Leo N. Tolstoy Religion and Morality, 1893. part 3

In fact, every man, as soon as he emerges from the animal state of childishness and the first childhood, during which he lives, guided only by the demands that his animal nature
makes of him, every man, having awakened to a rational consciousness, cannot but to notice that everything around him lives, renewing, not annihilating and steadily obeying one definite, eternal law, and that he alone, conscious of himself as a being separate from the whole world, is sentenced to death, to disappearance in boundless space and infinite time, and to painful consciousness of responsibility in his actions, that is, the consciousness that, having acted badly, he could have acted better.

And, having understood this, every reasonable person cannot but think and ask himself: why is his instantaneous, indefinite and fluctuating (в значении «колеблющийся») existence among this eternal, firmly, defined and infinite world? Entering into true human life, a person cannot avoid this issue.

This question always stands before before every person , and every person always answers it in one way or another. The answer to this question is what constitutes the essence of any religion. The essence of any religion consist only in the answer to this question: why do I live and what is my attitude towards the infinite world around me?

All the metaphysics of religion, all the teachings about deities, about the origins of the world, all external worship of God, which are usually taken for religion, are only signs the accompany religion, different in geographical, ethnographical and historical conditions. There is no single religion, from the most exalted (в значении «экзальтированный», «возвышенный») to the most crude, which would not have at its core this establishment of man’s relation to the world around him or its root cause.

There is not one the crudest religious rites, as well as the most refined cult, which would not have the same basis. Any religious doctrine is an expression by the founder of religion of that relationship in which he recognizes himself as a person, and consequently al other people, to the world or its beginning and root cause.

The expressions of these relations are very diverse, according to the ethnographic and historical conditions in which the founder of the religion and the people assimilating it are, in addition, these expressions are always interpreted differently and mutilated by the followers of the teacher , usually by hundreds, sometimes by thousands of years, anticipating the understanding of the masses; and therefore these relations of man to the world, i.e., religious, seem to the very many, but in essence there are only three basic relations of man to the world or its beginning : 1) primitive personal 2) pagan (языческое) public, or family-state 3) And Cristian, or divine.

Strictly speaking , there are only two basic relations of man to the world: personal, which consist in recognizing the meaning of life in the good of the individual, acquired separately or in combination with other personalities , and Cristian, recognizing the meaning of the life in the good of the individual, acquired separately or in combination with other personalities, and Cristian, recognizing the meaning of life in searving the one who sent a person into the world. The second relation of man to the world – social – is in essence only an extension of the first.

The first of these relations, the most ancient one, which is now found among people at the lowest stage of  the development, consist in the fact that person recognizes himself as a self-sufficient being, living in the world for the acquisition (в значении «приобретения») in it of the greatest possible personal good, regardless on how much the welfare of other being suffers from it.

From this very first relation to the world , in which every child finds himself, entering into life, and in which mankind lived the first, pagan, stage of its development, and many individual, most morally crude people and savage people still live today, flow all the pagan ancient religions, as well as the lowers forms of later religions their perverted form as well as lower forms of later religious in their perverted form: Buddhism her world, with the only difference that direct paganism recognizes the human right to enjoyment , while Buddhism – to the absence of suffering. Paganism («язычество») believes that the world should serve of the individual.

Buddhism believes that the world should disappear because it produces the suffering of the individual. Buddhism is only negative paganism, Taosism, Mahommedanism, and others. From the same attitude to the world, the newest spiritualism follows, which is based on the preservation of  the individual and its benefits. All pagan cults – divinations, deifications of enjoying beings like man, or saints praying for him, all sacrifices and prayers for him, all sacrifices and prayers for bestowal of earthly goods and deliverance from disasters – follow from this attitude to life.

The second, pagan attitude of man to the world, the social one – the one that he establishes at the next stage of development, the attitude characteristic mainly of mature people – consists in the fact that the meaning of life is recognized not in the good of one individual, but  in the good of certain set of oersonalities: family, clan, people, state, and even humanity (at attempt at the religion of the positivism).

The second, pagan attitude of man to the world, the social one - the one that he establishes at the next stage of development, the attitude characteristic mainly of mature people - consists in the fact that the meaning of life is recognized not in the good of one individual, but in the good of a certain set of personalities: family, clan, people, state, and even humanity (an attempt at the religion of the positivists).