Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Tolstoy’s line cautions against a certain kind of self-scrutiny: the impulse to “rummage” through one’s inner life as if the soul were a storeroom to be searched and inventoried. The metaphor of digging suggests that introspection can be invasive and indiscriminate, unearthing buried impulses, resentments, or memories that might have remained harmless if left undisturbed. The quote does not reject moral reflection altogether; rather, it warns that obsessive analysis can manufacture misery, tempt self-justification, or revive passions better subdued. It implies a practical ethics of attention: not every inner discovery is spiritually useful, and some are best met with restraint and silence.