In all ranks of modern society there are signs of this craving for the supernatural. It is therefore extremely interesting to follow the intimate steps of such an abandonment of science and return to faith. The “Confessions” of Tolstoi gave one of the best examples of the metamorphosis. Having reached the conclusion that life is meaningless because it cannot be harmonised with the fear of death and the prospect of absolute annihilation, Tolstoi (see chap. vi.) asked if it were not possible to solve the great problem of human existence by means of the facts of science. “I searched in all the sciences,” he said, “and not only found nothing myself, but became convinced that all who sought would find nothing. Not only would they find nothing, but they would see clearly precisely what had driven me to despair, the fact that the absurdity of life is the sole indisputable bit of knowledge open to man.” “For a long time, observing the grave and solemn tones of the exact sciences, which indeed, hardly touched the problem of life, it seemed to me that they must be concealing something that I did not understand.” All the while, the question that Tolstoi put to himself seemed simple enough: “Why am I to keep alive? Why am I to do anything?” or, in another way: “Has life any object that is not destroyed by the inevitable death that awaits me? To the one question, put in many ways, I sought an answer in human knowledge.” “From my earliest youth the speculative sciences interested me deeply. Later on, the mathematical and physical sciences attracted me, and until my question rose up clearly before me, day by day growing larger, and imperatively demanding an answer, until then I was satisfied with the semblance of an answer given by science.” “I said to myself; everything is evolving, differentiating, moving towards complexity and amelioration, and the progress is under the guidance of law. You, you yourself are part of this whole.” “Although I am deeply ashamed to confess it, there was a time when I thought myself content with these things. My muscles grew and became stronger. My memory added to its stores. My ability for thinking and understanding increased. I grew and developed, and feeling the growth within me, it seemed natural to believe that the solution of my own life was given by the law of the whole universe. But the time came when I stopped growing. I felt that I was no longer developing and even that I was slipping back. My muscles weakened; my teeth dropped out; and I felt that this law not only explained nothing, not only had never explained anything, but had not been a law at all; that in fact I had taken for a law what I found in myself at a particular stage of my life.”