paying them the tribute of respect and to treat them with a touch of
easy familiarity and derision. To put into brackets, as Dostoevsky did,
such words as good, self-sacrifice, progress, and so on, will alone
achieve you much more than many brilliant arguments would do. Whilst
you still contest a certain truth, you still believe in it, and this
even the least penetrating individual will perceive. But if you favour
it with no serious attention, and only throw out a scornful remark now
and then, the result is different. It is evident you have ceased to be
afraid of the old truth, you no longer respect it. And this sets people
thinking.
13
_Four walls_.--Arm-chair philosophy is being condemned--rightly.
An arm-chair thinker is busy deciding on everything that is taking
place in the world: the state of the world market, the existence of
a world-soul, wireless telegraphy and the life after death, the cave
dweller and the perfectibility of man, and so on and so on. His chief
business is so to select his statements that there shall be no internal
contradiction; and this will give an appearance of truth. Such work,
which is quite amusing and even interesting, leads at last to very
poor results. Surely verisimilitudes of truth are not truth: nor have
necessarily anything in common with truth. Again, a man who undertakes
to talk of everything probably knows nothing. Thus a swan can fly, and
walk, and swim. But it flies indifferently, walks badly, and swims
poorly. An arm-chair philosopher, enclosed by four walls, sees nothing
but those four walls, and yet of these precisely he does not choose
to speak. If by accident he suddenly realised them and spoke of them
his philosophy might acquire an enormous value. This may happen when a
study is converted into a prison: the same four walls, but impossible
not to think of them! Whatever the prisoner turns his mind to--Homer,
the Greek-Persian wars, the future world-peace, the bygone geological
cataclysms--still the four walls enclose it all. The calm of the study
supplanted by the pathos of imprisonment. The prisoner has no more
contact with the world, and no less. But now he no longer slumbers
and has grayish dreams called world-conceptions. He is wide awake and
strenuously living. His philosophy is worth hearing. But man is not
distinguished for his powers of discrimination. He sees solitude and
four walls, and says: a study. He dreams of the market-place, where
there is noise and jostling, physical bustle, and decides that there
alone life is to be met. He is wrong as usual. In the market-place,
among the crowd, do not men sleep their deadest sleep? And is not the
keenest spiritual activity taking place in seclusion?
14
The Spartans made their helots drunk as an example and warning to their
noble youths. A good method, no doubt, but what are we of the twentieth
century to do? Whom shall we make drunk? We have no slaves, so we have
instituted a higher literature. Novels and stories describe drunken,
dissolute men, and paint them in such horrid colours that every reader
feels all his desire for vice depart from him. Unfortunately only our
Russians are either too conscientious or not sufficiently rectilinear
in their minds. Instead of showing the drunken helot as an object of
repugnance, as the Spartans did, they try to describe vice truthfully.
Realism has taken hold. Indeed, why make a fuss? What does it matter if
the writer's description is a little more or less ugly than the event?
Was justice invented that everything, _even evil,_ should be kept
intact? Surely evil must be simply rooted out, banned, placed outside
the pale. The Spartans did not stand on ceremony with living men, and
yet our novelists are afraid of being unjust to imaginary drunken
helots. And, so to speak, out of humane feeling too.... How naive one
must be to accept such a justification! Yet everybody accepts it.
Tolstoy alone, towards the end, guessed that humanitarianism is only
a pretext in this case, and that we Russians have described vice not
only for the purpose of scaring our readers. In modern masters the word
vice arouses not disgust, but insatiable curiosity. Perhaps the wicked
thing has been persecuted in vain, like so many other good things.
Perhaps it should have been studied, perhaps it held mysteries.... On
the strength of this "perhaps" morality was gradually abandoned, and
Tolstoy remained almost alone in his indignation. Realism reigns, and
a drunken helot arouses envy in timid readers who do not know where to
put their trust, whether in the traditional rules or in the appeal of
the master. A drunken helot an ideal! What have we come to? Were it not
better to have stuck to Lycurgus? Have we not paid too dearly for our
progress?
Many people think we have paid too dearly--not to mention Tolstoy,
who is now no longer taken quite seriously, though still accounted
a great man. Any mediocre journalist enjoys greater influence than
this master-writer of the Russian land. It is inevitable. Tolstoy
insists on thinking about things which are nobody's concern. He has
long since abandoned this world--and does he continue to exist in
any other? Difficult question! "Tolstoy writes books and letters,
therefore he exists." This inference, once so convincing, now has
hardly any effect on us: particularly if we take into account what it
is that Tolstoy writes. In several of his last letters he expresses
opinions which surely have no meaning for an ordinary man. They can
be summed up in a few words. Tolstoy professes an extreme egoism,
sollipsism, solus-ipse-ism. That is, in his old age, after infinite
attempts to love his neighbour, he comes to the conclusion that not
only is it impossible to love one's neighbour, but that there _is_ no
neighbour, that in all the world Tolstoy alone exists, that there is
even no world, but only Tolstoy: a view so obviously absurd, that it
is not worth refuting. By the way, there is also no possibility of
refuting it, unless you admit that logical inferences are non-binding.
Sollipsism dogged Tolstoy already in early youth, but at that time
he did not know what to do with the impertinent, oppressive idea,
so he ignored it. Finally, he came to it. The older a man becomes,
the more he learns how to make use of impertinent ideas. Fairly
recently Tolstoy could pronounce such a dictum: "Christ taught men
not to do stupid things." Who but Tolstoy could have ventured on such
an interpretation of the gospels? Why have we all held--all of us
but Tolstoy--that these words contained the greatest blasphemy on
Christ and His teaching? But it was Tolstoy's last desperate attempt
to save himself from sollipsism, without at the same time flying in
the face of logic: even Christ appeared among men only to teach them
common sense. Whence follows that "mad" thoughts may be rejected
with an easy conscience, and the advantage, as usual, remains with
the wholesome, reasonable, sensible thoughts. There is room for good
and for reason. Good is self-understood; it need not be explained.
If only good existed in the world, there would exist no questions,
neither simple nor ultimate. This is why youth never questions. What
indeed should it question: the song of the nightingale, the morning
of May, happy laughter, all the predicates of youth? Do these need
interpretation? On the contrary, any explanation is reduced to these
The proper questions arise only on contact with evil. A hawk struck
a nightingale, flowers withered, Boreas froze laughing youth--and in
terror our questions arose. "That is evil. The ancients were right.
Not in vain is our earth called a vale of tears and sorrow." And
once questions are started, it is impossible and unseemly to hurry
the answers, still less anticipate the questions. The nightingale
is dead and will sing no longer, the listener is frozen to death and
can hear no more songs. The situation is so palpably absurd that only
with the intention of getting rid of the question at any cost will
one strive for a sensible answer. The answer must be absurd--if you
don't want it, don't question. But if you must question, then be ready
beforehand to reconcile yourself with something like sollipsism or
modern realism. Thought is in a dilemma, and dare not take the leap to
get out. We laugh at philosophy, and, as long as possible, avoid evil.
But nearly all men feel the intolerable cramp of such a situation, and
each at his risk ventures to swim to shore on some more or less witty
theory. A few courageous ones speak the truth--but they are neither
understood nor respected. When a man's words show the depth of the
pain through which he has passed, he is not, indeed, condemned, but
the world begins to talk of his tragic state of soul, and to take
on a mournful look fitting to the occasion. Others more scrupulous
feel that phrases and mournful looks are unfitting, yet they cannot
dwell at length on the tragedies of outsiders, so they take on an
exaggeratedly stern bearing, as if to say, "We feel deeply, but we do
not wish to show our feeling." They really feel nothing, only want
to make others believe how sensitive and modest they are. At times
this leads to curious results, even in writers of the first order
of renown. Thus Anatole France, the inventor of that most charming
smile which is intended to convince men that he feels everything and
understands everything, but does not cry out, because that would not
be fitting, in one of his novels takes upon himself the noble rôle of
advocate of the victims of a crime, against the criminal. "Our time,"
he says, "out of _pity_ to the criminal forgets the sufferings of his
victim." This, I repeat, is one of the most curious misrepresentations
of modern endeavour. It is true we in Russia talk a good deal about
compassion, particularly to criminals, and Anatole France is by no
means the only man who thinks that our distinguishing characteristic is
extreme sensitiveness and tender-heartedness. But as a matter of fact
the modern man who thinks for himself is not drawn to the criminal by
a sense of compassion, which would incontestably be better applied to
the victim, but by curiosity, or if you like, inquisitiveness. For
thousands of years man has sought to solve the great mystery of life
through a God-conception--with theodicy and metaphysical theories as
a result, both of which deny the possibility of a mystery. Theodicy
has long ago wearied us. The mechanistic theories, which contend that
there is nothing special in life, that its appearance and disappearance
depend on the same laws as those of the conservation of energy and
the indestructibility of matter, these look more plausible at first
sight, but people do not take to them. And no theory can survive men's
reluctance to believe in it. In a word, good has not justified the
expectations placed on it. Reason has done no better. So overwrought
mankind has turned from its old idols and enthroned madness and evil.
The smiling Anatole argues, and proves--proves excellently. But who
does not know what his proofs amount to?--and who wants them? It may be
our children will take fright at the task we have undertaken, will call
us "squandering parents," and will set themselves again to heaping up
treasures, spiritual and material. Again they will believe in ideals,
progress, and such like. For my own part, I have hardly any doubt of
it. Sollipsism and the cult of groundlessness are not lasting, and,
most of all, they are not to be handed down. The final triumph, in life
as in old comedies, rests with goodness and common sense. History has
known many epochs like ours, and gone through with them. Degeneration
follows on the heels of immoderate curiosity, and sweeps away all
refined and exaggerately well-informed individuals. Men of genius have
no posterity--or their children are idiots. Not for nothing is nature
so majestically serene: she has hidden her secrets well enough. Which
is not surprising, considering how unscrupulous she is. No despot, not
the greatest villain on earth, has ever wielded power with the cruelty
and heartlessness of nature. The least violation of her laws--and
the severest punishment follows. Disease, deformity, madness, death
--what has not our common mother contrived to keep us in subjection?
True, certain optimists think that nature does not punish us, but
educates us. So Tolstoy sees it. "Death and sufferings, like animated
scarecrows, boo at man and drive him into the one way of life open to
him: for life is subject to its own law of reason." Not a bad method
of upbringing. Exactly like using wolves and bears. Unfortunate man,
bolting from one booing monster, is not always able in time to dodge
into the one correct way, and dashes straight into the maw of another
beast of prey. Then what? And this often happens. Without disparagement
of the optimists, we may say that sooner or later it happens to every
man. After which no more running. You won't tear yourself out of the
claws of madness or disease. Only one thing is left: in spite of
traditions, theodicy, wiseacres, and most of all in spite of oneself,
to go on praising mother nature and her great goodness. Let future
generations reject us, let history stigmatise our names, as the names
of traitors to the human cause--still we will compose hymns to
deformity, destruction, madness, chaos, darkness. And after that--let
the grass grow.
15
Astrology and alchemy lived their day and died a natural death.
But they left a posterity--chemistry inventing dyes, and astronomy
accumulating formulae. So it is. Geniuses beget idiots: especially when
the mothers are very virtuous, as in this case, when their virtue
is extraordinary. For the mothers are public utility and morality.
The alchemists wasted their time seeking the philosopher's stone; the
astrologers, swindled people telling fortunes by the stars. Wedded to
utility these two fathers have begotten the chemists and astronomers.
... Nobody will dispute the genealogy. Perhaps even none will dispute
that, from idiotic children one may, with a measure of probability,
infer genius in the parents. There are certain indications that this is
so--though of course one may not go beyond supposition. But supposition
is enough. There are more arguments in store. For instance--our day is
so convinced of the absolute nonsense and uselessness of alchemy and
astrology that no one dreams of verifying the conviction. We know there
were many charlatans and liars amongst alchemists and astrologers. But
what does this prove? In every department there are the same mediocre
creatures who speculate on human credulity. However positive our
science of medicine is, there are many fraudulent doctors who rob their
patients. The alchemists and astrologers were, in all probability,
the most remarkable men of their time. I will go further: in spite
of dye-stuffs and formulae, even in our nineteenth century, which
was so famous for its inventions and discoveries, the most eminent,
talented men still sought the philosopher's stone and forecast the
destinies of man. And those among them who were possessed of a poetic
gift won universal attention. In the old days, _consensu sapientium_,
a poet was allowed all kinds of liberties: he might speak of fate,
miracles, spirits, the life beyond--indeed of anything, provided he was
interesting. That was enough. The nineteenth century paid its tribute
to restlessness. Never were there so many disturbing, throbbing writers
as during the epoch of telephones and telegraphs. It was held indecent
to speak in plain language of the vexed and troubled aspirations of
the human spirit. Those guilty of the indecency were even dosed with
bromides and treated with shower-baths and concentrated foods. But all
this is external, it belongs to a history of "fashions" and cannot
interest us here. The point is that alchemy and astrology did not die,
they only shammed death and left the stage for a time. Now, apparently,
they are tired of seclusion and are coming forward again, having pushed
their unsuccessful children into the background. Well, so be it. _A la
bonne heure_!...
16
Man comes to the pass where all experience seems exhausted. Wherever he
go, whatever he see, all is old and wearyingly familiar. Most people
explain this by saying that they really know everything, and that from
what they have experienced they can infer all experience. This phase
of the exhaustion of life usually comes to a man between thirty-five
and forty--the best period, according to Karamzin. Not seeing anything
new, the individual assumes he is completely matured and has the right
to judge of everything. Knowing what has been he can forecast what will
be. But Karamzin was mistaken about the best period, and the "mature"
people are mistaken about the "nothing new can happen." The fact of
spiritual stagnation should not be made the ground for judging all
life's possibilities from known possibilities. On the contrary, such
stagnation should prove that however rich and multifarious the past may
have been, it has not exhausted a tittle of the whole possibilities.
From that which has been it is impossible to infer what will be.
Moreover, it is unnecessary--except, perhaps, to give us a sense of
our full maturity and let us enjoy all the charms of the best period
of life, so eloquently described by Karamzin. The temptation is not
overwhelming. So that, if man is under the necessity of enduring a
period of arrest and stagnation, and until such time as life re-starts
is doomed to meditation, would it not be better to use this meditating
_interregnum_ for a directly opposite purpose from the one indicated:
that is to say, for the purpose of finding in our past signs which tell
us that the future has every right to be anything whatsoever, like or
utterly unlike the past. Such signs, given a good will to find them,
may be seen in plenty. At times one comes to the conclusion that the
natural connection of phenomena, as hitherto observed, is not at all
inevitable for the future, and that miracles which so far have seemed
impossible, may come to seem possible, even natural, far more natural
than that loathsome law of sequence, the law of the regularity of
phenomena. We are bored stiff with regularity and sequence--confess
it, you also, you men of science. At the mere thought that, however we
may think, we can get no further than the acknowledgment of the old
regularity, an invincible disgust to any kind of mental work overcomes
us. To discover another law--still another--when already we have far
more than we can do with! Surely if there is any will-to-think left
in us, it is established in the supposition that the mind cannot and
must not have any bounds, any limits; and that the theory of knowledge,
which is based on the _history_ of knowledge and on a few very doubtful
assumptions, is only a piece of property belonging to a certain caste,
and has nothing to do with us others_--und die Natur zuletzt sich doch
ergründe._ What a mad impatience seizes us at times when we realise
that we shall never fathom the great mystery! Every individual in
the world must have felt at one time the mad desire to unriddle the
universe. Even the stodgy philosophers who invented the theory of
knowledge have at times made surreptitious sorties, hoping to open a
path to the unknown, in spite of their own fat, senseless books that
demonstrate the advantages of scientific knowledge. Man either lives in
continuous experience, or he frees himself from conclusions imposed by
limited experience. All the rest is the devil. From the devil come the
blandishments with which Karamzin charmed himself and his readers....
Or is it the contrary? Who will answer! Once again, as usual, at the
end of a pathetic speech one is left with a conjecture. Let every man
please himself. But what about those who would like to live according
to Karamzin, but cannot? I cannot speak for them. Schiller recommended
hope. Will it do? To be frank, hardly. He who has once lost his peace
of mind will never find it again.
17