After being asked if he could provide a definition of religion and, if he could do that, to explain the relation between religion, that is, what a person believes, and morality, that is, the way he acts in accord with some notion of how he ought to act:
I can only go back to myself. I look around myself and I see every year that, no matter what people do to themselves and to one another, the spring constantly renews itself. This is a physical fact, not a metaphysical theory. I look at every spring and I respond to it very strongly. But I also notice that every year the spring is the same new spring and every year I am one year older. I have to ask the question: What is the relation between my brief and tragic life and this force in the universe that perpetually renews itself? I further believe that every human being asks this question. He cannot avoid asking it-it is forced upon him. And his answer to that question is his religion. If he says the relation between me and this thing is nothing, then his religion is nihilism. As for morality, what ought I to do? I wish I knew.
-Leo Tolstoy
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1 comment:
what if we kill spring?
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