Few questions have tormented humanity like the question of life. Why do we exist, what is our purpose, and if we are ultimately to be destroyed what is the point? There is not another question that is so poignant, dense, and more impossible to answer, yet it is a question every single human being asks sometime in his or her life. Countless books have been devoted to finding the meaning, and countless religions have sprung up in attempt to answer the question. Some individuals casually look into the question, others dive into the question with everything they have, forgoing all else in the search for why. Leo Tolstoy is one of those individuals. He is unique from all the others in the way we have a detailed account of his life, and his search for why. We can learn a lot from Tolstoy, but the final answer still remains for each individual to decide.

            Throughout Tolstoy’s life, his definition of the meaning of life drastically changes as he moves through levels of understanding. Raised Christian, Tolstoy renounced his faith and became a hedonist, living off of others and partying all the time. Later in his life, Tolstoy refers to this life style as parasitical. Tolstoy then took up writing, and gained great fame in the sphere of writing. He and his companions convinced themselves that they were the best of men, for “all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men.” (Tolstoy, p 15) After Tolstoy realized this blaring logical fallacy, he began to think about the meaning of life, and become depressed by his life’s seeming meaninglessness. He came to the conclusion that life was evil and meaningless, even a “cruel trick.”(Tolsoty, p 19)

            Tolstoy married soon after, and this distracted him from his fervent search for a time. During this time he thought that the meaning of life was thus: “that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one’s family.” (Tolstoy, p 20) He lived this way for a long time, but he began to have moments where he felt “lost and dejected.” (Tolstoy, p 21) Over time, these moments increased in frequency, until they became an unignorable urge that had to be answered to. The question was simply “why.”

            Tolstoy felt no meaning in life and was extremely depressed. He did not kill himself though, despite coming to the conclusion that life was evil. Tolstoy’s reasoning followed as thus, if everything in life fades away, only the honest accepts this and that life has no meaning whatsoever. Life must then be evil and an affliction, and death is much preferable to life. We see an interesting parallel here with the ancient Greek Socrates. Socrates believed that life is an affliction as well, but for slightly different reasons. He believed that the mind is stuck with the body, and the body simply distracts the mind from the powers the mind could have, and that death, the separation of soul and body, brings new freedom to the mind. (Phaedo) Socrates was also a fervent believer in the immortality of souls, this is reflected in all of his later recorded words.

            At this point of his life, Tolstoy and Socrates were in agreement in regards to life. If life is really evil and not to be desired, why doesn’t one simply kill one’s self? Socrates has an answer that Tolstoy rejects. According to Socrates, we are the property of the gods, and destroying ourselves before our proper time would be destruction of the god’s property, which does not put you in good favor with the gods. Tolstoy did not believe in the Greek gods at this point in his life, so he clearly rejected this position. With Socrates’ reason for remaining alive void in Tolstoy’s mind, why did he remain living?

            He attributes it to cowardice. He certainly thought about going through with it, but he could not, for “the horror of darkness was too great.”(Tolstoy, p 30) Tolstoy calls the conundrum of life a “terrible position in which we are all placed.” (Tolstoy, p 36) Life itself is a contradiction, and he concluded there are only four ways we as human beings deal with this thing called life. The first is ignorance, complete disregard of the fact that life is evil. These people find pleasure in life, and that is how they end up living their lives, oblivious to the oblivious looming before them.

            The next is acknowledgement that life is evil, and that the best thing to do in life is to just enjoy it while you can. From Ecclesiastes: “Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: and that this should accompany him in his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.” Tolstoy compares this type of acceptance to a man caught in a well hanging onto a branch between the jaws of a dragon and a terrible beast. The man notices some honey drops on some leaves within reach, and does his best to reach them in his last hours. By acknowledging the dragon and deciding to enjoy the honey as much as possible, people like Solomon found “happiness.”

            The last two options are the options, according to Tolstoy, of strength or of weakness. The strong end their lives, they understand that life is evil and seek to end it, and do. The weak stay depressed and are unable to kill themselves. Tolstoy puts himself into this category, this why he does not kill himself.

            There is yet another reason Tolstoy does not kill himself. The reason is reason. Tolstoy holds reason in extremely high regard, and recognizes that reason does not exist without life. Since he reasoned that life is evil, but reason comes from life, how could his reasoning be correct? Killing himself would destroy his reason, thus killing something good. This terrible contradiction plagued Tolstoy greatly. In the end, Tolstoy realized that he had to turn away from reason in order to truly live. This meant turning to God, and to faith.

            Tolstoy came to this conclusion after searching for the meaning of life with the simple folk. Among them, he did not find the contempt for life that he saw with the people of his class. These people had answers for life, and though they were not ground in reason, the people were happy, and they had God. They also had one critical thing that opened Tolstoy’s eyes- self sufficiency. To Tolstoy, providing for oneself became a critical aspect in the meaning of life. He observed the nobility, the parasites, and saw how they weren’t happy in relation to the simple folk who provided for themselves. He brings forth a great image of a man hired to pull a level up and down, and he is shown how the lever works to pump water. This man knows what he is doing has meaning, and is thus content. In the image, there are more men in the room looking at the pump watching it go up and down and don’t understand what it does. These men will come to the conclusion that they are useless and kill themselves. Tolstoy compares his class to these men in the room.

            In the end, Tolstoy found the meaning of life in God and faith. He reflected back on his previous views of life being evil, and discovered that the life he was living was evil, and therefore he had assumed all life is evil. God made life worth living for Tolstoy, and even though it took decades to find the answer Tolstoy was still able to live a happy life in the end.