One of the most vulgar of superstitions is that of the wise men who believe that one can live without faith.  (Daily Reading, 2nd Part, Introduction) [5]

True religion consists in establishing the relation of each of us towards the infinite life that surrounds us, the life that unites us to the infinite, and guides us in all our acts.  (Daily Reading, 2nd Part, 1, 2)

If you feel that you no longer have faith, know that you are in the most dangerous situation in which a man can find himself on earth.

Men live in a reasonable way and on good terms with each other when they are united by the same conception of life; that is to say, by a religion that satisfies all of them alike and gives them the same rule of conduct.  But when it happens that the conception of life, modified by moral and intellectual progress, becomes more precise and exacts a new rule of conduct, while men continue to follow the former one, their lives become unhappy and they no longer live in harmony.

The evil is aggravated more and more as men continue to ignore the new religious conception and its consequent rule of conduct, and when they observe the law imposed by the antiquated rule.  Instead of admitting the religious conception corresponding to the phase of their development, they form a conception that justifies their way of living, but does not correspond to the moral needs of the majority.

This phenomenon has been repeated on several occasions in the history of humanity.  But never, I believe, has the discord, between the various peoples and the religious conception that they have adopted been so great.  Indeed, they continue to live a pagan life.

In my opinion, this discord is so pronounced because the Christian conception of life, at the moment of its formation, goes far beyond the moral and intellectual state of the nations who acknowledged it at that time.  That is why the rule of conduct that it indicated was too greatly opposed, not only to individual habits, but even to the whole social organization of pagans, who became Christians in name only.

Thus it is that these nations have become attached to a false Christianity, represented by the Church, whose principles differ from those of paganism only by a lack of sincerity.  For that very reason, faith in Christian doctrines disappeared little by little without being replaced by any other.  That is why the Christian world finds itself in its present condition.  The majority of its adherents possess no explanation of the meaning of life – that is to say, no religion and no common rule of conduct.

The working masses, even though they outwardly profess the religion of the Church, do not believe in it, do not practice it in their daily lives, and follow its traditions by habit and convention.  As for the so-called cultivated classes, they either believe positively in nothing at all, or rather they pretend to believe in the Christianity of the Church for political reasons.  Or else, a small minority believes sincerely in the Christian doctrines, contrary to the life it leads, and seeks to justify its belief by all sorts of insidious sophisms.

There is only one reason for the unhappy condition in which Christianity now finds itself.

It is still more complicated by the fact that, because of its long duration, some of the leaders who profit by this unbelief pretend to believe what they do not believe at all.  Others, the more intellectual, who are the most corrupt, openly preach the futility for men of our time of such a conception of life or faith, and the rules of conduct that result from it.  They try to make them believe that the only fundamental law of human life is the struggle for existence, guided by our passions or our natural needs.

The regrettable cause of all our misery is, therefore, this unconscious lack of faith of the masses and the conscious ignoring of the necessity for religion by the so-called cultivated classes.

[5] Translator’s note – The work Daily Reading, from which many epigraphs are taken, was written by Tolstoy with quotations from his own writings and from those of great writers of all countries and all times.