Among the pagans, who stand at the lower stages of development, this mood is revealed in a naïve form. All happiness and success, even in such matters as are entirely accessible to the natural powers of man, and depend on his own diligence, knowledge, and dexterity, he expects from the gods, from their favor, which he tries to earn by sacrifice. Cultured people know how to appreciate their own strength, and they expect from religion that which exceeds their strength—serene peace and infinite perfection. Such a religious mood of a cultured person can be traced in Zola's novel "Doctor Pascal". The most learned Dr. Pascal believed in human powers, and especially in the power of reason, in science. He thought and firmly hoped that with the help of science he would succeed in regenerating mankind and relieving it of the sufferings with which it was now oppressed. But the aspirations of his niece, Clotilde, were boundless, at any rate they went beyond the means at the disposal of science; Therefore, it turned away from science and began to seek their satisfaction in religion, in Catholicism. Clotilde had long observed her uncle's hopes and the real successes of science; the results to which these observations led her, she frankly expressed to Dr. Pascal. "The years go by," she said to her uncle, "and the sky still does not open up to people. The truth that you want to grasp through your research is moving further and further away from you. You propose to wait and wait, perhaps, for tens of centuries. I don't want to wait. I want to know everything immediately and be happy. Notice that I need to know everything at once, and that I want to be blissful and happy forever! You see, it is precisely this that torments me with the impossibility of rising at once to all-embracing knowledge and resting in the bosom of perfect bliss, unclouded by any doubts or reproaches of conscience. Is it life when you move at a snail's pace in the darkness and cannot enjoy the cheerful hour without shuddering at the thought of the grief ahead? No, no, give me omniscience and happiness at once! Science has promised us this, and if it cannot fulfill its promise, it must be declared untenable." In this conscious striving for the ideal of infinite perfection and happiness and the expectation of these blessings from religion, Clotilde was supported by Catholic preachers...

II

Can such a unification of the basic spiritual strivings in their immediately given character be recognized as solid and reasonable?

No, you cannot. First of all, this question must be answered in the negative, because this unification is not justified by reality. The fact is that religion is not accompanied by a change in the external conditions of human life, does not bring a person external happiness and visible perfection, does not eliminate suffering and humiliation from his life. A vivid expression of this character of the reality of religious life is the suffering and humiliation of the righteous. Man is not freed from the suffering and humiliation of life to the extent of his righteousness and moral innocence. The righteous suffer in common calamities together with sinners. "To all," writes the biblical sage, "and to all is the same: the same fate for the righteous and the wicked, the good and the evil, the pure and the impure, the sacrificer and the unsacrificing, the virtuous and the sinner, both the swearer and the fearful of the oath. And this is evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all" (Eccl. IX, 2,3). But this is not enough. Not only do the innocent and the righteous suffer together with those responsible for the common calamities, but they suffer predominantly. Observations lead us to the conviction that suffering befalls the innocent and the righteous not by chance, but according to some law of both natural and human life—the innocent and the righteous suffer inevitably. In the depths of natural life, "does not that in which the features of innocence are more visible suffer? The lamb trembles at the wolf, the meek bird at the predatory"... In the sphere of human history, this law is incomparably more noticeable. We are equally convinced of this by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures and church writers, as well as by secular thinkers and observers of human life. According to the words of Ap. Paul, "those of whom the whole world was not worthy, wandered in the wilderness and in the mountains, in the caves and ravines of the earth" (Heb. XI, 38). "In fact," writes St. John Chrysostom, "consider all those who have only been named in past times, and you will see that they have all acquired boldness to God through sorrows. And first, if you will, let us go to the son of the first-created, the lamb of Christ, Abel: he did no evil, and yet he suffered what the greatest sinners deserve. We endure temptations as a punishment for our sins; and that righteous man suffered for nothing else but because he was righteous and perfect, and yet he endured many, many sorrows, and grievous ones. And what else can be said about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the long-suffering Job, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Samuel, David, about all the prophets who had sufferings in common, and finally, about the righteous men of the New Testament, beginning with Ap. The fact of the suffering of the righteous is beyond doubt. It is equally certain that sinners often prosper, that the sons of this world, whose interests do not go beyond material well-being, are wiser than the sons of light in their kind, and material happiness and outward glory are on their side. "Everything in the world," writes I.S. Turgenev, "good and bad, is given to a person not according to his merits, but as a result of some laws that I do not even dare to point out"... The sufferings of the righteous, in contrast to the well-being of the wicked, have troubled the human mind since ancient times. "Behold, these wicked ones prosper in this world, multiply riches. And I said, Have I not cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence, and subjected myself to wounds all day long, and chastisement every morning?" (Psalm. LXXII, 13,14).

III

Apart from the fact that the expectation of personal happiness and external perfection from religion is not justified by reality, the unification of the pursuit of happiness and perfection and the striving for the divine in their immediately given character must be considered unreasonable, because it leads consistently to atheism. The religion of the natural man takes one of two directions: for him, either religion is only a means to the attainment of earthly, natural-human ends, or the divine is the opposite of all that is natural-human. In the first, worst case, which we encounter in the religion of the Chinese, religion materializes and contains at its basis atheism, i.e. the denial of the divine in its own, invisible, nature. In the second direction, which characterizes Buddhism, we are dealing with idealism, which seems to be far from atheism. But in reality, extreme idealism leads to a separation between heavenly ideals and human life, between religious and everyday life. If the divine denies the earthly, then the worldly also excludes the heavenly, for which there is no place in natural human life. And this is the same atheism.

Chinese materialism and Buddhist idealism are not alien to us, and we suffer from them. We have built our worldly life in such a way and understand religious affairs in such a way that an impassable abyss is formed between the two. We are capable of religious enthusiasm, we are capable of good and even great deeds, but the moments of idealistic elation stand as lonely oases in the endless desert of our everyday life. We think that religion is religion, and life is life. We are willingly ready to recognize people who are not of this world, we reverently bow down before the desert dwellers and hermits, but with surprise and even indignation we meet a "layman" who lives in God's way: in God's way one can live only outside the world. This is because the worldly man, identifying the ideal with external perfection and personal happiness, worships only external greatness and can believe in holiness only if it appears to him in visible glory, with a smile of self-satisfaction, in freedom from natural limitations, in detachment from everyday life. We look upon the holy life as a life primarily free from limitations and sufferings, and we identify religion with the realm of the miraculous; In our opinion, it is disgusted by our everyday life with its petty worries, with its base demands, natural conditions. In order to enter the realm of religion, we think we need to renounce life. A saint, according to our ideas, is the same as a miracle worker – a person who is free from the conditions of natural life. We consider miraculous power to be the measure of holiness, and the absence of miracles serves for us as an indisputable sign of sinfulness. Miracles are an indicator of the presence and existence of a deity; The absence of miracles when we expect them is the basis of unbelief. In this case, the separation between heavenly ideals and natural life turns into open atheism. Instead of proving the stated position, we will cite two stories to illustrate it. G. Uspensky in the story "Paramon the Holy Fool" depicts before us the Russian society for the 30-40s, which for the ordinary Russian crowd were the most deaf, the deadest time. Everything was intimidated. Eternal and unceasing anxiety about the "guilt" of existence itself in the world pervaded all mutual relations, all social connections, all thoughts. In such an environment, Paramon the holy fool appears, who was sheltered by one family. The holy fool Paramon was a real, peasant, peasant holy man. He came from a peasant family, was married, but, obeying the voice and the vision, he left his home, wife and children and went to save his soul. He also saved his soul in the Russian peasant way, i.e. by the most genuine mortification of the flesh, by extreme self-torture. Something extraneous to everyday life emanated from him, and in the members of the family where he had settled, this something awakened ideal-religious aspirations, raised their thoughts to the stars, to the sky. In his presence they began to talk not only about grief and misfortune, but also about God and paradise. Paramon settled in the garden, in a gazebo, and spent most of his time in prayer before the icons of the saints and in listening to akathists. At the sight of the holy fool praying with inspiration, the whole family was transported by their thoughts to another, unearthly world. Several days of Paramon's serene life under the shelter of the house that sheltered him passed, when suddenly the peace was broken by an insignificant circumstance. The district police officer came to Paramon with a demand for his passport. The holy fool not only did not have a passport, but did not even understand what he was being asked about, and thus aroused even greater suspicions. The terrible appearance of the district police officer and Paramon's extreme detachment from life, his irresponsibility before the requirements of the everyday order of existence, all the members of the family were so frightened and indignant against the holy fool that they were very relieved when he was taken away by the district policeman: as if a mountain had been lifted off everyone's shoulders. "And flew away from us," says one of the family members, "the angel of awakened consciousness flew away from us (at the appearance of the quartermaster)."

The members of this family were no strangers to religious enthusiasm; in the sight of the praying fool, they themselves were carried away by their thoughts to the distant world above the stars; but... This enthusiasm was expressed only in the gazebo and was expressed precisely in the desire for the superstellar world, infinitely remote from our planet. There was no connection between all everyday life and moments of religious inspiration, the influence of Paramon did not extend to everyday life, and now the petty phenomenon of everyday life was enough to threaten trouble for "the angel of awakened consciousness to fly away." This sharply manifested the lack of those principles, the application of which could reconcile the holiness of the holy fool with the conditions and requirements of everyday life. Worldly life does not provide a place for holiness, has not set aside a corner for it in its complex system; holiness does not affect worldly life, does not condescend to it, is not embodied in its phenomena and forms.