one can even say that without faith, observation and experience can only weaken and destroy this confidence. So, belief in the essence of truth has the same religious significance as belief in dogma; and the basis of both beliefs is the same. But what could be crazier than the worship of so-called natural truth, which we see among people without religion, without faith in God: this cult of natural truth is reminiscent of fetishism. No one argues that there are many facts about which everyone needs to have a correct, true concept; the discovery of these facts, research and announcement is, in any case, a matter worthy of praise from a utilitarian point of view. But this universal desire to seek truth in everything cannot be confused with devotion to truth for its own sake. There, too, there is devotion to the truth for the sake of its consequences and conclusions from it; here devotion to the truth for its own sake has the property of being unconditional - it is essentially religious and supernatural: if it did not have a religious basis, then it would have neither meaning nor purpose in this world. In a word, the beginning of moral reasoning without religion is impossible: no matter how hard we try to prove the opposite, we will not prove it, because it is impossible to find a solid basis for it apart from faith. It is better not to mention the moral principle from an atheistic point of view: it will at least be consistent. Then it remains to take life as it is, without taking into account the moral principle, and analyze what it gives a person directly from its content, what horizons it opens to the world from the moment the world began to be guided exclusively by reason alone and abandoned faith in everything that cannot be proven through reason. After all, the new teaching seeks to establish the kingdom of reason on earth, completely excluding faith from it. Reason, without a doubt, is a great thing, you cannot do without it, but it is still necessary to understand for yourself what reason is and what it can do. The mind can be compared to a mill. The mill will process for us the fines we bring and put in. If there is no chalk, the mill will work, but will not process anything, because it cannot create chalk for itself. Reason will develop for us a conclusion or conclusion from the premises that we supply, and it is our business to get them. Natural science takes these premises from natural sensations and gives it to the mind to work out from them such happiness as it can work out. But our feelings in themselves are not intelligence. Reason cannot tell us that sweet is sweet and that sour is sour. Still less can the mind discern the beauty of purity and holiness, or (in the words of our teachers) “the vague but bright ideal of the supreme good.” Goods of the lower order differ in feelings. The supreme good is distinguished by faith. And here there is a great difference between these and other goods. The lower goods are tangible and indisputable. The highest goods are subject to dispute. No one can dissuade us from what the five natural senses have assured us of, and disputes and negative doubts about the dignity and meaning of truth and holiness fill the entire history of mankind. So, if we want to believe only in what our reason cannot doubt, reason will certainly tell us that it is impossible to believe in unconditional good. And when this is so, what right do our new teachers have to present before us some kind of supreme good! You can answer such speeches with their own argumentation: no matter how tempting this supreme good is in their mouths, how will they prove its existence to me? They cannot prove it, therefore, according to their own logic, it follows that it is an empty dream. Based on reason, they reject everything that cannot be verified tangibly, and want to take away our faith in God. But on the same basis, the moral standard will not stand up to them in the court of the same reason. They no longer have the right to assert that love is better than lust, that truth for its own sake is better than lies, that looking at a butterfly through a microscope is a purer and more sublime pleasure than looking at a ballet dancer through binoculars. The same mind will answer them: “And this is all nonsense. An empty dream. Some people have a taste for one thing, others for another: this peculiarity of taste is a fact; it means little, but one cannot help but recognize it as a fact. But if you think that any taste of one person can be obligatory for another who does not have it or has another, the opposite, then you are very mistaken: this is a dream of your imagination, a painful dream that should be discarded.” This is what the mind must decide. So, reason takes away our faith, and along with it takes away our moral sense; What does he then leave us with? He leaves us with our natural feelings, and then promises to bring us to such a structure and social order in which these feelings should serve us best according to our desire. Indeed, it will always be a joy for us to drink when we feel thirsty, to fall asleep when we are overcome by fatigue; feel the cool breath of the wind in the hot season; We will inhale the smell of flowers with pleasure, and with the onset of spring we will feel renewed vitality. All these pleasures will remain with us; but how hard it will be for them all to change! When there is no longer a supernatural moral feeling, all these sensations will fall at once to a low level. All the peaks of life will droop, and its valleys will be filled. There will be no shadowy gorges or mountain peaks illuminated by a mysterious light from another sphere. All chiaroscuro will disappear, and life will no longer present to us the moral perspective that we now see in it. The same thing will happen to life that would happen, as we saw above, to art if there were no animating and elevating moral interest in it. This is what the immediate consequences of atheism will be for life, equally noticeable for everyone - both for the virtuous and for the vicious. Not to mention that the dominance of new principles in the world will lead to the dominance of general immorality; This, let’s say, would not seem terrible to a significant part of the human race: what would be terrible is that with the introduction of new principles, the world will turn into a kingdom of emptiness and boredom. A pale, colorless paint will fall on everything, even vice, along with virtue; every deep feeling of both joy and sadness will lose its liveliness and strength and fullness of sound in overall harmony. There will be no contrasts, there will be no diversity; there will be no sublime thought for the philosopher, the satirist will lose humor and wit, everyone will lose what gave value to everything, the exciting principle. This is what atheism threatens life with - the impoverishment of all its current strength and reserves. This can be predicted in advance, correctly and without any exaggeration. And now, peering into the phenomena of current life, we can notice that something similar is happening, that the prediction is beginning to come true. In many corners boredom and fatigue are already settling in, where they were not there before, and the very concept of contentment and happiness is disappearing. With all this, they never cease to tell us that the new goal in our life should be happiness, and if we cannot obtain it for ourselves, then we can help create it for others in a better future. They say that heavenly bliss was an empty dream, a fiction of the imagination; that it disappears as soon as we decide to comprehend it with our minds; but on the contrary, human, earthly happiness is something definite and true. But how difficult it is to achieve this happiness even now, when life is full of living and deep interests: how much more difficult will it be when these interests lose their main meaning for us and life loses its most subtle aromas; and this will certainly follow when the world is finally left without religion. So, when our moralists tell me about the strength and greatness of humanity in its present earthly state, and especially about the increase of both in the future earthly state, I am ready to answer them with the same words that one of them used when analyzing the idea of ​​heavenly bliss. These are the words of Frederick Harrison: 14 “If you want my opinion, here it is. The idea of ​​a perfect, illuminated state in the fullness and power of new life is an idea that is decisively incompatible with accurate thinking; it evaporates in contradictions, in phrases that, at the first attempt to determine their meaning, turn out to be devoid of any meaning.” And this ideally happy person, this creature of the future, what will he be like? What will he strive for? What will you find pleasure in? How will he spend his days? Will he be able to love? Will he be able to have fun and rejoice? Let us be given a concept of this in phrases that, during the first attempt to determine their meaning, would not evaporate in contradictions, but would have a definite meaning and, moreover, consistent with precise thinking. Maybe - why do I know? - such a creature is possible in the future, but who will dare to seriously imagine its features, or seriously hope for its appearance? Will we have to believe in this being of the future, but in this case we will need faith, which is rejected regarding heavenly life; only here one would have to believe in a truly fantastic object. It’s even funny to think about the possibility of such faith in a future being illuminated by glory. Where does such insight come from in a life confined to its earthly limits, in a life without hope, without a view into the distance, in a life from which the current salt of the earth, i.e., religion, has been taken out. If heavenly bliss in the kingdom of the living God is an unthinkable state, then even less conceivable is a utopia on earth without God. In a word, both observation and experience undoubtedly lead us to the following conclusion. All the highest, that is, essentially human (as opposed to animal) pleasures of life depend and have always depended on the presence of a supernatural moral principle in our consciousness; are affirmed on the idea that we do not create our own will, but the will of the Almighty Being, supreme above us and at the same time, in a sense, akin to us. And this does not apply only to the Christian world or to times and peoples who have risen to the pure concept of divinity. The same desire of the human soul for a personal Divinity can be recognized in all centuries and among all peoples who have had a civilization known in history. Everywhere in humanity the same hot, passionate feeling has been discovered, although it is often and had no definite purpose, and was unable to explain itself. To understand the possibility of such a feeling, to comprehend this most powerful of all human sensations, man’s desire for God, let us remember another familiar feeling, the desire for love. Just as this last feeling - incomprehensible to itself - mysteriously takes possession of the soul in every person’s youth, so in the young age of humanity this desire for divinity seems to be a mystery, incomprehensible to the soul. Our new moralists admit this ardent desire, recognize the need of human nature in it, and want to retain it; but at the same time they deny its only possible object and want to replace it with other objects that are completely incapable of either arousing this desire of the soul or satisfying it. To explain this feeling, which cannot be denied, we are told about enthusiasm for humanity and its future destinies. But this feeling is essentially nothing more than a search for God, which just does not want to reveal itself, is ashamed to call itself by name. The moral feeling cannot be separated from the religious; one can even say that religion and morality are essentially the same thing. These are just two different sides, two types of the same essence. “I want to be pure in heart,” in other words, the same as saying: “I want to unite with God.” Just as it is impossible to prove the dignity of purity, so it is impossible to prove the existence of God; but one stands and falls together with the other. We can, if we want, free ourselves from both, but having rejected one, we cannot retain the other. What destroys one is destructive for the other. Practically, the question is put before us in this form: was life, as we have looked at it until now, presented to us in a false light, in a deceptive image? Was moral life really nothing more than a dream from which we are only now waking up, one after another? Reason cannot answer these questions. The answer must be sought deeper, in the very depths of our nature. The mind compares inferences and conclusions; our choice should not be between conclusions, but between first premises. To what will we give our desire, to what will we confirm the desire of our heart? If there is only one thing that can be proven that cannot be doubted, then the object of our desire will be one thing - sensual pleasure. And this is what science has led humanity to over the past three centuries, although the meaning of this teaching was revealed only little by little and only now has become completely clear. There is no doubt that in our time there is a disposition in the world to accept this teaching. To some extent, the world has already accepted it, and the aftereffect of this is the relaxation of moral judgment, that is, that very feeling on which the highest and most vital interests of life have hitherto rested. Every day this disease spreads, this relaxation is reported one after another in the world around us. Let us imagine the state of these people, at the border, so to speak, between their old and new life. They still have the same sympathy for virtue. They still harbor the annoying thought that life can have a worthy and sublime goal. There is still a desire in the soul to stand up for the truth, and in all likelihood these people are still capable of joining the fight for it. But at the same time, inseparable from them is the consciousness that corrodes the soul like rust, that this struggle essentially leads to nothing and has no goal, and they feel that one can neither praise nor condemn people, no matter what people do, that one must treat with the same, deadly impartiality both the highest motives of human actions and the lowest manifestations of animal instinct. They will not call virtue madness, nor will they seek prudence in vice. Without recognizing any of the people as having a special right to praise or preference over others, they treat everyone with the same degree of indifference, and are ready to tell everyone: “Do what you like, as long as you don’t interfere with your neighbor. If a person adheres to moral rules, let him live by his own rules. These rules are nonsense, an empty dream; but all the same, whoever has them, they constitute a fact, and a fact cannot but be recognized as existing.” And they are also ready to say to a person without moral rules: “Follow your vice, follow the suggestion of your passion; be an animal if you want, live as you please.” They do not deny that on this basis many people are not able to balance their pleasures - what to do! in any case, they say, whoever cannot balance this balance here, on this side of the coffin, for that life has no meaning and no value. For those who have lost their game, they have nothing to say to console them. You can say one thing to such a person: “Wait, the end is soon, then close the curtain, the boring comedy has been played.” It is impossible to deny any significance and value of life more decisively than this. Such a denial is all the more decisive because it does not mean to bring everyone to the same level. To those who are inclined to look at life lightly, it leaves life as fun or a toy, but to those who are not satisfied with toys alone, it leaves absolutely nothing. This kind of pessimism is not at all like the pessimism of Schopenhauer. 15 That is a special type of mental disorder, painful oppression of the spirit, representing life in black. This same pessimism is of a different nature. It is accessible to the healthiest and brightest temperament, as well as to the sickest. It can darken the clearest soul and come into harmony with the darkest spiritual disposition. He is able to connect with all our affairs, activities and pleasures and torment us in the midst of it all with intermittent attacks of melancholy. It is so simple that anyone can accept it: even small children have access to this kingdom. Whoever enters it may fall into madness; but you don't have to be crazy to enter it. Eliot Georges (pseudonym; real name: Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880)) was an English writer. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was an English positivist philosopher, economist and public figure. Jeremiah Bentham (1748–1832) - English sociologist, lawyer, founder of one of the trends in English philosophy - utilitarianism. John Tyndall (1820–1893) – English physicist. Jacob is the youngest of the twin sons of the Old Testament patriarch Isaac. Jacob tricked his father into obtaining his blessing instead of his older brother Esau. Rachel is in the Old Testament tradition the youngest daughter of Laban the Aramean, sister of Leah, cousin and wife of Jacob. Huxley (Huxley) Thomas Henry (1825–1895) - English naturalist, closest associate of Charles Darwin and popularizer of his teachings. Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) was an ancient Greek playwright. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English playwright and poet. We are talking about W. Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth". We are talking about W. Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet". We are talking about Sophocles' tragedy Antigone. Augustine Aurelius (354–430) – Christian theologian and philosopher. Harrison Frederick (1831–1923) - English lawyer and historian, writer and politician, supporter of positivism. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) – German philosopher.