Tolstoy's "Confessions"

Chapter 1
He starts of with an examination of his own falling out of the christain faith and describes how it happens in his class of people. 20 T replaced his beliefs with a quest for perfection. 23
Chapter 2
He talks about wanting to be good and moral as a child, but being praised for his bad habits. His aunt wanted him to have an affair with a married woman. T lived this way for 10 years. He then became a member of the writers groups and took on the role of teacher and moralizer like other writers, but didn't know the answers any more than they did and took on too much pride.
Chapter 3
He lived this way for six more years until he was married. he traveled and followed the belief in Progress above all else. While abroad he saw a man executed and his own brother died leaving him scarred. He came back and opened schools for the peasants. However he was constantly fighting the belief that he was teaching, but didn't know what he was teaching. He became a father and continued writing, but left off the questions of the meaning of life until five years before he wrote this. They kept coming back up and became like a disease with him until he could solve these questions.
Chapter 4
He continues to struggle with these thoughts and has suicidal thoughts if he cannot solve his problems.
Chapter 5
He struggles more and delves into other great minds, but finds nothing or is just not satisfied. He ends up understanding that one of his questions is what is to come of his life? He brings scientific thoughts about the meaning of life and still comes up with nothing.
Chapter 6
T continues to the same search with philosophy and science. He brings in Socrates and questions of death as a way to understand life. And Solomon and and Indian writer and Buddha. Death is better than life.
Chapter 7
Four ways for people of his type to deal with the problems of finding out the answers to life's questions. 1 ignorance - obviously no good. 2 epicureanism - all of T's circle live this way, but they don't understand that it is an accident of fate that they have and others do not. 3 strength and energy - suicide. 4 weakness - waiting for something better out of life, although there is none. T could not make sense of it all, so he must in some way be mistaken about his theories.
Chapter 8
T realizes that he has forgotten all the other people that make up humanity and that he does not even know them. He understood that he had to come to know them and understand why they were still living, despite the poor conditions. He realizes that he must reject his reason and logic in order to understand the full meaning of humanity and life.
Chapter 9
Because science does not answer all the questions in life with reason there must be something else. The something else is God. God is the irrational idea that gives life meaning.
Chapter 10
T started to spend time with the poor peasants and found that their faith and religion was based on many superstitions, but they were less dissatisfied than the rich people of T's circle. He cast off the life of the rich people and took up the life of the peasant and understood it as truth.
Chapter 11
He came to realize that he was looking at all of his theories through himself and not through mankind. His examples of an evil life were not the same as those for all of mankind. Instead of questioning why God wants us to do something we should do it and move closer to his plan. Like the peasant with the master.
Chapter 12
T starts to pray and search for God as he feels a power over himself that he doesn't understand.
Chapter 13
T understands that he must live according to God's plan - to live otherwise is not to live. According to God's plan we are to live to save our soul. He starts to take on the faith in whole, but cannot understand everything and why it is done, but sees that his faith and reason can choose what parts of the rituals of faith to hold on to and which to discard.
Chapter 14
He cannot understand everything and understands that there are somethings that he doesn't believe and won't and this causes him some torment when he goes to communion. When he spoke with the lower classes he began to understand what it all meant.
Chapter 15
He noticed the Orthodox and other religions insistence that they were the one and only true church and that all others were heretics. Thus theology was driving people apart instead of together, the very thing it should be doing.
Chapter 16
He now sees truth in the teachings of all the churches, but not all the teachings. What he once saw as completely false he now seeks to find the truth in each and weed out the false. He has a dream.