And so I lived, abandoning myself to this madness, for another six years until I married. During this period I went abroad. Life in Europe and the contact I had with advanced and learned Europeans still further reinforced the belief in overall perfection, by which I lived; for I found the same belief among them. With my own self this belief assumed the form it usually takes among the educated men of our time. The belief was expressed in the word “progress.” At the time I felt that this word had some meaning. Living as I was then, like any individual I was tormented by the problem of how to live a better life. I did not yet understand that in answering “live in conformity with progress,” I was speaking exactly like a person who is in a boat being carried along by wind and waves and who when asked the most important and vital question, “Where should I steer?” avoids answering by saying, “We are being carried somewhere.”

—Leo Tolstoy, A Confession (1879), chapter 3