"I was not fifty," he said; "I loved; I was loved; I had good children, a great estate, fame, health, and moral and physical vigour; I could reap or mow like any peasant; I used to work ten hours at a stretch without fatigue. Suddenly my life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep. But this was not to live. I had no desires left. I knew there was nothing to desire. I could not even wish to know the truth. The truth was that life is a piece of insanity. I had reached the abyss, and I saw clearly that there was nothing before me but death. I, a fortunate and healthy man, felt that I could not go on living. An irresistible force was urging me to rid myself of life.... I will not say that I wanted to kill myself. The force which was edging me out of life was something stronger than myself; it was an aspiration, a desire like my old desire for life, but in an inverse sense. I had to humour, to deceive myself, lest I should give way to it too promptly. There I was, a happy man,--and I would hide away a piece of cord lest I should hang myself from the beam that ran between the cupboards of my room, where I was alone every night while undressing. I no longer took my gun out for a little shooting, lest I should be tempted.[3] It seemed to me that life was a dreary farce, which was being played out before my eyes. Forty years of work, of trouble, of progress, only to find that there is nothing! Nothing! Nothing will remain of me but putrescence and worms.... One can live only while one is intoxicated with life; but the moment the intoxication is over one sees that all is merely deceit, a clumsy fraud.... My family and art were no longer enough to satisfy me. My family consisted of unhappy creatures like myself. Art is a mirror to life. When life no longer means anything it is no longer amusing to use the mirror. And the worst of it was, I could not resign myself--I was like a man lost in a forest, who is seized with horror because he is lost, and who runs hither and thither and cannot stop, although he knows that at every step he is straying further." Salvation came from the people. Tolstoy had always had for them "a strange affection, absolutely genuine,"[4] which the repeated experiences of his social disillusions were powerless to shake. Of late years he, like Levine, had drawn very near to them.[5] He began to ponder concerning these millions of beings who were excluded from the narrow circle of the learned, the rich, and the idle who killed themselves, endeavoured to forget themselves, or, like himself, were basely prolonging a hopeless life. He asked himself why these millions of men and women escaped this despair: why they did not kill themselves. He then perceived that they were living not by the light of reason, but without even thinking of reason; they were living by faith. What was this faith which knew nothing of reason?