“…You see, I shut my eyes and ask myself if everyone has faith, where did it come from? And then they do say that it all comes from terror at the menacing phenomena of nature, and that none of it’s real. And I say to myself, ‘What if I’ve been believing all my life, and when I come to die, there’s nothing but the “burdocks growing on my grave?” as I read in some author. How—how can I get back to my faith? But I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it? I have come now to lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let this chance slip, no one all my life will answer me. How can I prove it? How can I convince myself? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see that scarcely anyone else cares; no one troubles his head about it now, and I’m the only one who can’t stand it. It’s deadly—deadly!”
“No doubt, deadly. But there’s no proving it, though you can be convinced of it.”
“How?”
“By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. Insofar as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “A Lady of Little Faith” (Chapter IV, Book II, Part I), The Brothers Karamazov
(Thank you, Jim Gardner.)
