32 pages • 1 hour read
Leo TolstoyA Confession
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1880A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Tolstoy says that he lost his way because he lived a bad life. The meaning of life was hidden from him because he lived a life “squandered in the satisfaction of lusts” (68). Tolstoy eventually realized that a person must “live his life not for himself but for all” (70).
He writes that life plays out according to the will of a higher power and that people should do what they are called to do by this power, otherwise they will never understand the purpose of life. Tolstoy offers the analogy of a poor servant who is given a job pulling a lever and performs the work unquestioningly. Over time, she comes to learn how the whole apparatus works. She is unlike members of the elite classes who would “speculate on why we should do something so stupid as moving this lever up and down” (71) and come to incorrect, self-serving conclusions about the apparatus without ever understanding how it works.
Chapter 12 Summary
Tolstoy says he realized that the only satisfactory life is the simple working life and determined to try this mode of living. An agonizing year of searching for God followed. He tried to refute his former reasoning by saying that causation exists outside of space and time and that God caused him to exist. Tolstoy felt joyful when he considered the existence of such a God. However, he remained unsatisfied with the idea that God’s relation to him was as creator and provider.
Tolstoy continued to vacillate between joy and despair: feelings of joy follow the acknowledgment of the existence of God, and feelings of despair arise when he imagines his relationship with God. Finally, Tolstoy felt an inner voice respond to his question, “What, then, do I seek?” with the answer “He is there, the one without whom there could be no life” (74). When Tolstoy understood that life is simply about seeking God, his vitality returned to him.
Chapters 11-12 Analysis
Tolstoy pivoted away from an obsession with logic toward a focus on how one lives life. He found that living a meaningful life comes from performing good deeds than from latching onto a philosophical doctrine. He says that a person lives properly when he lives “the same way the animals do but with one difference […] he must live his life not for himself but for all. And when he does this, I am firmly convinced that he is happy and his life is reasonable” (70). This declaration includes implicit criticism of the wealthy, who are made to appear individualistic, and praise of laborers, who regularly act in communion with others, even if by necessity.
Chapter 12 highlights the torment that accompanied Tolstoy along every step of his spiritual enlightenment. He tried to refute the rational conclusions of Kant and Schopenhauer but was never satisfied with the result. He uncovered a fascinating distinction between acknowledging God’s existence and considering his relation to God, which elicited opposite emotional responses. Slowly, Tolstoy struggled toward truth. He explains that he felt at peace when he paddled against the current of tradition to reach the shoreline of God and the truth, showing that he could distinguish what rings spiritually true for him from what he could cast aside as useless.
Related Titles
By Leo Tolstoy
