Note 27 — BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES26

Since writing the above I have read the following words of a candidly unsympathetic friend of philosophy: “Neither philosophy nor science can institute man’s relation to the universe, because such reciprocity must have existed before any kind of science or philosophy can begin; since each investigates phenomena by means of the intellect, and independent of the position and feeling of the investigator; whereas the relation of man to the universe is defined, not by the intellect alone, but by his sensitive perception aided by all his spiritual powers. However much one may assure and instruct a man that all real existence is an idea, that matter is made up of atoms, that the essence of life is corporality or will, that heat, light, movement, electricity, are different manifestations of one and the same energy, one cannot thereby explain to a being with pains, pleasures, hopes, and fears his position in the universe.” Tolstoi, essay on “Religion and Morality,” in “Essays, Letters, and Miscellanies.”