[Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Blank representing omitted text is represented as a line of
underscores: ______.]
THE JOURNAL OF
LEO TOLSTOI
(_First Volume--1895–1899_)
THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS
ASPHALT
_By Orrick Johns_
BACKWATER
_By Dorothy Richardson_
DANDELIONS
_By Coulson T. Cade_
CENTRAL EUROPE
_By Friedrich Naumann_
CRIMES OF CHARITY
_By Konrad Bercovici_
RUSSIA’S MESSAGE
_By William English Walling_
THE BOOK OF SELF
_By James Oppenheim_
THE BOOK OF CAMPING
_By A. Hyatt Verrill_
MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY
_By Alexander Kornilov_
THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING
_By Alexandre Benois_
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUPER-TRAMP
_By William H. Davies_
_With a Preface by Bernard Shaw_
THE JOURNAL OF
LEO TOLSTOI
(_First Volume--1895–1899_)
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
By ROSE STRUNSKY
[Illustration: Publisher’s logo]
ALFRED A. KNOPF
NEW YORK · MCMXVII
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
The ultimate meaning of the Russian Revolution which took place
in March, 1917, can be best understood through the pages of the
Journal of Leo Tolstoi which is here printed. The spiritual qualities
which make up the mind and personality of Tolstoi are the spiritual
qualities which make up the new era among men which is being waged
so painfully and so uncompromisingly at the present moment on the
soil of Russia. One holds the key to the other, for no land but
Russia could have produced a Tolstoi, and in no land but Russia
could Tolstoi have been so embraced and so absorbed.
They are both flesh of each other’s flesh, and I place them equally
in greatness against each other. Great and wonderful as is the
Russian people, so Tolstoi was as great and wonderful as the Russian
people. I say this knowing well the pain and impatience both felt
for each other in the long eighty-two years of Tolstoi’s life here,
but it was the pain and the impatience of great love and infinite
understanding, of feeling and knowing each other’s pulse-beats,
and not the misunderstanding of strangers. It was the wise father
doubting the impatient methods of his children; it was the ardent
children desiring and struggling to accomplish the wishes of the
father and being lost in the maelstrom of an insistent reality.
The youth went faster than the father, and yet so infinite and
universal were the words of the latter that when the last summings-up
are made both stand together in total harmony and agreement. Tolstoi
at thirty took no part in the great educational agrarian movement of
the latter Fifties, and even had a fine scorn for their exponents
which did not leave him in his later years--witness the phrase against
Herzen and Chernishevsky, “raised to great men,” he said, “and who
ought to be grateful to the government and the censorship, without
which they would have been the most unnoticed of sketch-writers.”
And yet it was Herzen and Chernishevsky and Dobrolubov, these
“sketch-writers,” who kept up the fire of agrarian reform and who
practically forced the issue upon Alexander II. Tolstoi ignored the
whole revolutionary movement of that time; even more than ignored it;
threw himself seemingly into the opposite camp, leading the life of
a gay fêted hero returned from the Crimean War. But his _Morning of
a Landed Proprietor_ shows that he was thinking deeply even at that
time of the social problems around him, only he was thinking more
slowly than the rest. He was just waking up to the fact that the
peasant conditions needed improvement, at the time when all around
him the youth had passed to the idea that it was not an improvement
that they needed, but an absolute change in the fundamental ideas of
property. It took him forty years to say, that you might as well ask
him how to make use of the ownership, or the labour or the rent of
a bonded slave as to ask him for advice as to the problem of owning
of land. Here was no reformer speaking, but one who was united with
the revolutionary thought around him.
But when the men of the Sixties were making that answer for themselves,
and had won the first great step toward the change--the abolition of
serfdom--Tolstoi was away altogether from his native land writing
that great epoch of the War of 1812--_War and Peace_. It was because
this great soul was undogmatic, and reached out into the world not by
mass thinking, but marvellously enough entirely by himself, laying
his roots far and deep, that he seemed so slow moving. Yet it was
the direction and the end that counted, and the end finds him, like
the race between the tortoise and the hare--that he is still ahead.
Even Russia will have far and long to travel to come to that kingdom
of God on earth, to that conception of the manifestation of the
will of God on earth, which is the spiritual ideal of Tolstoi, and
toward which, express it in any materialistic or naturalistic terms
it may, the Russian nation has with one mind been working with such
marvellous self-consciousness.
Again, after the emancipation of the serfs, Tolstoi seemed to fail
the New Russia, interesting himself only at this moment with the
education of the youth and the need of reform--ever the need of
reform, when already for over a decade the cry of Russia was for new
forms entirely, new land arrangements, new relations between man
and man, and man and his property. The time had come, they said,
for the Will of the People to be made manifest.
But before Tolstoi could decide on that, he had to decide on a more
fundamental problem of what his relation was to God, as well as what
his relation was to man. In other words, what were the true spiritual
relations between man and man, not only the economic, political and
social ones. And it is this attempt to solve the real fundamental
meaning to all relationship, the very reason for the youth’s outbursts
against the economic, political and social injustices that existed,
that kept him moving forward so slowly. For he moved whole worlds
at a step.
The only reason for life, he said, is the universal desire for well
being, which in man, whose reason has awakened, is expanded into
a desire for universal welfare; in other words, for love. For he
knows that he is not a separate being, but a part of a whole, and
therefore it is meaningless to think that he can obtain anything
for himself alone. It is only in struggling and attaining for the
Whole that he can find his true life.
The Russian youth agreed with him entirely. To their logic, the
struggle for universal welfare led to terrorism; to Tolstoi, to the
absolute non-resistance to evil by violence. The youth said the will
of God is being thwarted by a band of oppressors. If we do away with
the oppressors we can get together in mutual love. Tolstoi said that
he who thinks he can violate the will of God for an immediate good
is only short-sighted. Never at any moment can the will of God be
thwarted and the good attained.
For a while the Russian Government rather approved of the Tolstoyan
attitude of non-resistance to evil. The one who used the greatest
amount of violence and evil of all, was pleased to meet the philosophy
which advised non-resistance to it. But Tolstoi grew and travelled
in his long years and he had to change his conclusions, so that
his logic led him to that most self-conscious and difficult of
all revolutionary movements, passive-resistance. Take no part in
violence, he said; therefore, pay no taxes that support a government
which violates, and do not serve in the army which is an act of
violence in itself. It was then that Tolstoi was looked upon with
askance by the Russian authorities and formerly anathematised from
the church. It was to his followers that the more drastic punishment
of imprisonment and exile was meted out.
Toward the latter years of his life, his great human heart could
not remain quite closed to the violence around him, and religious
thinker that he was, he had to stop his meditations to cry out
against the Kishineff massacres of the Jews and against the raising
of the scaffolds and the tying of the “Stolypine’s neck-ties,” that
most telling nick-name of the Russian people for the noose, which
was tied even for school children on the crossroads of Russia after
the bitter failure of the revolution of 1905.
It was only in _What Is Art?_ that the Russian people and Tolstoi
were unanimously at one. Art is to serve the people, to be of the
people, to be something understandable by all people. There were to
be no dogmas for art, no German metaphysics for art. It was merely
the means of expressing to his neighbour the mysteries that went on
in the soul of the artist. There was no quarrel here between his
fellow countrymen and the great thinker. Everything was to be for
the people; the spiritual manifestations of life as well as the
material.
How to make clear that for all this seeming lack of harmony, there
existed the greatest bond of all between this teacher and his
children. Thousands in Russia took his life as an example and left
the vainglories of the city with all its false standards and went
to live among the people. They went not only to serve them but to
be one of them, to live by the sweat of their brow as the masses
did, because it was the only moral thing to do, and because the
greatest happiness lay in the spiritual values of life, and because,
as Tolstoi himself says, “It is good with them, but with us it is
shameful.”
I remember so well the deep-set eyes and the long shaggy eyebrows
of that all-knowing seer, as he sat on the veranda of his home in
Yasnaya Polyana one May afternoon in 1906, and told us that he was a
religious thinker and not a political one but that to his mind the
revolution in Russia would take fifty years to develop. And with
that fine scorn for parliamentarism which would have rejoiced the
heart of any syndicalist, he added that that which we were witnessing
now, the assembling of the first Duma, was only the first scene of
the first act of a five act drama and it was high comedy!
The second scene followed soon and turned out to be bitter tragedy,
and before it was quite over Tolstoi wandered off on that last
pilgrimage which ended in the little railway station of Ostopova.
He succumbed at last to that “temptation” he speaks of so freely in
his Journal, to leave his home conditions, negate himself entirely,
and find himself again, merged and at one with the Whole. And the
Great Deliverer came and offered him even a greater fusion with all,
giving him that “other post,” the “new appointment” he so ardently
prayed for in life. When that happened he became at once clear and
lucid even to those nearest him--who had criticised him the most.
The Russian youth was disconsolate. Our spiritual guide is gone,
they cried. Who will hold up the candle for us now? What black night
is there in the world, and how to grope our way in it alone!
How lonely it was without that spiritual guide!
The first act of the March Revolution was to redecorate the grave
of Tolstoi in the forest of Zakaz, to make the sacred pilgrimage to
his resting place and tell the father of the good news--the will of
God is being established, reason is awakened in man. Love toward
neighbour; nay, the greatest of all, love toward enemies, is being
accomplished.
It is with a feeling of reverence that I bring this gift of the inner
soul of Tolstoi to the English-speaking public. The very formlessness
of the phrases of this Journal helps toward a sincerity of thought
which shows itself pure by its nakedness. Tolstoi himself knew the
value of these documents, for one man was to him as another, and
the sincere gropings of a man’s reason toward the understanding of
the meaning of life was of value even if they were his own, and
especially if they were of one who had lived much and thought much
as he did. “It is especially disagreeable to me,” he writes, “when
people who have lived little and thought little do not believe me,
and, not understanding me, argue with me about moral problems. It
would be the same for which a veterinary surgeon would be hurt if
people who were not familiar with his art would argue with him.”
And Tolstoi knew that he knew his art, he knew consciously, since
the spiritual awakening that came to him in the Eighties, the great
mission to which he dedicated his life--to find a moral justification
of living--and it is therefore that he laid special stress in the
disposal of these documents for the public after his death. The
volume here printed is only four years of over sixty years of Journal
which he kept since his early twenties. They are published first,
because it is only with the Journal beginning 1890 that his editor
and friend, V. G. Chertkov, has the copied manuscripts in their
entirety--from that date up to Tolstoi’s death in 1910.
Over and over again in his life, Tolstoi attempted to make special
and legal provision for his journals and notebooks, as he calls
them, that they be given and spread free to the public, and he
designated his friend and follower, who has edited and published
this volume in Russian, as the practical inheritor and executor of
these manuscripts. He was to publish them in their entirety, except
for certain revisions so that there should be preserved, as Tolstoi
expressed it, that which ought to be preserved and there should be
thrown out that which ought to be thrown out.
“I know,” he wrote to Chertkov, February 8, 1900, “that no one
bears such an esteem, respect and love for my spiritual life and
its expression as you do. I always said it and now I write it in my
notes which express my wishes after my death, asking you especially,
and only you, to undertake the revision of my papers.”
This Chertkov has done exceedingly well in the original Russian
edition, giving in double brackets the number of the words he left
out, which seemed to him necessary on account of their too intimate
character. These places I have merely indicated by three points.
Unfortunately the Russian volume was printed under the old régime and
deletions had to be made on account of the censor, which, because of
the difficulty of communication during the war, it was impossible
to fill in. These places are also designated in this volume by
three points, but in the Russian edition they are given in double
parenthesis, also enclosing the number of the words left out. So
that a record of all omissions have been kept.
The problem of disposing of these documents after his death according
to his principles against copyrights, occupied Tolstoi for many
years. The Russian law nullified any such disposal of property,
for legally the inheritor had to be a fixed person “and works to
be disposed of free to all” meant nothing. He therefore wrote many
wills, defining and modifying his position in all possible ways so
that his ideas might be carried out, and in such a form that they
could not be frustrated by any one.
His plans were threefold:
1. That all his works written after 1881 as well as all his writings
written before that year (the year that marks his spiritual
regeneration) but not published until later or not published at all
up to his death, should be no one’s property, but be given free to
the public for printing and translation.
2. That all his manuscripts and documents (among that number the
journals, first drafts of books, letters, etc.,) which would remain
after his death should be given over to V. G. Chertkov, who was to
revise them and arrange them in suitable form for publication.
3. That the estate of Yasnaya Polyana should be given over to the
peasants.
Tolstoi’s first idea was that Chertkov should be one of the legal
inheritors, together with the Countess Tolstoi, his wife. But
Chertkov refused for various personal reasons, he says, but mainly
because he thought that the arrangement for the transfer of property
could be best facilitated and could be more delicately managed if
some one member of the Tolstoi family was designated instead of an
outsider. Tolstoi, therefore, designated as his legal inheritor his
youngest daughter Alexandra, who stood in close sympathy with him
in his spiritual ideas, and, in case of her death before his own,
his eldest daughter Tatiana. He hoped that his daughters, together
with the Countess Tolstoi, would fulfil his requests concerning the
disposal of his posthumous documents and the gift of the estate
according to his wishes.
After Tolstoi’s death the estate was given to the peasants by means
of the sale of most of the posthumous documents which enabled his
daughter Alexandra to buy back the estate from the family and give
it to the peasants as directed by Tolstoi, but in the matter of
the journals it was more difficult to arrange from the fact that
the Countess Tolstoi placed all these journals and notebooks in
the Moscow Historical Museum on the ground that they were a gift
of Tolstoi to her during his lifetime and that therefore she had
a right to dispose of them as she thought best. The matter would
have taken only a legal process in the court to disentangle, a thing
which the Countess Alexandra Tolstoi did not wish to undertake as
being against the spirit of her father to use legal force to come
to an agreement.
Chertkov, therefore, was forced to use only such copies of the
original journals and notebooks which he happened to have in his
possession. The present volume is made from a copy done by the hands
of the Prince and Princess Obolensky, the son-in-law and daughter
of Tolstoi, who also stood very near to Tolstoi spiritually, were
conscientious in their fulfilment of such tasks for him, and who
knew his handwriting very well. The original documents are still in
the Moscow Historical Museum, but Chertkov has promised to publish
the volumes and journals which he has from the years 1900 to 1910,
and has already brought out a second volume of this series, which
dates from Tolstoi’s early years in the twenties.
Whatever value this volume has as a historical and exact transcript
of Tolstoi’s original jottings-down as they came to him, it has much
more value as a transcript of the thoughts of a great Russian which
have so permeated his people that they are now being rewritten on the
pages of Russian history. It is because the blood of his brother
calls to him from under the ground, that the Russian has undertaken
to advance one step nearer to the fulfilment of the great law--to
live together in harmony, to serve his brother and to do the one
work--which is the one work for all, to love.
The hundred-years readiness for sacrifice for the common good, the
willingness to go to exile and death of four generations of men and
women, the red flag now flying over the Winter Palace in Petrograd
with the letters of gold, “Proletarians of all Nation Unite,” the
insistent call to the peoples of the world to overthrow all oppressors
and live together in mutual harmony, the trumpet calls of a democracy
whose tones are so strange and new, that we across the borders seem
not to hear or understand them, all have their spiritual counterpart
in the pages of this book. It is Russia that speaks here.
I must give my thanks to Mr. Alexander Gourevich who so carefully
compared the original text and English translation, and to Mr. Joseph
Peroshnikoff who patiently revised the notes and assisted in the
compilation of the index.
ROSE STRUNSKY.
New York, May, 1917.
CONTENTS
Introduction--Rose Strunsky, v
Journal, 3
1895, October, 3
“ November, 4
“ December, 8
1896, January, 19
“ February, 21
“ March, 29
“ May, 31
“ June, 56
“ July, 61
“ September, 70
“ October, 74
“ November, 87
“ December, 99
1897, January, 113
“ February, 117
“ March, 134
“ April, 137
“ May, 139
“ July, 140
“ August, 144
“ September, 148
“ October, 150
“ November, 163
“ December, 177
1898, January, 193
“ February, 199
“ March, 210
“ April, 219
“ May, 226
“ June, 232
“ July, 243
“ August, 246
“ November, 256
1899, January, 269
“ February, 269
“ June, 270
“ July, 276
“ September, 277
“ October, 283
“ November, 291
“ December, 292
Explanatory Notes to Text, by V. G. Chertkov, 299
A short Sketch of the Life of Tolstoi at the End of the Nineties,
by C. Shokor-Trotsky, 387
Index, 409
THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI
_October–December 1895_
THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI
_I continue[1][A] October 28. Yasnaya Polyana._
Have been thinking:
Have been thinking one thing: that this life which we see around us
is a movement of matter according to fixed, well-known laws; but
that in us we feel the presence of an altogether different law,
having nothing in common with the others and requiring from us the
fulfilment of its demands. It can be said that we see and recognise
all the other laws only because we have in us this law. If we did
not recognise this law, we would not recognise the others.
This law is different from all the rest, principally in this, that
those other laws are outside of us and forces us to obey them; but
this law is in us--and more than in us; it is our very selves and
therefore it does not force us when we obey it, but on the contrary
frees us, because in following it we become ourselves. And for this
reason we are drawn to fulfil this law and we sooner or later will
inevitably fulfil it. In this then consists the freedom of the will.
This freedom consists in this, that we should recognise that which
is--namely that this inner law is ourselves.
This inner law is what we call reason, conscience, love, the good,
God. These words have different meanings, but all from different
angles mean one and the same thing. In our understanding of this inner
law, the son of God, consists indeed the essence of the Christian
doctrine.
The world can be looked upon in this way: a world exists governed by
certain, well-known laws, and within this world are beings subject to
the same laws, but who at the same time bear in themselves another
law not in accord with the former laws of the world, a higher law,
and this law must inevitably triumph within these beings and defeat
the lower law. And in this struggle and in the gradual victory of
the higher law over the lower, in this only is life for man and the
whole world.
_Oct. 29. Yasnaya Polyana. If I live._[2]
[A] These superior figures refer to the editor’s notes which begin
on page 299.
_Nov. 5. Y. P._
I have skipped 6 days. It seems to me, I thought little during this
time: I wrote a little, chopped wood and was indisposed--but lived
through much. I lived through much, because in fulfilling a promise
to S.[3], I read through all my journals for the past seven years.
It seems to me, I am approaching a simple and clear expression of that
by which I live. How good that I didn’t finish the Catechism![4] I
think I shall write it differently and better, if the Father wishes
it. I understand why it is impossible to say it quickly. If it could
be said all at once, by what then would we live in the realm of
thought? It will never be given me to go farther than this task.
I just took a walk and understood clearly why I can’t make
_Resurrection_ go better: it was begun falsely. I understood this in
thinking over again the story: _Who is Right?_[5] (about children).
I understood that one must begin with the life of the peasants, that
they are the subject, they are positive, but that the other thing
is shadow, the other thing is negative. And I understood the same
thing about _Resurrection_. One must begin with her.[6] I want to
begin immediately.
During this time there were letters: from Kenworthy,[7] a beautiful
one from Shkarvan,[8] and from a Dukhobor in Tiflis.[9]
Have written to no one for a long time. General indisposition and no
energy. The stage manager and the decorator[10] were here, students
from Kharkov against whom I think I did not sin, Ivan Ivanovich
Bochkarev,[11] Kolasha.[12]...
_Nov. 6. Y. P. If I live._
_November 7. Y. P._
I wrote a little these two days on the new _Resurrection_. My
conscience hurts when I remember how trivially I began it. So far,
I rejoice when I think of the work as I am beginning it.
I chopped a little. I went to Ovsiannikovo, had a good talk with
Maria Alexandrovna[13] and Ivan Ivanovich.[14] Waltz’s assistant
was here and a Frenchman with a poem....
_November 8, 9. Y. P._
Have written little on _Resurrection_. I was not disappointed, but
I was weak.
Yesterday Dunaev[15] came. Chopped much yesterday, overtired myself.
To-day I walked. I went to Constantine Bieli’s.[16] He is very much
to be pitied. Then I walked in the village. It is good with them,
but with us it is shameful. Wrote letters. Wrote to Bazhenov[17]
and three others. Thought:
1) The confirmation of the fact, that reason liberates the latent love
in man for justice is the proverb, “Comprendre c’est tout pardoner.”
If you forgive a man, you will love him. To forgive means to cease
to condemn and to hate.
2) If a man believes something at the word of another, he will lose
his belief in that which he would have inevitably believed in, had
he not trusted the other one. He who believes in ... etc., ceases
to believe in reason. They even say straight out, one ought not to
believe in reason.
3) ...
A very interesting letter from Holland, about what a youth is to do
who is called to military service, when he is the sole supporter of
his mother.[18]
_November 10. Y. P._
Slept with difficulty. Weakness both physical and intellectual
and--for which I am at fault--also moral. Rode horseback. Posha[19]
arrived.... A wonderful French pamphlet about war.[20] Yes, 20 years
are needed for that thought to become a general one. My head aches
and seems to crackle and rumble. Father, help me when I am most weak
that I may not fall morally. It is possible.
_Nov. 11. Y. P. If I live._
I write and think: it is possible that I won’t be. Every day I make
attempts, and I get more accustomed to it.
_To-day November 15._
I have been so weak all the time I could write nothing except a
few letters. A letter to Shkarvan. There have been here, Dunaiev,
Posha, Maria Vasilievna.[21] They left yesterday. Yesterday also I
went to see Maria Alexandrovna; she is ill. To-day Aunt Tanya[22]
and Sonya came.
I didn’t sleep at night and therefore didn’t work. But I wrote on
the girl _Konefsky_[23] and a little in my journal. I am reading
Schopenhauer’s[24] “Aphorisms.” Very good. Only put “The service
of God” instead of “The recognition of the vanity of life,” and we
agree.
Now 2 o’clock, I shall write out later what I have noted down.[25]
_December 7. Moscow._
Almost a month since I have made any entries. During this time
we moved to Moscow. The weakness has passed a little, and I am
working earnestly, though with little success, on the Declaration
of Faith.[26] Yesterday I wrote a little article on whipping.[27] I
lay down to sleep in the day and had just dozed off--I felt as if
some one jerked me; I got up, began to think about whipping, and
wrote it out.
During this time, I went to the theatre[28] for the rehearsals of
the Power of Darkness. Art, beginning as a game, has continued to
be the toy of adults. This is also proved by music, of which I have
heard much. It is ineffectual. On the contrary, it detracts when
there is ascribed to it the unsuitable meaning which is ascribed
to it. Realism, moreover, weakens its significance ...
N. refused to serve in the military. I called on him.[29]
Philosophov[30] died.... Wrote several worthless letters.
I have thought during this time much--in meaning. Much of it I could
not understand and have forgotten.
1) I have often wanted to suffer, wanted persecution. That means
that I was lazy and didn’t want to work, so that others should work
for me, torturing me, and I should only suffer.
2) It is terrible, the perversions ... of the mind to which men
expose children for their own purposes during the time of their
education. The rule of conscious materialism is only explained by
this. The child is instilled with such nonsense that afterwards the
materialistic, limited, false conception, which is not developed
to the conclusions which would show its falsity, appears like an
enormous conquest of the intellect.
3) I made a note, “Violence frees,” and it was something very clear
and important, and now I don’t remember what it was at all.
_I have remembered. December 23._ Violence is a temptation because it
frees us from the strain of attention, from the work of reasoning:
one must labour to undo a knot; to cut it, is shorter.
4) A usual perversion of reason, which is made through a violently
enforced faith, is to make men satisfied either with idolatry or with
materialism, which at bottom is one and the same thing. Faith in the
reality of our conceptions is faith in an idol, and the consequences
are the same; one must bring sacrifices to it.
5) I can imagine consciousness transferred to the life of the spirit
to such a degree that the sufferings of the body would be met gladly.
6) A beautiful woman smiles, and we think that because she smiles
she says something good and true when she smiles. But often the
smile seasons something entirely foul.
7) Education. It is worth while occupying oneself with education, in
order to find out all one’s shortcomings. Seeing them, you will begin
to correct them. But to correct oneself is indeed the best method
of education for one’s children and for others’ and for grown-up
people.
Just now I read a letter from Shkarvan[31] that medical help does
not appear to him like a boon, that the lengthening of many empty
lives for many hundred years is much less important to him than the
weakest _blowing_, as he writes, (a puff) on the spark of divine
love in the heart of another. Here then in this _blowing_, lies the
whole art of education. But to kindle it in others, one must kindle
it in oneself.
8) To love means to desire that which the beloved object desires.
The objects of love desire opposing things, and therefore, we can
only love that which desires one and the same thing. But that which
desires one and the same thing is God.
9) Man beginning to live, loves only himself, and separates himself
from other beings in that he constantly loves that which alone
constitutes his being. But as soon as he recognises himself as a
separate being, he recognises also his own love, and he is no longer
content with this love for himself and he begins to love other
beings. And the more he lives a conscious life, the greater and
greater number of beings he will begin to love, though not with such
a stable and unceasing love as that with which he loves himself, but
nevertheless, in such a way that he wishes good to everything he
loves, and he rejoices at this good, and suffers at the evil which
tries the beloved beings, and he unites into one all that he loves.
As life is love, why not suppose that my “self,” that which I consider
to be myself and love with a special love, is perhaps the union I
made in a former life of things which I loved, just as I am making
a union of things now. The other has already taken place and this
one is taking place.
Life is the enlargement of love, the widening of its borders, and
this widening is going on in various lives. In the present life,
this widening appears to me in the form of love. This widening is
necessary for my inner life and it is also necessary for the life of
this world. But my life can manifest itself not only in this form.
It manifests itself in an innumerable quantity of forms. Only this
one is apparent to me.
But in the meantime, the movement of life understood by me in this
world, through the enlargement of love in myself and through the union
of beings through love, produces at the same time other effects, one
or many, unseen by me. As for instance, I put together 8 toy cubes
to make a picture on one side of them, not seeing the other sides
of the constructed cubes, but on the other sides are being formed
pictures just as regular, though unseen by me.
(All this was very clear when it came into my head, and now I have
forgotten everything and the result is nonsense.)
10) I have thought much about God, about the essence of my life, and
it seemed I only doubted one and the other and believed in my own
conclusions; and then, one time, not long ago, I simply had the desire
to lean upon my faith in God and in the indestructibility of my soul,
and to my astonishment I felt so firm and calm a confidence, as I
have never felt before. So that all my doubts and scrutinisings have
evidently, not only not weakened my faith, but have strengthened
it to an enormous degree.
11) Reason is not given that we should recognise what we ought to
love; this it won’t disclose; but only for this: to show what we
ought not to love.
12) As in each piece of handiwork, the principal art lies not in the
regular making of certain things anew, but in the ever bettering of
the inevitable faults of a wrong and ruined work, so even in the
business of life, the principal wisdom is not how to begin to act
and how to lead life correctly, but how to better faults, how to
liberate oneself from errors and seductions.
13) Happiness is the satisfaction of the requirements of a man’s
being living from birth to death in this world only; but the good is
the satisfaction of the requirements of the eternal essence living
in man.
14) The essence of the teachings of Christ consists in this, that
man ought to know who he is; that he should understand, like a bird
which does not use its wings and runs on the land, that he is not a
mortal animal, dependent on the conditions of the world, but like a
bird which has understood that it has wings and has faith in them, he
should understand that he himself was never born and never died and
always is, and passes through this world in one of the innumerable
forms of life to fulfil the will of Him who sent him into this life.
_Dec. 8. Moscow. If I live._
Mascha[32] is with Ilia,[33] a loving letter from her to-day.
_To-day December 23. Moscow._
It is long since I have made an entry. On the 30th, the Chertkovs[34]
came. It is two days since Kenworthy arrived. He is very pleasant....
Have continued to write the Declaration--am progressing. Off and
on, I think out the drama,[35] and yesterday I raved about it all
night. I am not well; a bad cold in the head, influenza. Because of
the letter to the Englishman, I began also a letter on the collision
between England and America.[36]
Have been thinking during this time:
1) I have been thinking especially clearly of that which I have
already said many times; that all the evil in the world comes
only from this, that people look upon themselves, upon their own
personality, as a worthy object of their conscious life--upon
themselves or upon a group of personalities, it is all the same.
As long as a man lives for himself unconsciously, he does no harm. If
there is a struggle, then the struggle is an unconscious one which
is ended at once when the struggle with surroundings is ended; man
adjusts himself to it or he goes under, and this struggle is neither
cruel nor is it an evil one. The struggle begins to be cruel only
when man directs his consciousness upon it, prepares it, strengthens
and multiplies its energy tenfold and hundredfold.
As Pascal says: there are three kinds of people; one kind know
nothing and sit quietly, and just as quiet are those who know; but
there are a middle kind who don’t know but believe they do; from
them comes all the evil in the world. They are the people in whom
consciousness has awakened, but they don’t know how to use it.
2) The whole thing lies in this--that you should always remember
who you are. There is no situation so difficult, from which the way
out would not immediately offer itself, if you only would remember
that you are not a temporary, material manifestation, but an eternal
omnipresent being. “I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in me shall never die, and though he were dead yet shall
he live. Believest thou this?”
I walked on the street. A wretched beggar approached me. I forgot
who I was and passed by. And then suddenly I remembered, and just
as naturally as the hungry begin to eat and the tired sit down,
I turned back and handed him something. It is the same with the
temptation to quarrel, to insult, to be vain.
3) One can not voluntarily cease to remain awake, i. e. to fall
asleep. Just as little can one voluntarily cease to live. Life is
more important than the will, than desire. (Unclear.)
4) Receive with thankfulness the enjoyments of the flesh--all that
you meet on the way, if they are not sinful--in short, if they do
not go against your consciousness, if they do not make it suffer.
But use the efforts of your will, your liberty, only to serve God.
I just wrote a letter to Crosby.[37] He is working in America.
_Dec. 24. Moscow. If I live._
Yesterday I received the “Open Letter” of Spielhagen, the Socialist,
which appeared in the newspapers with regard to Drozhin.[38]
1896
_January 23. Moscow._
Just a month that I made no entries. During this time I wrote a letter
about patriotism[39] and a letter to Crosby[40] and here now for two
weeks I have been writing the drama. I wrote three acts abominably.
I thought to make an outline so as to form a _charpente_. I have
little hope of success.
Chertkov and Kenworthy went away the 7th. Sonya went to Tver to
Andrusha.[41] To-day Nagornov[42] died. I am again a little indisposed.
I jotted down during this time:
1) A true work of art--a contagious one--is produced only when the
artist seeks, strives. In poetry this passion for representing that
which is, comes from the fact that the artist hopes that having
seen clearly and having fixed that which is, he will understand the
meaning of that which is.
2) In every art there are two departures from the way, vulgarity and
artificiality. Between them both there is only a narrow path. And
this narrow path is outlined by impulse. If you have impulse and
direction, you pass by both dangers. Of the two, the more terrible
is artificiality.
3) It is impossible to compel reason to examine and clarify that
which the heart does not wish.
4) It is bad when reason wishes to give the meaning of virtue to
selfish efforts.
Kudinenko[43] was here. A remarkable man. N. took the oath and is
serving.[44] A letter from Makovitsky[45] with an article on the
Nazarenes.[46]
_Jan. 24. Moscow. If I live._
_Jan. 25. Moscow._
During these two days the chief event was the death of Nagornov.
Always new and full of meaning is death. It occurred to me: they
represent death in the theatre. Does it produce 1/1,000,000 of that
impression which the nearness of a real death produces?
I continue writing the drama. I have written four acts. All bad.
But it is beginning to resemble a real thing.
_Jan. 26. Mosc. If I live._
_January 26. Moscow._
I am alive, but I don’t live. Strakhov--to-day I heard of his
death.[47] To-day they buried Nagornov--and that is news. I lay
down to sleep, but could not sleep, and there appeared before me
so clearly and brightly, an understanding of life whereby we would
feel ourselves to be travellers. Before us lies a stage of the road
with the same well-known conditions. How can one walk along that
road otherwise than eagerly, gaily, friendly, and actively together,
not grieving over the fact that you yourself are going away or that
others are going ahead of you thither, where we shall again be still
more together.
To-day I wrote a postscript to the letter to Crosby. A good letter
from Kenworthy. Unpleasantness with N. He is a journalist.
_Jan. 26 [27?]. Moscow. If I live._
Almost a month that I have made no entries. To-day, _Feb. 13, Moscow_.
I wanted to go to the Olsuphievs.[48].... There is much bustle here
and it takes up much time. I sit down late to my work and therefore
write little. I finished somehow the fifth act of the drama and took
up _Resurrection_. I read over eleven chapters and am gradually
advancing. I corrected the letter to Crosby.
An event--an important one--Strakhov’s death, and something
else--Davydov’s conversation with the Emperor.[49]......
The article by Ertel[50] that the efforts of the liberals are useful,
and also the letter by Spielhagen on the same theme,[51] provoke
me. But I can not, I must not write. I have no time. The letters
from Sopotsko[52] and Zdziekhovsky[53] on the Orthodox Church and on
the Catholic, provoke me on the other hand. However, I shall hardly
write. But here yesterday I received a letter from Grinevich’s[54]
mother on the religious bringing up of children. That I must do. At
least I must use all my strength to do this.
Very much music--it is useless.... As regards religion, I am very
cool at present.
Thought during this time (much I have forgotten and have not written
down):
1) Oh, not to forget death for a moment, into which at any moment you
can fall! If we would only remember that we are not standing upon
an even plain (if you think we are standing so, then you are only
imagining that those who have gone away have fallen overboard and
you yourself are afraid that you will fall overboard), but that we
are rolling on, without stopping, running into each other, getting
ahead and being got ahead of, yonder behind the curtain which hides
from us those who are going away, and will hide us from those who
remain. If we remember that always, then, how easy and joyous it
is to live and roll together, yonder down the same incline, in the
power of God, with Whom we have been and in Whose power we are now
and will be afterwards and forever. I have been feeling this very
keenly.
2) There is no more convincing proof of the existence of God, than
the faculty of the soul by which we can transport ourselves into
other beings. Out of this faculty flows both love and reason, but
neither one nor the other is in us, but they are outside of us and
we only coincide with them. (Unclear.)
3) The power to kill oneself is free play given to people. God did
not want slaves in this life, but free workers. If you remain in
this life, then it means that its conditions are advantageous to
you. If advantageous--then work. If you go away from the conditions
here, if you kill yourself, then the same thing will be put before
you again there. So there is nowhere to go.
It would be good to write the history of what a man lives through
in this life who committed suicide in a past life; how, coming up
against the same requirements which were placed before him in the
other life, he comes to the realisation that he must fulfil them. And
in this life he is more intelligent than in the others, remembering
the lesson given him.
4) How does it happen that a clever, educated man believes in the
nonsensical? Man thinks that which his heart desires. Only if his
heart desires the truth, and only if it does, will he think the
truth. But if his heart desires earthly pleasures and peace, he will
think of that which will bring him earthly pleasures and peace or
still something else. But as it is not an attribute of man to have
earthly pleasures and peace, he will think falsely; and to be able
to think falsely he will hypnotise himself.
(Unclear, not good.)
_Feb. 14. M. If I live._
_To-day February 22. Nicholskoe, at the Olsuphievs._[55]
It is already more than a week that I feel depressed in spirit.
No life; I can not work on anything. Father of my life and of all
life! If my work is already finished here, as I am beginning to
think, and the ending of my spiritual life, which I am beginning
to feel, means a transfer into that other life--that I am already
beginning to live there and that here these remnants are being taken
away little by little--then show it to me more clearly that I may
not seek and weary myself. Otherwise it seems to me that I have
many well-thought plans, yet I have no means, not only for carrying
them through--this I know, I ought not to think of--but even to do
something good, something pleasing to Thee as long as I live here.
Or give me strength to work with the consciousness of serving Thee.
Still, Thy will be done. If only I always felt that life consisted
only in the fulfilment of Thy will, I would not doubt. But doubt
comes because I bite the bit and don’t feel the reins.
It is now 2 o’clock. I am going to dinner. I took a walk, slept in
the morning, read _Trilby_. And I want to sleep all the time.
During this time, what has happened? Almost nothing. I thought on
the Declaration of Faith.
_If I live. February 23. Nicholskoe._
_To-day February 27. Nicholskoe._
Am writing the drama, it moves very stiffly. Indeed I don’t even
know if I am progressing or not.... I am very comfortable here; the
important thing--it is quiet.
Read _Trilby_--poor. Wrote letters to Chertkov, Schmidt,[56]
Kenworthy. Read Corneille--instructive.
Have been thinking:
1) I made a note that there are two arts. Now thinking it over, I
don’t find a clear expression of my thought. Then I thought that
there was an art, as they rightly characterise it, which grew from
play, from the need of every creature to play. The play of the calf
is jumping, the play of man is a symphony, a picture, a poem, a
novel.
This is one kind of art, the art of play, of thinking out new plays,
producing old ones and inventing new. That is a good thing, useful
and valuable because it increases man’s joys. But it is clear that
it is possible to occupy oneself with play only when sated. Thus
society can only occupy itself with art, when all its members are
sated. But as long as all its members are not sated, there can not be
real art, there will be an art of the overfed, a deformed one, and
an art of the hungry ones--rough and poor, just as it is now. And
therefore, in the first kind of art--of play--only that part is of
value which is attainable to all, which increases the joys of all.
If it is like this, then it is not a bad thing, especially if it
does not demand an increase of toil on the part of the oppressed,
as happens now.
(This could and should be expressed better.)
But there is yet another art which _calls forth in man better and
higher feelings_. I wrote this just now--something I have said many
times--and I think it isn’t true. Art is only one and consists in
this: to increase the sinless general joys accessible to all--the
good of man. A nice building, a gay picture, a song, a story give
a little good; the awakening of religious feelings, of the love of
good brought forth by a drama, a picture, a song--give great good.
The 2nd thing that I have been thinking about art, is that nowhere is
conservatism so harmful as in art. Art is one of the manifestations
of the spiritual life of man, and therefore, as when an animal is
alive, it breathes and discharges the products of its breathing, so
when humanity is alive, it manifests activity in art. And therefore,
at every given moment it must be contemporaneous--the art of our
time. One ought only to know where it is (not in the decadence of
music, poetry, or the novel); and one must seek it not in the past,
but in the present. People who wish to show themselves connoisseurs
of art and who therefore praise the past classic art and insult the
present, only show by this, that they have no feeling for art.
3) Rachinsky[57] says: “Notice that contemporaneous with the spread
of the use of narcotics, since the 17th century, the astounding
progress of science began, and especially of the natural ones.” Is
it not because of this, I say to him, that the false direction of
science has come, the studying of that which is not necessary to man,
but is only an object for idle curiosity, or when useful, is not the
only thing really necessary? Is it not because of this that from
that time on there was neglected the one thing that was necessary,
i.e. the settling of moral questions and their application to life?
4) What is the good? I only know a word in Russian which defines this
idea. The good is the real good, the good for all, _le veritable
bien, le bien de tous_, _what is good for everybody_.[58]
5) Men, in struggling with untruth and superstition, often console
themselves with the quantity of superstition they have destroyed.
This is not right. It is not right to calm oneself until all that
is contradictory to reason and demands credulence is destroyed.
Superstition is like a cancer. Everything must be cleaned out if one
undertakes an operation. But if a little bit is left, everything
will grow from it again.
6) The historic knowledge of how different myths and beliefs arose
among peoples in different places and in different times ought to,
it seems, destroy the faith that these myths and beliefs which have
been inoculated in us from our infancy, constitute the absolute
truth; but nevertheless, so-called educated people believe in them.
How superficial then, is the education of so-called educated people!
7) To-day at dinner there was talk about a boy with vicious
inclinations who was expelled from school, and about how good it
would be to give him over to a reformatory.
It is exactly what a man does who lives a bad life, harmful to his
health, and who, when he becomes ill, turns to the doctor so that
the latter may cure him, but has no idea that the illness was given
to him as a beneficial indicator that his whole life is bad and that
he ought to change it. The same thing is true with the illnesses
in our society; every ill member of society does not remind us that
the whole life of our society is irregular and that we ought to
change it. But we think that for every such ill member, there is
or ought to be, an institution freeing us from this member or even
bettering him.
Nothing hampers the progress of humanity so much as this false
conviction. The more ill the society, the more institutions there
are for the healing of symptoms and the less anxiety for changing
the entire life.
It is now 10 o’clock in the evening. I am going to supper. I want to
work very much, but am without intellectual energy; a great weakness,
yet I want to work terribly. If God would only give it to-morrow.
_Feb. 28. Nicholskoe. If I live._
_To-day March 6. Nicholskoe._
All this time I have felt weakness and intellectual apathy. I am
working on the drama very slowly. Much has become clear. But there
isn’t one scene with which I am fully satisfied.
To-day I was about to plan something silly: to write out an outline
of the Declaration of Faith. Of course it didn’t go. In the same
way I began and dropped a letter to the Italians.[59]
During this time I jotted down:
1) Corneille writes in his _Préface_ to Menteur on art, that its
aim is a diversion, “_divertir_,” but that it must not be harmful,
and if possible, it ought to be educationally enlightening.
2) At supper there was a discussion on heredity: they say vicious
people are born from an alcoholic ... (I can’t clearly express my
thought and will put it by.)
3) Something very important. I lay and was almost asleep, suddenly
something seemed to tear in my heart. It occurred to me: that is
the way death comes from heart failure; and I remained calm--I felt
neither grief nor joy, but blessedly calm--whether here or there, I
know that it is well with me, that things are as they ought to be,
just like a child, tossed in the arms of its mother, does not stop
smiling from joy for it knows that it is in her loving arms.
And the thought came to me: why is it so now and was not so before?
Because before, I did not live the whole of life, but lived only an
earthly life. In order to believe in immortality, one must live an
immortal life here. One can walk with one’s feet and not see the
precipice before one, over which it is impossible to cross, and one
can rise on one’s wings....[60]
(It isn’t going and I don’t feel like thinking.)
_March 7, 1896. Nicholskoe. If I live._
_To-day May 2. Yasnaya Polyana._
It is almost two months since I have made an entry. All this time I
lived in Moscow. Of important events there were: a getting closer to
the scribe Novikov[61] who changed his life on account of my books
which his brother, a lackey, received from his mistress abroad. A
hot-blooded youth. Also his brother, a working man, asked for “What
is my Faith?” and Tania[62] sent him to Mme. Kholevinsky.[63] They
took Mme. Kholevinsky to prison. The prosecuting attorney said that
they ought to go after me. All this together made me write a letter
to the ministers of Justice and the Interior in which I begged them
to transfer their prosecution to me.[64]
All this time I wrote on the Declaration of Faith. I made little
progress. Chertkov, Posha Biriukov were here and went away. My
relations with people are good. I have stopped riding the bicycle.
I wonder how I could have been so infatuated.
I heard Wagner’s Siegfried.[65] I have many thoughts in connection
with this and other things. In all I have jotted down 20 thoughts
in my notebook.
Still another important event--the work of African Spier.[66] I just
read through what I wrote in the beginning of this notebook. At
bottom, it is nothing else than a short summary of all of Spier’s
philosophy which I not only had not read at that time, but about
which I had not the slightest idea. This work clarified my ideas on
the meaning of life remarkably, and in some ways strengthened them.
The essence of his doctrine is that things do not exist, but only
our impressions which appear to us in our conception as objects.
Conception (Vorstellung) has the quality of believing in the existence
of objects. This comes from the fact that the quality of thinking
consists in attributing an objectivity to impressions, a substance,
and a projecting of them into space.
_May 3. Y. P._
Let me write down anything. Am indisposed. Weakness and physical
apathy. But think and feel keenly. Yesterday at least, I wrote a few
letters: to Spier,[67] Shkarvan, Myasoyedov,[68] Perer, Sverbeev.[69]
I am reading Spier all the time, and the reading provokes a mass of
thoughts.
Let me write out something at least from my 21 notes.
To-day I worked on the Declaration of Faith.
1) “Come and dwell in us and cleanse us of all evil” ... On the
contrary: Cleanse thy soul of evil thyself and He will come and dwell
in thee. He only waits for this. Like water he flows into thee in
the measure as room is freed. “Dwell in us.” How agonisingly lonely
it is without Thee--this I experienced these days and how peaceful,
firm and joyous, needing nothing and no one when with Thee. Do not
leave me!
I can not pray. His tongue is different from that which I speak, but
He will understand and translate it into His own when I say: “Help
me, come to me, do not leave me!”
And here I have fallen into a contradiction. I say you have to
cleanse yourself, then He will come. But I, not yet having cleansed
myself, call upon Him.
_May 4. If I still live here, Y. P._
_May 5. Y. P._
The same general despair. And I am sad. There is one cause; the higher
moral requirement that I put forward. In its name I have rejected
everything that is beneath it. But it was not followed. Fifteen years
ago I proposed giving away the greater part of the property and to
live in four rooms. Then they would have an ideal....
To-day I rode past Gill.[70] I thought: no undertaking is profitable
with a small amount of capital. The more capital, the more profits;
the less expenses. But from this it in no way follows that, as Marx
says, capitalism will lead to socialism. Perhaps it will lead to
it, but to one with force. The workingmen will be compelled to work
together, and they will work less and the pay will be more, but there
will be the same slavery. It is necessary that people work freely
in common, that they learn to work for each other, but capitalism
doesn’t teach them that; on the contrary, it teaches them envy, greed,
selfishness. Therefore, through a forced uniting brought about by
capitalism, the material condition of the workers can be bettered, but
their contentment can in no way be established. Contentment can only
be established through the free union of the workers. And for this
it is necessary to learn how to unite, to perfect oneself morally,
to willingly serve others without being hurt when not receiving a
return. And this can’t in any way be learned under the capitalistic,
competitive system, but under an entirely different one.
I sleep alone downstairs.
_To-morrow, May 6th, Y. P._
_To-day, May 9, Y. P._
Up to now, I haven’t yet written out all that I had to. Have been
continually indisposed. Notwithstanding this, I work in the mornings.
To-day, it seemed to me I advanced very much. Our people have gone
away, some to the coronation, others to Sweden.[71] I am alone with
Masha; she has a sore throat. I am well.
_May 10, If I live. Y. P._
_To-day, May 11, Y. P._
Sonya arrived from Moscow. I continue to write the Declaration of
Faith. It seems as if I were weakening. To-day I received a letter
from N, a tangled up revolutionist. In the evening I rode horseback
to Yasenki[72] and thought:
I have not yet written out everything from my notebooks. I will jot
down at least this, the more so since, when it came into my head it
seemed to me very important. Namely:
1) Spier says we know only sensations. It is true, the material of
our knowledge is sensations. But one must ask; why variation of
sensations (even of one and the same sense of sight or touch). He
(Spier) insists too much that corporeality is an illusion, and does
not answer the question: why variation of sensations? It is not
bodies that make variation of sensations, I agree to this, but it is
just such beings as we, who must be the cause of these sensations.
I know that what he recognises as our being he recognises as a unit.
Good. Admitting it is a unit, then it is a divided off, broken off
unit, and I am a unit being only within certain limits. And these
limits of my being are the limits of other beings. Or, one being is
outlined by limits and these limits create sensations, i. e., the
material of knowledge. There are no bodies, bodies are illusions,
but other beings are not illusions and I recognise them through
sensations. Their activity produces sensations in me and I conclude
that the same effect is produced in them by my activity. When I
receive sensations from a man with whom I come in contact, it can
be understood; but when I receive sensations from the earth upon
which I fall, from the sun which warms me, what is it that produces
these sensations in me? Probably the activities of beings whose life
I do not understand; but I recognise only a part of them like the
flea on my body. Touching the earth, feeling the warmth of the sun,
my limits come in contact with the limits of the sun. I am in the
world (I project this into space. I can not do it otherwise though
it is not so in reality) like a cell, not an immovable one, but one
wandering and touching by his limits, not only the limits of other
cells of the same kind, but other enormous bodies.
Better still, not to project this into space; I act and am acted
upon by the greatest variety of beings; or, my division of a unit
being associates with other divisions of the most various kinds.
(What a lot of nonsense!)
_May 12, Y. P. If I live._
Pentecost. It is cold, damp, and not a leaf on the trees.
_To-day already, May 16, Y. P. Morning._
I can not write my Declaration of Faith. It is unclear, metaphysical,
and whatever good there is in it, I spoil. I am thinking of beginning
it all from the beginning again or to call a stop and get to work
on a novel or a drama.
N.[73] was here; it was a difficult love test. I passed it only
outwardly and even then badly. If the examiner had gone along
thoroughly, skipping about, I would have failed shamefully.
A beautiful article by Menshikov, “The Blunders of Fear.”[74] How
joyous! I can almost die, even absolutely, and yet it always seems
as if there is something still to be done. Do it and the end will
take care of itself. If you are no longer fit for the work, you
will be changed and a new one will be sent and you will be sent to
another work. If only one rises in work!
Strakhov Th. A.[75] was here. The other one, N.,[76] came to me in
my sleep. I had a talk with him[77] about the Declaration of Faith.
In speaking to him I felt how hazy was the desire for the good in
itself. And I corrected it this way:
1) A man at a certain period of his development awakens to a
consciousness of his life. He sees that everything about him lives
(and he himself lived like that before the awakening of his reason)
without knowing its life. Now that he has learned that he lives, he
understands that force which gives life to the whole world and in
his consciousness he coincides with it, but being limited by his
separate being (his organism), it seems to him that the purpose of
this force which gives life to the world, is the life of his separate
being.
(_I thought that I would write it clearly and again I am
confused;--evidently I am not ready._)
Life is the desire for the good. (Everything that lives, lives only
because it desires the good; that which does not desire the good,
does not live.)
Man, when awakened to a reasoning consciousness, is conscious of
life in himself, i. e. of the desire for the good. But since this
consciousness is engendered in the separate bodily being of man,
since man learns that life is the desire for the good when he is
already separated from others by his bodily being, therefore, in
the first awakening of man to a reasoning consciousness, it seems
to him that life, i. e. the desire for the good which he recognises
in himself, has for its object his separate bodily being. And man
begins to live consciously for the good of his separate being, begins
to use that reason of his which revealed to him the essence of all
life; the desire for the good, in order to secure the good for his
own separate being.
But the longer a man lives, the more obvious it becomes to him that
his purpose is unattainable. And therefore, while he has not yet made
clear to himself his error, even before he recognises by reason the
impossibility of the good for a separate personality, man knows by
experience and feeling the error of activity which is directed to
the good of his own separate personality and he naturally strives
that his life, his desire for the good, be drawn away from his own
personality and brought over to other things; to comrades, friends,
family, society.
This same reason which he desires to use for the attainment of
the good for his own separate being, shows man that this good is
unattainable, that it becomes destroyed by the struggle between the
separate beings for the desired good, destroyed by the unpreventable,
innumerable disasters and sufferings which threaten man, and above
all, by the unavoidable illnesses, sufferings, old age and death
which occur in the individual life of man. No matter how man might
expand his desire for the good to other beings, he can not but see
that all these separate beings are like him, subject to unavoidable
sufferings and death and therefore, they, just as he, can not have
real life by themselves.
And it is just this error of men who have awakened to the consciousness
of life that the Christian teaching dissipates, in showing to man
that as soon as a consciousness of life has awakened in him, i. e.
the desire for the good, then his being, his “self” is no longer
his separate bodily being, but that same consciousness of life, the
desire for the good not for himself, which was born in his separate
being. The consciousness, therefore, of the desire for the good,
is the desire for the good for everything existent. And the desire
for the good for everything existent, is God.
The Christian teaching teaches just this, that His son, who resembles
God, and who was sent by the Father into the world that the will
of the Father be fulfilled in him, lives in man with an awakened
consciousness (the conversation with Nicodemus.)
The Christian teaching reveals to man with an awakened consciousness,
that the meaning and the aim of his life does not consist, as it
seemed to him before, in the acquiring of the greater good for his
own separate personality or for other such personalities like him,
no matter how many they are, but only in the fulfilment in this
world of the will of the Father who has sent man into the world--it
reveals also to man the will of the Father in regard to the son.
The will of the Father in regard to the son is that there should be
manifested in this world that desire for the good which forms the
essence of his life, so that man living in this world should wish
the good to a greater and greater number of beings and consequently
he should serve them as he serves his own good.
(Confused.)
_May 17, Y. P._
Again I am dissatisfied with what I wrote yesterday and which seemed
to me true and full. Last night and this morning I thought about the
same thing. Here are the new things which have become clear to me:
1) That the desire for the good is not God, but only one of His
manifestations, one of the sides from which we see God. God in me
is manifested by the desire for the good;
2) That this God which is enclosed in man, begins to strive to free
Himself in broadening and enlarging the being in whom He dwells;
then, seeing the impassable limits of this being, He tries to free
Himself by going outside of this being and embracing other beings;
3) That a reasoning being cannot find room for himself in the life
of an individual, and that as soon as he becomes reasoning he tries
to go out of it;
4) That the Christian teaching reveals to man that the essence of
his life is not his separate being, but God, which is enclosed in
his being. This God, therefore, becomes known to man through reason
and love ...
I can not write any farther; weak, sleepy.
5) And above all, that the desire for the good for oneself, love for
oneself, could exist in man only up to the time when reason had not
yet awakened in him. But as soon as reason had wakened in him, then
it became clear to man that the desire for the good for himself--a
separate being--was futile, because the good is not realisable
for a separate and mortal being. Just as soon as reason appeared,
then there became possible only one kind of desire for the good;
the desire for the good for all, because with the desire for the
good for all, there is no struggle but union, and no death but the
transmission of life. God is not love, but in living, unreasoning
beings He is manifested through a love for oneself, and in living,
reasoning beings, through love for everything that exists.
I am now going to write out the 21 points from my notebooks.
1) In order to believe in immortality one has to live an immortal
life here, i. e. to live not towards oneself but towards God, not
for oneself, but for God. Man, in this life, seems to be standing
with one foot on a board and the other on the earth; and as soon
as his reason has awakened, he sees that that board upon which he
was just about to step lies over an abyss and it not only bends and
creaks, but is already falling and man transfers his weight to that
foot which stands on the earth. How not be afraid if one stands on
that which bends and creaks and falls; and how be afraid, and of
what to be afraid, if you stand on that upon which everything falls
and below which it is impossible to fall?
2) Read about Granovsky.[78] In our literature it is customary to
say, that during the reign of Nicholas conditions were such that it
was impossible to express great thoughts. (Granovsky complains of
this and others too.) But the thoughts there were not real. It is all
self-deception. If all those Granovskys, Bielinskys,[79] and others
had anything to say, they would have said it, no matter what the
obstacles. The proof is Herzen.[80] He went away abroad and despite
his enormous talent, what did he say that was new, necessary? All
those Granovskys, Bielinskys, Chernishevskys,[81] Dobroliubovs, who
were raised to great men, ought to be grateful to the government
and the censorship without which they would have been the most
unnoticed of sketch-writers.
Perhaps the Bielinskys, Granovskys, and the other unimportant ones
might have had something real within them, but they stifled it,
imagining they had to serve society with the forms of social life and
not to serve God by professing the truth and by preaching it without
any care about the forms of social life. Let there be contents and
the forms will shape themselves.
People acting thus, i. e. adapting their striving for truth to the
existing forms of society, are like a being to whom wings have been
given to fly, without knowing obstacles, and who used these wings
in order to help itself in walking. Such a being would not attain
its ends--every obstacle would stop it and it would spoil its wings.
And then this being would complain that it had been held back and
would tell with sorrow (like Granovsky) that it would have gone far
if obstacles had not held it back.
The quality of real spiritual activity is such, that it is impossible
to hold it back. If it is held back, then it means only one thing:
it is not real.
3) Man dying little by little (growing old) experiences that which a
sprouting seed ought to experience which has not yet transferred its
consciousness from the seed to the plant. He feels that he grows
less, but he is not conscious of himself there where he increases;
in another life.
I am beginning to experience this.
4) I wrote down: “Reason is a tool for the recognition of truth,
verification, criticism.” I can’t remember very well. It seems to
me, and I am even certain of it, that it is this:
Under reason is understood many different intellectual activities and
very complex ones, and therefore the correctness of the solutions
of reason is often doubted. As an answer to this doubt, I say, that
there is an activity of the reason which is not to be doubted, namely,
the critical activity, the activity of verifying what is told me.
They tell me that God ... etc. I submit this to the verification of
reason and decide without doubt that that which is not reasonable
does not exist for me. It is wrong to say that everything which
exists is reasonable, or that everything which is reasonable exists,
but it is wrong not to say that that which is unreasonable does not
exist for me.
5) It seems to man that his animal life is his real essence and that
the spiritual life is the product of his animal one, just as it
seems to a man rowing in a boat that he is standing still and that
the banks, and the whole earth, are running past him.
6) There is a goodness which wants to make use of the advantages
of goodness and does not want to bear the disadvantages of it. That
is animal goodness.
7) Christian truth, they say, can not be proved; it must be believed.
As if it were easier to become convinced of the truth of the
nonsensical than of the reasonable. Why deprive Christianity of the
power of convincing? Why?
8) Nature, they say, is economical of its own forces; by the least
effort, it attains the greatest results. So is God. To establish the
Kingdom of God on earth, of union, of serving one another--and to
destroy hostility, God does not have to do it himself. He has placed
His reason in man, which frees love in man and everything which He
desires will be done by man. God does His work through us. And there
is no time for God--or there is infinite time. When he has placed
reasoning love in man, he has already done everything.
Why has He done this in this way through man, and not by Himself?
The question is stupid and one which never would have entered one’s
head if we were all not spoilt by absurd superstition....
9) One of the most torturing spiritual sufferings is the not being
understood by people when you feel yourself hopelessly alone in your
thoughts. There is consolation in this, that you know that that
very thing which people do not understand in you, God understands.
10) To carry over one’s “self” from the bodily to the spiritual,
that means to consciously wish only the spiritual. My body can
unconsciously strive for the fleshly, but I consciously desire
nothing of the fleshly, as when I do not desire to fall, but can
not but submit to the law of gravitation.
11) If you have transferred your “self” to your spiritual being, you
will feel the same pain in violating love as you will feel physical
pain when you violate the good of the body. The indicator is just
as direct and true. And I already feel it.
12) Sin is the strengthening of the consciousness of life in one’s
separate being, or the weakening of one’s reasoning consciousness,
which shows the inconsistency of animal life. For the first end, the
activity of reason is directed to the strengthening of the delusion
of a separate life: 1, food; 2, lust; 3, vanity, strengthened by
reason. For the second end, are used the means of weakening reason:
tobacco, opium, wine.
13) Temptation is the assertion that it is permitted to violate love
for the greater good: 1, to oneself; it is necessary to feed, cure,
educate, calm oneself, in order to be in condition to serve men,
and for this it is permitted to violate love; 2, one must secure,
preserve, and educate the family, and for this it is permitted to
violate love; 3, one has to organise, secure, protect the community,
the state, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 4, one has
to contribute to the salvation of the souls of people by violent
suggestion, through education, and for this it is permitted to
violate love.
14) The essay on art has to be begun with a discussion of the
fact, that for the picture here, which it has cost the master 1000
working days, he is given 40 thousand working days: for an opera,
a novel, still more. And then, some say of these works, that they
are beautiful; others, that they are absolutely bad. And there is
no incontestable criterion. There is no such argument about water,
food, and good works. Why is that so?
15) What is the result of a man recognising as his “self” not his
own separate being, but God living in him? In the first place, not
consciously desiring the good for his own separate being, that man
will not, or will less eagerly, take the good away from others; in
the second place, having recognised as his “self” God, who desires
the good for all that exists, man also will desire it.
16) Why do people hold on so passionately to the principle of family,
the producing and bringing up of children? Because to a man who has
not yet transferred his consciousness from his separate being to
that of God, it is the only seemingly satisfactory explanation of
the meaning of life.
17) The meaning of life becomes clear to man when he recognises
as himself, his divine essence which is enclosed in his bodily
envelope. The meaning of this lies in the fact that this being,
striving for its emancipation, for the broadening of the realm of
love, accomplishes through this broadening the work of God, which
consists in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.
18) Violence can neither weaken nor strengthen a spiritual movement.
To act on spiritual activity by force is just like catching the
rays of the sun--no matter how you cover them, they will always be
on top.
19) I have noted down: “Do you imagine your life in the wood which
is being burned down or in the fire which burns?”
It is this way: you get the wood ready, and then you are sorry to
use it; in the same way you get yourself ready and then you are
sorry. But the comparison is not good, because fire comes to an end.
A better comparison would be with food; do you imagine your life in
food or in that which is being fed? Is not that the meaning of the
words of St. John about “my body”, which ought to be food? Man is
food for God if he gives himself to God.
(Unclear; nonsense.)
20) The principal aim of art, if there is art, and if it has an aim,
is to manifest and to express the truth about man’s soul, to express
those mysteries which it is impossible to express simply by speech.
From this springs art. Art is a microscope which the artist fixes
on the mysteries of his soul and shows to people those mysteries
which are common to all.
21) Love, enclosed in man and freed by reason, manifests itself in
two ways: 1, by its expansion, and 2, by the establishment of the
Kingdom of God. It is steam which, in spreading, works.
22) Lately, I have begun to feel such firmness and strength, not my
own, but that of that God’s work which I wish to serve, that the
irritation, the reproaches, the mocking people hostile to the work
of God, is strange to me; they are pitiable, touching.
23) The world, living unconsciously, and man, in the period of his
childhood, performed unconsciously the work of God. Having awakened
to consciousness, he does it consciously. In the collision between
the two methods of serving, man ought to know that the unconscious
passes and will pass into the conscious and not the opposite and
that therefore it is necessary to give oneself over to the future
and not to the past. (Stupid.)
24) The delusion of man who has awakened to consciousness and who
continues to consider his own separate being as himself, is that he
considers a tool as himself. If you feel pain at the disturbing of
the good of your separate being, it is as if you felt on your hand
the blows on the tool with which you work. The tool has to be taken
care of, ground, but not to be considered as oneself.
25) God Himself is economical. He has to penetrate all with love. He
has fired man alone with love and has placed him in the necessity
of firing all the rest.
26) Nothing affects the religious outlook so much as the way we
look upon the world; whether with a beginning and an end, as it was
looked upon in antiquity, or infinite as it is looked upon now. In
a finite world, one can construct a reasonable rôle for separate
mortal man, but in an infinite world the life of such a being has
no meaning.
27) (_For Konevsky_) It happens to Katiusha after her resurrection,
that she has certain periods in which she smiles slyly and lazily
as if she had forgotten all which she considered true before; she
is merely joyous and wants to live.
28) To him who lives a spiritual life entirely, life here becomes
so uninteresting and burdensome that he can part with it easily.
29) Natasha Strakhov[82] asks her father, when he speaks of something
which happened when she was not yet born: “Where was I then?” I would
have answered: “You were asleep and had not yet waked up here.”
Conception, birth, childhood are only a preparation to an awakening,
which we see, but not the sleeping ones.
30) The error in which we find ourselves when we consider our separate
beings as ourselves is the same as when a traveller counts only one
stage as the whole road, or a man, one day as his whole life.
31) Read about ... and was horrified at the conscious deception of
men ...
32) “An eraser.” I have forgotten. I shall recall it.
Have written up to dinner. It is now 2 o’clock and I am going to
dine.
_May 28, Ysn. Pol. 12 o’c. noon._
It is already several days that I am struggling with my work[83]
and am making no progress. I sleep. I wanted to scribble it somehow
to the very end, but I can’t possibly do it. Am in a wretched mood,
aggravated by the emptiness, by the poor, self-satisfied, cold
emptiness of my surrounding life.
In the meantime I have been to Pirogovo.[84] I have a most joyous
impression; my brother Sergei[85] has undoubtedly had a spiritual
transformation. He himself has formulated the essence of my faith (and
he evidently recognises it as true for himself); to raise in oneself
the spiritual essence and to subject to it the animal element. He has
a miraculous ikon and he was tortured by his undefined attitude to
it. The little girls[86] are very good and live seriously. Masha has
been infected by them. Later there were at our house: Salamon,[87]
Tanyee.[88]...
A terrible event in Moscow--the death of three thousand[89]--I
somehow can not express myself as I ought to. I am indisposed all the
time, getting weaker. In Pirogovo, there was the harnessmaker, an
intelligent man. Yesterday a working-man came from Tula, intelligent.
I think a revolutionist. To-day a seminary student, a touching case.
I am advancing very, very badly in my work. Rather boring letters
because they demand polite answers. I have written to Bondarev,[90]
Posha, and to some one else. O yes; Officer N. was here too. I think
I was useful to him. Splendid notes by Shkarvan.[91]
Yesterday there was a letter from poor N.[92], whom they have driven
off to the Persian frontier, hoping to kill him. God help him. And
don’t forget me. Give me life, life, i. e. a conscious, joyful
serving of Thee.
In the meantime, I thought,
1) It is remarkable how many people see some insoluble problem in
evil. I have never seen any problem in it. For me it is now altogether
clear that that which we call evil is that good, the action of which
we don’t yet see.
2) The poetry of Mallarmé,[93] and others. We who don’t understand
it, say boldly that it is humbug, that it is poetry striking an
_impasse_. Why is it that when we hear music which we don’t understand
and which is just as nonsensical, we don’t say that boldly, but say
timidly: yes, perhaps one ought to understand it or prepare oneself
for it, etc. That is silly. Every work of art is only a work of art
when it is understandable, I do not say for all, but for people
standing on a certain level of education, on the same level as the
man who reads poetry and who judges it.
This reasoning leads me to an absolutely certain conclusion that music
before any other art (decadence in poetry and symbolism and other
things in painting) has lost its way and struck an _impasse_. And he
who has turned it from the road was that musical genius Beethoven.
The principal factors are the authorities and people deprived of
æsthetic feeling who judge art.
Goethe? Shakespeare?[94] Everything that goes under their names
is supposed to be good and on _se bât les flancs_ in order to
find something beautiful in the stupid and the unsuccessful, and
taste is entirely perverted. And all these great talents--Goethe,
Shakespeare, Beethoven, Michael-Angelo--side by side with exquisite
things, produced not only mediocre ones, but disgusting ones. The
mediocre artists produce a mediocrity as regards value and never
anything very bad. But recognised geniuses create either really
great works or absolute stuff and nonsense; Shakespeare, Goethe,
Beethoven, Bach, and others.
3) To place before myself the most complex and confused thing which
demands my participation. On all sides it seems there exist insoluble
dilemmas; it is bad one way and worse the other. And it is only
necessary to carry over the problem from the outer realm into the
inner, into one’s own life, to understand that this is only an arena
for my inner perfection, that it is a test, a measure of my moral
development, an experiment as to how much I can and want to do the
work of God, the enlargement of love, and everything resolves itself
so easily, simply, joyously.
4) A mistake (sin) is the use of reason, given me to recognise my
essence in the love for everything which exists, in acquiring the
good for my separate being. As long as man lived without a reasoning
consciousness, he fulfilled the will of God in acquiring the good
for himself and in struggling for it and there was no sin; but as
soon as reason had awakened, then there was sin.
5) The harness-maker, Mikhailo, says to me that he does not believe
in a future life, that he thinks that when a man dies, his spirit
will leave him and will go away. But I say to him: “Well, go off
then with this spirit; then you won’t die.”
_May 29, Ysn. Pol. If I live._
It seems to me, _June 6, Ysn. Pol._
The principal thing is that during this time I have advanced in my
work,[95] and am advancing. I write on sins and the whole work is
clear to the end.
Finished Spier--splendid.
The economic movement of humanity by three means: the destruction
of ownership of land according to Henry George[96]; the inheritance
which would give over accumulated wealth to society, if not in the
first generation, then in the second; and a similar tax on wealth
on an excess of over 1000 rubles income for a family or 200 for
each man.
To-day the Chertkovs arrived. Galia[97] is very good.
The day before yesterday a gendarme came, a spy, who confessed that
he was sent after me. It was both pleasant and nasty.[98]
During this time have thought principally the following:
1) When a man lives an animal life, he does not know that God lives
through him. When reason awakens in him, then he knows it. And
knowing it, he becomes united with God.
2) Man in his animal life has to be guided by instinct; reason
directed to that which is not subject to it, will spoil everything.
3) Is not luxury a preparing for something better, when there is
already a sufficiency?
Yesterday was not the 6th, but the 8th. To-day, _June 9, Y. P._
I have written little and not very well. It seems to me that it
is getting clearer. In the morning I had a conversation with the
workingmen who came for books. I remembered the woman who asked to
write to John of Kronstad.[99]
The religion of the people is this: there is a God and there are
gods and saints. (Christ came on earth, as a peasant told me to-day,
to teach people how and to whom to pray.) The gods and the saints
perform miracles, have power over the flesh and perform heroic deeds
and good works, and the people have only to pray, to know how and
to whom to pray. But people can not perform good works, they can
only pray. Here is their whole faith.
I bathed and don’t feel well.
_June 19, Y. P._
Have been feeling weak all this time and sleep badly. Posha came
yesterday. He spoke about the Khodinka accident well, but wrote
it badly. Our very idle, luxurious life oppresses me. N. came. A
stranger. He is young and he does not understand in the same way as
I do, that which he understands, although he agrees with everything.
Finished the first draft[100] on the 13th of June. Now I am revising
it, but am working very little.
... Struggled with myself twice and successfully. Oh, if it were
always so!
Once I passed beyond Zakaz[101] at night and wept for joy, being
grateful for life. The pictures of life in Samara stand out very
clearly before me; the steppes, the fight of the nomadic, patriarchic
principle with the agricultural civilised one.[102] It draws me
very much. _Konefsky_ was not born in me; that is why it moves so
awkwardly.
Have been thinking:
1) Something very important about art: what is beauty? Beauty is
that which we love. “He is not dear because he is good, but good
because he is dear.” Here is the problem; why dear? Why do we love?
And to say that we love, because a thing is beautiful, is just the
same as saying that we breathe because the air is pleasant. We find
the air pleasant, because we have to breathe; and in the same way we
discover beauty, because we have to love. And he who hasn’t the power
to see spiritual beauty, sees at least a bodily one and loves it.
_June 26, Y. P. Morning._
All night I did not sleep. My heart aches without stopping. I continue
to suffer and can not subject myself to God.... I have not mastered
pride and rebellion and the pain in my heart does not stop. One thing
consoles me; I am not alone but with God, and therefore no matter
how painful it is, yet I feel that something is taking place within
me. Help me, Father.
Yesterday I walked to Baburino[103] and unwillingly (I rather would
have avoided than sought it), I met the 80-year-old Akime ploughing,
the woman Yaremichov who hasn’t a coat to her household and only
one jacket, then Maria whose husband was frozen and who has no
one to gather her rye and who is starving her child, and Trophime
and Khaliavka, and the husband and wife were dying as well as the
children. And we study Beethoven. And I pray that He release me
from this life. And again I pray and cry from pain. I am entrapped,
sinking, I cannot alone, only I hate myself and my life.
_June 30, Ysn. Pol._
Continued to suffer and struggle much, and have conquered neither
one nor the other. But it is better. Mme. Annenkov[104] was here and
put it very well ...[105] They have spoiled for me even my diary
which I write with the point of view of the possibility of its being
read by the living[106] ...
Just now upstairs they began to speak about the New Testament and
N. _en ricanant_ proved that Christ advised castration. I became
angry,--shameful.
Two days ago I went to those who had been burned out; had not dined,
was tired and felt well.... Yesterday I visited the lawyer who wanted
to snatch a hundred rubles from a beggar-woman to decorate his own
house with. It is the same everywhere.
During this time I have been in Pirogovo. My brother Serezha has
entirely come over to us. The journey with Tania and Chertkov was
joyous. To-day in Demenka[107] I gave the last words for his journey
to a dying peasant.
I am advancing much on the work.[108] I will try to write out now
what I have jotted down in the book.
_To-day, July 19._[109]
I am in Pirogovo. I arrived the day before yesterday with Tania and
Chertkov. In Serezha[110] there has certainly taken place a spiritual
change; he admits it himself saying that he was born several months
ago. I am very happy with him.
At home, during this time, I lived through much difficulty. Lord,
Father, release me from my base body. Cleanse me and do not let your
spirit perish in me and become overgrown. I prayed twice beseechingly;
once that He let me be His tool; and second that He save me from my
animal “self.”
During this time I progressed on the Declaration of Faith. It is far
from what has to be said and from what I want to say. It is entirely
inaccessible to the plain man and the child, but, nevertheless I
have said all that I know coherently and logically.
In this time also I wrote the preface to the reading of the
Gospels[111] and annotated the Gospels. Had visitors. Englishmen,
Americans--no one of importance.
I will write out all that I jotted down:
1) Yesterday I walked through a twice ploughed, black-earth fallow
field. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black
earth--not one green blade of grass, and there on the edge of the
dusty grey road there grew a bush of burdock. There were three
off-shoots. One was broken and its white soiled flower hung; the
other also broken, was bespattered with black dirt, its stem bent
and soiled; the third shoot stuck out to the side, also black from
dust, but still alive and red in the centre. It reminded me of
Hadji-Murad.[112] It makes me want to write. It asserts life to the
end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other
has asserted it.
2) He has a capacity for languages, for mathematics, is quick to
comprehend and to answer, can sing, draw correctly, beautifully, and
can write in the same way; but he has no moral or artistic feeling
and therefore nothing of his own.
3) Love towards enemies. It is difficult, seldom does it succeed--as
with everything absolutely beautiful. But then what happiness when
you attain it! There is an exquisite sweetness in this love, even
in the foretaste of it. And this sweetness is just in the inverse
ratio to the attractiveness of the object of love. Yes, the spiritual
voluptuousness of love towards enemies.
4) Some one makes me suffer. As soon as I think about myself, about my
own suffering, the suffering continues to grow and grow and terror
overcomes me at the thought to where it might lead. It suffices to
think of the man on account of whom you are suffering, to think about
his suffering--and instantly you are healed. Sometimes it is easy
when you already love your torturer; but even when it is difficult,
it is always possible.
5) Yesterday in walking I thought what are those boundaries which
separate us, one being from another? And it occurred to me. Are not
space and time the conditions of these divisions, or rather, the
consequences of these divisions? If I were not a separated part,
there would be neither space nor time for me, as there is not for
God. But since I am not the whole, I can understand myself and other
beings through space and time only.
(I feel that there is something in this, but I can not yet express
it clearly.)
6) There was an argument about whether being in love was good. For me
the conclusion was clear; if a man already lives a human, spiritual
life, then being in love--love, marriage--would be a downfall for
him, he would have to give a part of his strength to his wife, to
his family, or even at least to the object of his love. But if he
is on the animal plane, if he eats, drinks, labours, holds a post,
writes, plays--then to be in love would be an uplift for him as for
animals, for insects, in the time of ...[113]
7) To pray? They say that prayer is necessary, that it is necessary
to have the sweet feeling of prayer which is called forth by
service, singing, reading, exclamations, ikons. But what is prayer?
A communion with God, a recognition of one’s relation to God, the
highest state of the soul. Is it possible that this state of the
soul can be attained by an action upon the outer senses.... Is it
not more probable that the prayerful state might be reached only
in rare exceptional moments and necessarily in isolation, as even
Christ said and as Elijah saw God, not in a storm but in a tender
breeze?
8) Yesterday I looked through the romances, novels, and poems of
Fet.[114] I recalled our incessant music on 4 grand-pianos in Yasnaya
Polyana and it became clear to me that all this--the romances, the
poems, the music--was not art, something important and necessary to
people in general, but a self-indulgence of robbers, parasites, who
have nothing in common with life; romances, novels about how one falls
in love disgustingly, poetry about this or about how one languishes
from boredom. And music about the same theme. But life, all life,
seethes with its own problems of food, distribution, labour, about
faith, about the relations of men ... It is shameful, nasty. Help
me, Father, to serve Thee by showing up this lie.
9) I was going from the Chertkovs on the 5th of July. It was
evening, and beauty, happiness, blessedness, lay on everything. But
in the world of men? There was greed, malice, envy, cruelty, lust,
debauchery. When will it be among men as it is in Nature? Here there
is a struggle, but it is honest, simple, beautiful. But there it is
base. I know it and I hate it, because I myself am a man.
(I have not succeeded.)
10) When I suffered in my soul, I tried to calm myself with the
consciousness of serving. And that used to calm me, but only then
when there happened to be an obvious instance of serving, i. e. when
it was unquestionably required and I was drawn to it. But what is to
be done when it happens neither one way nor the other? Give myself
to God, negate myself. Do as Thou wilt, I consent.
(Again, not what I want to say.)
I am going to dinner.
11) Kant,[115] they tell us, made a revolution in the thought of
men. He was the first to show that a thing in itself is inaccessible
to knowledge, that the source of knowledge and life is spiritual.
But is not that the same which Christ said two thousand years ago,
only in a way understandable to men? Bow in spirit and in truth;
the spirit is life creating, the letter, the flesh, is beneficial
in no way.
12) Balls, feasts, spectacles, parades, pleasure-gardens, etc., are
a dreadful tool in the hands of the organisers. They can have a
terrible influence. And if anything has to be subjected to control,
it is this.
13) I walked along the road and thought, looking at the forests,
the earth, the grass, what a funny mistake it is to think that the
world is such as it appears to me. To think that the world is such
as it appears to me, means to think that there can be no other being
capable of knowledge except myself with my six senses.[116] I stopped
and was writing that down. Sergei Ivanovich[117] approached me. I
told him what I was thinking. He said:
“Yes, one thing is true, that the world is not such as we see it
and we don’t know anything as it is.”
I said:
“Yes, we know something exactly as it is.”
“What is it?”
“That which knows. It is exactly such as we know it.”
14) One is often surprised that people are ungrateful. One ought
to be surprised at how they could be grateful for good done them.
However little good people do, they know with certainty that the
doing of good is the greatest happiness. How then can people be
grateful to others that these others have drunk themselves full,
when that is the greatest enjoyment?
15) Only he is free whom nothing and nobody can hinder from doing
what he wants. There is only one such work to do--to love.
16) Prayer is directed to a personal God, not because God is personal
(I even know as a matter of fact that He is not personal, because the
personal is finite and God is infinite), but because I am a personal
being. I have a little green glass in my eye and I see everything
green. I can not help but see the world green, although I know that
it is not like that.
17) The æsthetic pleasure is a pleasure of a lower order. And
therefore the highest æsthetic pleasure leaves one unsatisfied. In
fact, the higher the æsthetic pleasure, the more unsatisfied it
leaves one. It always makes one want something more and more. And
so without end. Only moral good gives full satisfaction. Here there
is full satisfaction. Nothing further is wished for or needed.
18) A lie to others is by far neither as important nor as harmful
as a lie to oneself. A lie to others is often an innocent play, a
satisfying of vanity. A lie to oneself is always a perversion of
the truth, a turning aside from the demands of life.
19) Although seldom, yet it has happened to me that I have done good
from pity, a real good. In that case you never remember what you
really have done and under what circumstances. You remember only that
you were with God (this occurred to me in regard to my favourite
boots which I remember I gave away out of pity and for a long time
I could not remember where they had gone). It is the same way with
all those moments when I was with God, whether in prayer or in the
business of life. Memory is a fleshly affair, but here, the thing
is spiritual.
20) Man can not live a fleshly life, if he does not consider himself
in the right and he can not live a spiritual life if he does not
consider himself sinful.
21) ...
I am going to sleep. It is 12:30 in the morning, July 30th.
_July 31, Y. P. If I live._
_July 31, Y. P._
I am alive. It is evening now. It is past four. I am lying down and
can not fall asleep. My heart aches. I am tired out. I hear through
the window--they play tennis and are laughing. S. went away to the
Shenshins.[118] Every one is well, but I am sad and can not master
myself. It is like the feeling I had when St. Thomas[119] locked
me in and I heard through my prison how every one was gay and was
laughing. But I don’t want to. One must suffer humiliation and be
good. I can do it.
I continue to copy:
1) The disbelief in reason is the source of all evil. This disbelief
is reached by the teaching of a distorted faith from childhood.
Believe in one miracle and the trust in reason is destroyed.
2) ...
3) Christianity does not give happiness but safety; it lets you down
to the bottom from which there is no place to fall.
4) I rode horseback from Tula and thought about this; that I am a
part of Him, separated in a certain way from other such parts, and
He is everything, the Father, and I felt love, just love, for Him.
Now, especially now, I not only can not reproduce this feeling,
but not even recall it. But I was so joyful that I said to myself:
Here I was thinking that I can not learn anything new and suddenly
I acquired a wonderful blessed new feeling, a real feeling.
5) What humbug[120]--beauty, truth, goodness! Beauty is one of those
attributes of outer objects, like health, an attribute of the living
body. Truth is not the ideal of science. The ideal of science is
knowledge, not truth. The good can not be placed on the plane with
either of these, because it is the goal of life.
(It is unclear, but it was clear and will be.)
6) I do not remember good works, because they are outside of the
material man--of memory.
_August 1, Ysn. Pol. If I live._--which is doubtful. My heart aches
very much....
It is dreadful to think how much time has elapsed; a month and a
half. _To-day, Sept. 14, Y. P._
During this time I took a trip to the monastery with Sonya.[121]...
I wrote on _Hadji-Murad_[122] very poorly, a first draft. I have
continued my work on the Declaration of Faith. The Chertkovs have
gone away.... All three sons are here now with their wives.[123]
There was a letter from the Hollander who has refused to serve.[124]
I wrote a preface to the letter.[125] I wrote a letter also to
Mme. Kalmikov[126] with very sharp statements about the Government.
The whole month and a half has been condensed in this. Oh, yes; I
have also been ill from my usual sickness and my stomach is still
not strong.
One thing more. During this time there was a letter from the Hindu
Tod and an exquisite book of Hindu wisdom, _Ioga’s Philosophy_.[127]
In the meantime I thought:
1) There are many people, especially Europeans and especially women,
who not only talk but who write things that appear intelligent, in
the same way as dumb people speak; as a matter of fact, it isn’t
any more natural for them to think than for a dumb person to speak,
but both one and the other, both the stupid and the dumb, have been
taught.
2) To love an individual man, one has to be blinded. Without being
blinded one can love only God, but people can be pitied, which means
to love in a Godly way.
3) To get rid of an enemy, one must love him, as it is also said in
the “Teaching of the twelve apostles.”[128] But to love one has to
put to oneself the task for all one’s life of love towards an enemy,
to do him good through love and to perfect oneself in love for him.
4) At first, one is surprised that stupid people should have within
them such an assertive convincing intonation. But it is as it should
be. Otherwise no one would listen to them.
5) I find this note: “A decoration for peasants, our happiness”--I
can not remember what that means, but it is something that pleased
me. I think it means that to a poor man looking on the life of
the rich, it appears as happiness. But this happiness is as much
happiness, as cardboard made into a tree or a castle--is a tree or
a castle.
6) We are all attracted to the Whole and one to another, like
particles of one body. Only our _roughness_, the lack of smoothness,
our angles, interfere with our uniting. There is already an
attraction, there is no need of making it, but one must plane oneself,
wipe out one’s angles.
7) One of the strongest means of hypnotism, of exterior action on the
spiritual state of man, is his dress. People know that very well;
that is why there is a monastic garb in monasteries and a uniform
in the army.
8) I was trying to recall two excellent subjects for novels, the
suicide of old Persianninov and the substitution of a child in an
orphan asylum.
9) When my weakness tortured me, I sought means of salvation, and
I found one in the thought that there is nothing stationary, that
everything flows, changes, that all this is for a _while_, and that
it is only necessary to suffer the _while_ while we live--I and the
others. And some one of us will go away first. (The _while_ does
not mean to live in any way, but means, not to despair, to suffer
it through to the end.)
10) I wanted to say that I was grateful, so as to make the other
one well disposed, and later to tell the truth. No, I thought, that
is not permitted. He will ascribe it to his virtues and the truth
will be accepted even less. Man, not acknowledging his sins, is a
vessel hermetically closed with a cover which lets nothing enter.
To humble oneself, to repent, that means to take off the cover and
to make oneself capable of perfection, of the good.
11) Barbarism interferes with the union of people, but the same
thing is done by a too great refinement without a religious basis.
In the other, the physical disunites, and in this, the spiritual.
12) Man is a tool of God. At first I thought that it was a tool with
which man himself was called to work; now I have understood that
it is not man who works, but God. The business of man is only to
keep himself in order. Like an axe, which would have to keep itself
always clean and sharp.
13) Why is it that scoundrels stand for despotism? Because under
an ideal order which pays according to merit, they are badly off.
Under despotism everything can happen.
14) I often meet people who recognise no God except one which we
ourselves recognise in ourselves. And I am astonished; God in me.
But God is an infinite principle; how then, why then, should He
happen to be in me? It is impossible not to question oneself about
this. And as soon as you question yourself, you have to acknowledge
an exterior cause. Why do people not feel themselves in need of
answering this question? Because for them, the answer to this
question is in the reality of the existing world, whether according
to Moses or to Darwin--it is all the same. And therefore, to have
a conception of an exterior God, one has to understand that that
which is actually real, is only the impression of our senses, i. e.
it is we ourselves, our spiritual “self.”
15) In moments of passion, infatuation, in order to conquer, one
thing is necessary, to destroy the illusion that it is the “self”
who suffers, who desires, and to separate one’s true “self” from
the troubled waters of passion.
_Sept. 15. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day October 10. Y. P._
It is almost a month that I have made no entries and it seemed to me
it was only yesterday. During this time, though in very poor form,
I finished the Declaration of Faith. During this time there were
some Japanese with a letter from Konissi.[129] They, the Japanese,
are undoubtedly nearer Christianity than our church Christians. I
have learned to love them very much....
I want to write out the whole Declaration of Faith from the beginning
again. Yesterday there was a good letter from Verigin, Peter.[130]
All last night I thought about the meaning of life and though there
are other things to note down, I want to note down this:
The whole world is nothing else than an infinite space filled with
infinitely small, colourless, silently moving particles of matter.
At bottom, even this is not so; I know that they are particles of
matter only through their impenetrability, but the impenetrability
I know only through my sense of touch and my muscle sense. If I did
not have this sense, I would not know about impenetrability or about
matter. As to motion, also, I, strictly speaking, have no right to
speak, because if I did not have the sense of sight or again muscle
sense, I would not know anything about motion either.
So that all that I have the right to assert about the outer world
is that something exists, something entirely unknown to me, as it
was said long ago both by the Brahmins and by Kant and by Berkeley.
There is some kind of occasion, some kind of grain of sand which
causes irritation in the shell of the snail and produces a pearl
(_sécrétion_, secretion in the snail). This is our whole outside
world.
What is there then? There is myself with my representations of
myself, of the sun, trees, animals, stones. But what then is it that
I call myself? Is it something arbitrary depending on myself? No,
it is something independent of myself, predetermined. I can not not
be myself, and not have that representation which I have, namely,
that I include in myself a small part of these moving atoms and call
them myself. And all the other remaining atoms I see in the form of
beings more or less like myself. The world appears to me to consist
entirely of beings which are like me or resemble me.[131]
(I have become confused, yet have something to say. I am going to
try when I have the strength.)
I am continuing to write out what I had to say and what I dreamt of
all night, namely:
People think that their life is in the body, that from that which
takes place in the body; from breathing, nutrition, circulation of
the blood, etc., life flows. And this seems unquestionable; let
nutrition, breathing, circulation of the blood cease and life will
end. But what ends is the life of the body, life in this body....
And in fact if you consider that life comes from the process of
the body and only in the body then as soon as the processes of the
body are ended, then life ought to be ended. But certainly this
is an arbitrary assertion. No one has proven and can prove that
life is only in the body and can not be without the body. To assert
this, is all the same as asserting that when the sun has set then
the sun has come to an end. One must first decide what is life. Is
it that which I see in the others as it begins and stops, or is it
what I know in myself? If it is what I know in myself, then it is
the only thing that is and therefore it can not be destroyed. And
the fact that in bodies before me processes end which are connected
with life in me and in other beings, shows me only this, that life
goes away somewhere from my sensual eyes. To go away entirely, to
be destroyed, it absolutely can not be, because outside of it there
is nothing in the world. The problem, then, might be this: Will my
life be destroyed, can it be destroyed? And the destruction of the
body of a man, is that a sign of the destruction of his life? In
order to answer this question one must first decide what is life?
Life is the consciousness of my separateness from other beings, of
the existence of other beings and of those limits which separate
me from them. My life is not bound up with my body. There may be a
body, but no consciousness of separateness like for a sleeping one,
an idiot, an embryo or for those who have fits.
It is true that there can be no life without the consciousness of
the body; but that is because life is the consciousness of one’s
own separateness and of one’s own boundaries. But the consciousness
of one’s own separateness and of one’s own boundaries happens in
our life in time and space, but it can happen in any other way
and therefore the destruction of the body is not the sign of the
destruction of life.
(Not clear and not what I want to say.)
_Oct. 11. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day October 20. Y. P. Morning._
I feel like writing down three things.
1) In a work of art the principal thing is the soul of the author.
Therefore among medium productions the feminine ones are the better,
the more interesting. A woman will push herself through now and
then, speak out the most inner mysteries of her soul; and that is
what is needed. You see what she really loves, although she pretends
that she loves something else. When an author writes, we the readers
place our ears to his breast and we listen and say, “Breathe. If you
have rumblings, they will appear.” And women haven’t the capacity
of hiding. Men have learned literary methods and you can no longer
see him behind his manner, except that you know he is stupid. But
what is in his soul, you don’t see.
(Not good; malicious.)
The 2nd thing I wanted to write was that yesterday, in blowing out
my candle, I began to feel for matches and did not find them, and an
uneasiness came over me. “And you are getting ready to die! What,
then, are you also going to die with matches?” I said to myself.
And I at once saw in the dark my real life and became calm.
What is this fear of the dark? Besides the fear at the incapability
of meeting whatever accident might happen, it is the fear at the
absence of the delusion of our most important sense, that of sight.
It is fear before the contemplation of our true life. I now no
longer have that fear--on the contrary, that which had been fear is
now peace; there only has remained the habit of fear; but to the
majority of people the fear is exactly of that which alone can give
them peace.
The 3rd thing I wanted to write was that when a man is put in the
necessity of choosing between an act which is clearly beneficial to
others, but with the thwarting of the demands of conscience (the
will of God), then the problem is only one of short-sightedness,
because the man sees in the immediate future the good which will
arise from his act, if he thwarts the will of God, but he does not
see in the more remote future the other good, which is an infinite
number of times greater, which will come from the abstention of
this act and the fulfilment of the will of God. It is the same kind
of thing that children do, destroying the general order of a house
which is necessary for their own happiness, for the sake of the
immediate pleasure of play.
The fact is that for the work of God and for man accomplishing the
work of God, time does not exist. Man can not but represent to himself
everything in time, and therefore in order to correctly judge of the
importance of the work of God, he has to represent it to himself in
the very remote future, even in infinite time. The fact, that I will
not kill the murderer and will forgive him, that I shall die unseen
by any one, fulfilling the will of God, will bear its own fruit ...
if I insist upon thinking in terms of time--in infinite time. But
it will bear its fruit surely.
I have to finish the former:
4) Refinement and power in art are almost always diametrically
opposed.
5) Is it true that works of art are obtained by assiduous work? That
which we call a work of art--yes. But is it real art?
6) The Japanese sang and we could not restrain ourselves from
laughter. If we had sung before the Japanese they would have laughed.
The more so had Beethoven been played for them. Indian and Greek
temples are understood by all. And Greek statues are understood
by all. And our best painting is also understandable. So that
architecture, sculpture, painting, having reached their perfection,
have reached also cosmopolitanism, accessibility to all. To the same
point in some of its manifestations has the art of speech reached;
in the teaching of Buddha, of Christ, in the poetry of Sakia-Muni,
Jacob, Joseph. In dramatic art; Sophocles, Aristophanes did not
reach it. It is being reached in the new ones. But in music they
have been lagging behind entirely. The ideal of all art to which
it should strive is accessibility to all--but it, especially music
to-day, noses its way into refinement.
7) The principal thing which I wanted to say about art, is that it
does not exist in the sense of some great manifestation of the human
spirit as it is understood now. There is play, consisting in the
beauty of construction, in sculpting figures, or in representing
objects, in dancing, in singing, in playing on various instruments,
in poetry, in fables, in stories, but all this is only play and
not an important matter to which one could consciously devote his
strength.
And so it was always understood and is understood by the working,
unspoiled people and every man who has not gone away from labour,
from life, can not look upon it in any other way. It is necessary,
one _must_, say it out loud--how much evil has come from this
importance attributed by the parasites of society to their plays!
8) The whole outer world is formed by us, by our senses. We know
nothing and can know nothing about it. All that we can know, in
studying the outer world is the relation of our senses (_sens_) among
themselves and the laws of these relations. There is no question
but that this is very interesting, and from the study of these
relations are opened many new situations which we can make use of
and which increase the comforts of our life, but this is not only
not everything, not all of science as people busying themselves with
this study are now asserting, but it is only one minute particle of
science.
Science is the study of the relation of our spiritual “self”--that
which masters the outer senses and uses them--to our outer senses or
to the outer world, which is the same thing. This relation has to be
studied, because in this relation is accomplished the movement of
humanity as a whole to perfection and the good, and the movement of
each individual man to the same goal. This relation is the object
of every science; but to-day the study of this relation is called
Ethics by our present-day scholars, and is considered as a science by
itself, and a very unimportant one from out the great mass of other
sciences. It is all topsy-turvy; the whole of science is considered
as a small part and a small part is considered as the whole. From
this comes the brutalisation of men.
This arises out of the astonishing ignorance of most of the so-called
learned. They are naïvely convinced that the outer world is an actual
reality, just in the same way as the peasants are convinced that
the sun and the stars move around the earth. Just as the peasants
know nothing of the work of Galileo, Copernicus and Newton, or if
they have heard of it--do not believe--so the materialist scholars
have never heard, do not know or do not believe what has been done
as to criticism of knowledge by Descartes, Kant, Berkeley and even
before, by the Hindus and by all religious doctrines.
9) When you suffer, you must enter into yourself--not seek matches,
but put out that light which is there, and which interferes with the
seeing of your true “self.” You must turn upside down the toy which
stood on the cork and place it on the lead and then everything will
become clear and the greatest part of your suffering will cease--all
that part which is not physical.
10) When you suffer from passion, here are some palliative
prescriptions:
(a) Remember how many times you have suffered before because in your
consciousness you have connected yourself to your passion; lust,
greed, desire, vanity, and remember how everything passed away and
you have still not found that “self” which suffered then. And so it
is now. It is not you who are suffering, but that passion which you
wrongly joined to yourself.
(b) Again, when you suffer, remember that the suffering is not
something disagreeable which you can wish to get rid of, but it is
the very work of life, that very task which you have been designated
to do. In wanting to get rid of it, you are doing that which a man
would do who lifts the plough there where the earth is hard, just
where, in fact, it has to be ploughed up.
(c) Then remember, at the moment when you suffer, that if there is
anger in the feelings you have, the suffering is in you. Replace
the anger with love, and the suffering will end.
(d) Also this is possible; love towards enemies, which is indeed the
one real love. You must struggle for it, struggle with toil, with
the consciousness that in it is life. But when you have attained
it, what relief!
(e) The principal thing is to turn the toy upside down, find your
true “self” which is only visible without matches, and then anger
will vanish by itself. That “self” is incapable of, cannot, and has
no one to be angry with--loving, it can only pity.
During these latter days I didn’t feel like writing. I merely wrote
letters to every one and sent to Schmidt an addition to the letter
about the incompatibility ... with Christianity.[132] I have begun
the Declaration of Faith anew. I am going to continue.
Went to Pirogovo with Masha. Serezha[133] is very good....
_October 21. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day probably October 23. Y. P._
All these days I have been out of tune with my work. Wrote a letter
yesterday to the commander of the disciplinary battalion in Irkutsk
about Olkhovik.[134]
It is evening now, I am sitting down to write because I feel the
special importance and seriousness of the hours of life which are
left to me. And I do not know what I have to do, but I feel that
there has ripened in me an expression of God’s will which asks to
be let out.
Have re-read _Hadji Murad_--it isn’t what I want to say. As to
_Resurrection_ I can’t even get hold of it. The drama interests me.
A splendid article by Carpenter on science.[135] All of us walk near
the truth and uncover it from various sides.
_October 26. Y. P._
I am still just as indisposed and don’t feel like writing. My head
aches. Serezha came yesterday.[136] Wrote a letter to Sonya and to
Andrusha.
But it seems to me that during this time of doubt, I arrived at two
very important conclusions:
1) That, which I also thought before and wrote down; that _art_
is an invention, is a temptation for amusement with dolls, with
pictures, with songs, with _play_, with stories--and nothing more.
But to place art as they do (and they do the same with science), on
the same level with the good is a horrible _sacrilège_. The proof
that it is not so, is that about truth also (the right) I can say
that truth is a good (as God said, great good, _teib_, i.e., good),
and about beauty one can say that it is good; but it is impossible
to say about good that it is beautiful (at times it is homely), or
that it is true (it is always true).
There is only one good; good and bad; but truth and beauty are good
qualities of certain objects.
The other very important thing, is that reason is the only means
of manifesting, and freeing love. It seems to me that this is an
important thought, omitted in my Declaration of Faith.
_To-day November 1. Y. P._
All this time I have felt neither well nor like working. I have
written letters only, among the number was one to the Caucasian
disciplinary battalion.[137] Yesterday, walking at night on the
snow, in the blizzard, I tired my heart and it aches. I think I am
going to die very soon. That is why I am writing out the notes. I
think I am going to die without fear and without resistance.
Just now I sat alone and thought how strange it was that people live
alone. People; I thought of Stasov;[138] how is he living now, what
is he thinking, feeling. Of Kolichka,[139] too. And so strange and
new became the knowledge that they, all of them, people--are living,
and I do not live in them; that they are closed to me.
_November 2. Y. P. If I live._
_November 2nd. Y. P._
Am alive. Am a little better. Have written on the Declaration of
Faith. I think it is true that it is cold because it endeavours to
be infallible.[140] A blizzard. Sent off the letters to Schmidt and
Chertkov. Did not send the letter to Mme. Kalmikov.
To-day I thought about art. It is play. And when it is the play
of working, normal people it is good, but when it is the play of
corrupted parasites, then it is bad--and here now it has reached
to decadence.
_November 3. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day November 5. Y. P. Morning._
Yesterday was a terrible day.
... At night I hardly slept and was depressed. I just now found the
_prescriptions_[141] in my diary, looked them over and began to feel
better; to separate one’s true “self” from that which is offended
and vexed, to remember that this is no hindrance, no accidental
unpleasantness, but the very work predestined me, and above all to
know that if I have a dislike for any one, then as long as there is
that dislike in me--then I am the guilty one. And as soon as you
know you are guilty, you feel better.
To-day, lying on the bed, I thought about love towards God ... I wish
I could say, the love of God, i.e., divine love--that the first and
principal commandment is divine love, but that the other resembling
it and flowing from it, especially flowing from it, is the love for
neighbour.
Yesterday I wrote 18 pages of introduction to Art.[142]
It is wrong to say of a work of art, “You don’t yet understand it.”
If I don’t understand it, that means that the work of art is poor,
because its task is in making understandable that which is not
understandable.
_November 6. Y. P. If I live._
_November 6. Y. P._
Am alive. It is the third day that I continue to write on art. It
seems to me it is good. At least I am writing willingly and easily.
... Have received a good letter from Vanderveer. Wrote another letter
to the commander of the battalion in the Caucasus. Chertkov sent me
his copy of a similar letter.
To-day I rode horseback to Tula. A marvellous day and night. I am
just now going to take a walk to meet the girls.
Have been thinking.
1) Natural sciences, when they wish to determine the very essence
of things, fall into a crude materialism, i.e., ignorance. Such,
besides Descartes’ whirlwinds, are atoms and ether and the origin
of species. All that I can say, is that it appears to me so, just
as the heavenly vault appears round to me, while I know that it is
not round and that it appears to me so, only because my sight for
all directions extends on only one radius.
2) The highest perfection of art is its cosmopolitanism. But on
the contrary, with us at present it is becoming more and more
specialised, if not according to nations, then according to classes.
3) The refinement of art and its strength are always in inverse
proportion.
4) “Conservatism lies in this” ... That is the way I have it noted,
but further I can’t remember now.
5) Why is it pleasant to ride? Because it is the very emblem of
life. Life--you ride.
I wanted to take a walk....
_November 7. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day November 12. Y. P._
I haven’t noted down anything during this time. I was writing
the essay on Art. To-day a little on the Declaration of Faith. A
weakness of thought and I am sad. One must learn to be satisfied
with stupidity. If I do not love, at least not _not_ to love. That,
thank the Lord, I have attained.
_November 16. Y. P. Morning._
I still work just as badly and am therefore depressed. The day after
to-morrow I am going to Moscow, if God commands.[143]
... In the meantime I received a strange letter from the Spaniard
Zanini, with an offer of 22,000 francs for good works. I answered
that I would like to use them for the Dukhobors. What is going to
happen?[144] I wrote to Kuzminsky on Witte and Dragomirov[145] and
the day before yesterday I wrote diligently all morning on War.[146]
Something will come of it.
I am thinking continually about art and about the temptations or
seductions which becloud the mind, and I see that art belongs to
this class, but I do not know how to make it clear. This occupies
me very, very much. I fall asleep and wake up with this thought,
but up to now I have come to no conclusion.
The notes during this time about God and the future life are:
1) They say that God must be understood as a personality. In this
lies great misunderstanding; personality is limitation. Man feels
himself a personality, only because he comes in contact with other
personalities. If man were only one, he would not be a personality.
These two conceptions are mutually determined; the outer world, other
beings, and the personality. If there were not a world of other
beings, man would not feel himself, would not recognise himself as
a personality; if man were not a personality he would not recognise
the existence of other beings. And therefore man within this Universe
is inconceivable otherwise than as a personality. But how can it
be said of God, that He is a personality, that God is personal? In
this lies the root of anthropomorphism.
Of God it only can be said what Moses and Mohammed said, that he is
one, and one, not in that sense that there is no other or other gods
(in relation to God there can be no notion of number and therefore
it is even impossible to say of God that he is one (1 in the sense
of a number), but in that sense that he is monocentric, that he is
not a conception, but a being, that which the Greek Orthodox call
a living God in opposition to a pantheistic God, i.e., a superior
spiritual being living in everything. He is one in that sense that He
is, like a being to whom one can address oneself, i.e., not exactly
to pray, but that there is a relationship between me, something
which is limited, a personality, and God--something inconceivable
but existing.
The most inconceivable thing about God for us consists exactly in
this, that we know Him as a one being, can know him in no other way,
and at the same time it is impossible for us to understand a one being
who fills up everything with himself. If God is not one, then He is
scattered and He does not exist. If He is one, then we involuntarily
represent him to ourselves in the shape of a personality and then He
is no longer a higher being, no longer everything. But, however,
in order to know God and to lean on Him one must understand Him as
filling everything and at the same time as one.
2) I have been thinking how obviously mistaken is our conception of
the future life in bodies either more or less similar to ours. Our
bodies as we know them are nothing but the products of our outer
six senses. How then can there be life for that spiritual being who
is separated from his body--how can it be in that form which is
determined and produced by that body through its senses?
_November 17. Y. P. If I live._
_November 17. Y. P._
Yesterday I hardly wrote anything.
... There is a fight in the papers over Repine’s[147] definition of
art as amusement. How it fits into my work. The full significance
of Art has still not been made clear. It is clear to me, and I can
write and prove it, but not briefly and simply. I cannot bring it
up to that point.
Yesterday there was a letter from Ivan Michailovich[148] and from
the Dukhobors.
Amusement is all right, if the amusement is not corrupted, is honest,
and if people do not suffer from that amusement. I have been thinking
just now; the æsthetic is the expression of the ethical, i.e., in
plain language; art expresses those feelings which the artist feels.
If the feelings are good, lofty, then art will be good, lofty, and
the reverse. If the artist is a moral man, then his art will be
moral, and the reverse. (Nothing has come of this.)
I thought last night:
We rejoice over our technical achievements--steam, ... phonographs. We
are so pleased with these achievements that if any one were to tell
us that these achievements are being attained by the loss of human
lives we would shrug our shoulders and say, “We must try not to have
this so; an 8-hour day, labour insurance, and so forth; but because
several people perish, is no reason to renounce those achievements
which we have attained.” I. e., _Fiat_ mirrors, phonographs, etc.,
_pereat_ several people.
It is but sufficient to admit this principle--and there will be no
limit to cruelty, and it will be very easy to attain every kind of
technical improvement. I had an acquaintance in Kazan who used to
ride to his estate in Viatka, 130 versts away, in this fashion: he
would buy a pair of horses at the market for 20 roubles (horses
were very cheap) and would hitch them up and drive 130 versts to
the place. Sometimes they would reach the place, and he would have
the horses plus the cost of the journey. Sometimes they would not
cover a part of the road and he would hire. But nevertheless it used
to cost him cheaper than hiring stage horses. Even Swift proposed
eating children. And that would have been very convenient. In New
York, the railroad companies in the city crush several passers-by
every year and do not change the crossings to make the disasters
impossible, because the change would cost dearer than paying to the
families of those crushed yearly. The same thing happens also in the
technical improvements of our age. They are accomplished by human
lives. But one has to value every human life--not to value it, but
to place it above any value and to make improvements in a way that
lives should not be lost and spoilt, and to stop every improvement
if it harms human life.
_November 18. If I live, then Moscow._
_November 22. Moscow._
The fourth day in Moscow. Dissatisfied with myself. No work. Got
tangled up in the article on art and have not moved forward.
... There were here; the Gorbunovs,[149] Boulanger,[150] Dunaev. I
called on Rusanov myself.[151] Received a very good impression.
Read Plato; embryos of idealism.
I recalled two subjects which were very good:
1) A wife’s deception of her passionate, jealous husband; his
suffering, his struggle and the enjoyment of forgiveness, and
2) A description of the oppression of the serfs and later the very
same kind of oppression by land property, or rather by being deprived
of it.
Just now Goldenweiser[152] played. One thing--a fantasy fugue:[153]
an artificiality; studied, cold, pretentious; another--“Bigarrure” by
Arensky;[154] sensual, artificial; and a third--a ballad by Chopin;
sickly, nervous, not one or the other or the third can be of any
use to the people.
The devil who has been sent to me is still with me, and tortures me.
_November 23. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day November 25. Moscow._
Am very weak. My stomach isn’t working. I am trying to write on
art--but it doesn’t go. One thing is good; have found myself, my
heart.... A letter from Zanini with an offer of 31,500 francs.[155]
Tischenko, a good novel on poverty.[156] It is now past two, am
going for a walk.
_To-day November 27. Moscow._
Very weak, poor in all respects. And feel as if I had only just now
awakened. Have been thinking:
1) We are all in this life--workers placed at the work of saving our
souls. It can be compared to keeping up the fire given from heaven
and lighted on the hearth of my body. My work lies in this, to keep
up and feed this fire in myself (not to spend the material of this
fire as I have done lately, except in burning it) and not to think
how and what gets lighted from this fire. It is not a difficult
matter to thresh with several flails, but to keep in order, not to
get confused (and not only to thresh, but not to interfere with the
others), one has only to remember oneself, one’s own tempo while
beating. But as soon as you have begun to think of others, to look
at them, you get confused.
The same thing happens in life. Remember only yourself, your own
work--and this work is one: to love, to enlarge love in yourself--not
to think of others, of the consequences of your labour and the work
of life will go on fruitfully, joyously. Just as soon as you begin
to think of that which you are producing, about the results of your
labour, just as soon as you begin to modify it in accordance with
its results--your work becomes confused and ceases, and there comes
the consciousness of the vanity of life. The master of life gave to
each one of us separately such a labour, that the fulfilment of that
labour is the most fruitful work. And He himself will use and guide
this work, give it a place and a meaning. But as soon as I try to
find and fix a place for it, and in accordance with this, to modify
it then I become confused, see the vanity of labour and I despair.
My task is to work and He already knows for what it is needed and
will make use of it. “Man walks, God leads.” And the work is one;
to enlarge love in oneself.
I am a self-moving saw or a living spade and its life consists in
this, to keep its edge clean and sharp. And it will work well enough,
and its work will be useful. To keep it sharp, and to sharpen and
sharpen it all the time, that is to make oneself always kinder and
kinder.
2) Once more I wrote to N that she is wrong in thinking that it is
possible for one to renounce oneself from the exploit of living.
Life is an exploit. And the principal thing is, that that very thing
that pains us and seems to us to hinder us from fulfilling our work
in life--is our very work in life. There is some circumstance, a
condition in life which tortures you; poverty, illness, faithlessness
of a husband, calumny, humiliation,--it suffices only to pity
yourself and you become the unhappiest among the unhappy. And it
suffices only to understand that this is the very work of life which
you are called to do; to live in poverty, in illness, to forgive
faithlessness, calumny, humiliation--and instead of depression and
pain there is energy and joy.
3) Art becoming all the time more and more exclusive, satisfying
continually a smaller and smaller circle of people, becoming more
and more selfish, has gone crazy, since insanity is only selfishness
reaching to its last degree. Art has reached the last degree of
selfishness--and has gone out of its mind.
I have felt very badly and depressed these days. Father, help me to
live with Thee, not to wander from Thy will.
_November 28. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day December 2. Moscow._
Five days have passed and very torturing ones. Everything is still
the same.
... My feeling; I have discovered on myself a terrible putrefying
sore. They had promised me to heal it and have bound it. The sore
was so disgusting to me, it was so depressing for me to think that
it was there, that I tried to forget it, to convince myself that
it was not there. But some time has passed--they unbound the sore
and though it was healing, nevertheless it was there. And it was
torturingly painful to me and I began to reproach the doctor--and
unjustly. That is my condition. The principal thing is the devil that
has been sent me. Oh, this luxury, this richness, this absence of
care about the material life! Like an over-fertilised soil. If they
do not cultivate good plants on it, weeding it, cleaning everything
around them,--it will become overgrown with horrible ugliness and
will become terrible. But it is difficult--I am old and am almost
unable to do it. Yesterday I walked, thought, suffered and prayed
and it seems to me not in vain.
Yesterday I went to Princess Helen Sergeievna.[157] It was very
pleasant. I still cannot work. I shall try to in a minute. I have
written nothing in the note book. Letters from Koni,[158] from
Mme. Kudriavtsev.[159] Yesterday the factory hands came and a new
one, Medusov, I think.
_Dec. 12. Moscow._
I have suffered much during these days and it seems I have advanced
towards peace, towards the good--towards God. Am reading much on
art. It is becoming clear. I am not even sitting down to write.
Masha went away. The Chertkovs came.
To-day I wrote the appendix to _The Appeal_.[160]
_Dec. 15. Moscow._
Now 2 o’clock in the morning. Have done nothing. My stomach ached.
Am calm; have no desire to write.
... I have made some notes. I don’t write out everything. Something
struck me forcibly--it is my clear consciousness of the weight of the
oppressiveness from my personality, from the fact that I am I. This
gives me joy because it means that I understood, that I recognised
as myself, at least partly, a “self” that was not personal.
_December 16, Moscow. If I live._
_To-day December 19 or 20._
Five days have passed and I feel the oppressiveness, the weight of
my body and therefore the consciousness of the existence of that
which is not the body has strengthened terribly. I want to throw off
this weight, free myself from these chains and nevertheless I feel
them. I am sick of my body.
All this time I have not worked at all and I feel heavy melancholy. I
am fighting against it by seeking in my life a task which is beyond
this life. There is only one such: an approach to the perfection of
God, to love. Yesterday it became so clear to me that life here is
nothing else than a manifestation in these forms of the greatest
perfection of God. “To live an age and unto the night”--that is in
terms of time. To live for a universal life and for this one--that
is in terms of space.
I have done nothing during this time and am unable to. I am living
badly.
I have noted a few trifles on Art:
1) They bring as a proof that art is good, the fact that it produces
a great impression on you. Yes, but who are you? On the decadents,
their works produce a great impression on them. You say that they
are spoilt. But Beethoven, who does not produce an impression on
the working man, produces such an impression on you, only because
you are spoilt. Who then is right? What music is beyond question as
to its value? That kind which produces as impression on a decadent
and on you and on the working man; simple, understandable, popular
music.
2) What relief all would feel who are locked up in a concert-room
listening to Beethoven’s last works, if a jig or a cherdash or
something similar would be played for them.
3) N. was here and said that he recognised only sensation, that
man himself, the “self” was only a sensation. Sensation receives
sensation. He reached this nonsense because of the scientific
method; the limiting of the field of research, the non-recognition
of anything else than sensation, is very good and profitable for the
practical ends of the science of experimental psychology, but it
is good-for-nothing as far as a living universal point of view is
concerned. And this error is often made by people; they transfer
to life the method which is suitable to science.
4) Nothing so confuses the conception of art as the acceptance of
authorities. Instead of determining by a clear concise conception
of art whether the works of Sophocles, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare,
Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, Raphael, Michael-Angelo, come up to the
conception of good art and exactly how they do so, they determine
by the existing works of the recognised great artists, art itself
and its laws. But, however, there are many works of noted artists
which are below every criticism and there are many false reputations,
accidentally won fame; Dante, Shakespeare.
5) I am reading the history of music:[161] out of sixteen chapters
on artificial music there is one short chapter on popular music. And
they know almost nothing about it. So that the history of music is
not the history of how real music was born and spread and developed;
the music of melodies--but the history of artificial music, i.e.,
how real melodious music was distorted.
6) Artificial, master-class music, the music of parasites, feeling
its own impotence, its own hollowness, takes recourse, in order to
replace real interest by artificiality, now to counterpoint, to the
fugue, now to opera, to illustration.
7) Church music is good, therefore, because it is understood by
the masses. The undeniably good is only that which is understood by
all. And therefore it is true, that the more understandable it is,
the better.
8) The various characters expressed by art touch us only because
in each one of us is the possibility of every possible character.
(Forgot)
9) The history of music, like all history, is written on the plan to
show how it has gradually reached that condition in which the thing
is found about which the history is now being written. The present
condition of music, or that about which the history is written, is
supposed to be the highest. But what if it is not only a lower thing,
but something entirely distorted, an accidental deviation towards
distortion.
10) Belief in authorities causes the errors of authorities to be
accepted as models.
11) They say that music strengthens the impression of words--in
arias, songs. It isn’t true. Music gets ahead of impressions made
by words, by heaven knows how far. An aria of Bach; what words can
rival it at the time when it is being rendered? It is a different
thing--the words by themselves. To whatever music you would place
the Sermon on the Mount, the music would remain far behind, once
you penetrated the words. “Crucifix” by Faure,[162] the music is
pitiable compared to the words. They are two entirely different and
incompatible feelings. In song they go along together only because
the words give tone.
(Not exact. About this in another place.)
12) So vividly have I recalled Vasili Perfileev[163] and others,
whom I saw in Moscow, and so clear did it become that, although they
are dead, they still are.
13) The Scylla and Charybdis of artists; either understandable, but
shallow, vulgar; or pseudo-lofty, original and incomprehensible.
14) The poetry of the people always reflected and not only
reflected, predicted, prepared, popular movements; the Crusades,
the Reformation. What could the poetry of our parasitical circle
predict and prepare?--Love, debauchery; debauchery, love.
15) Popular poetry, music, art in general is exhausted, because all
the talented have been won over by bribes to be buffoons to the rich
and the titled; chamber music, opera, odes and[164] ...
16) In all art, there exists the struggle between the Christian and
the pagan. The Christian begins to conquer and the new wave of the
15th Century overflows, the Renaissance, and only now at the end of
the 19th, the Christian rises again, and paganism in the shape of
decadence having reached the highest degree of nonsense, is being
destroyed.
17) Besides the fact that the most gifted of the people were won
over by bribes into the camp of the parasites, the cause of the
destruction of popular poetry and music were: at first the serfdom
of the people and later the most important one--printing.
18) Chertkov said that around us there are four walls of the unknown;
in front, the wall of the future, in back the wall of the past, to
the right the wall of ignorance, of that which is taking place there
where we are not, and the fourth wall, he says, is the ignorance of
that which is going on in the soul of another. In my mind this is
not so. The first three walls are as he says. One should not look
through them. The less we look beyond them the better. But as to
the fourth wall of the ignorance of that which is going on in the
souls of other people, this wall we ought to break down with all our
strength, striving for a fusion with the souls of other people. And
the less we will look beyond those three other walls, the closer we
will get to others in this respect.
19) After death in importance, and before death in time, there is
nothing more important, more irrevocable, than marriage. And just
as death is only good then when it is unavoidable, but every death
on purpose is bad, so it is with marriage. Only then is marriage
not evil, when it is not to be conquered.
20) Apostasy comes from a man professing what he professes not for
himself, not for God, but for people. He betrays his professions,
either because he has become convinced that more people, or better
people according to his mind, do not profess the same thing as he,
or because that which he did before, he did for human fame and now
he wants to live for himself, before God.
21) If I believed in a personal God to whom one could turn to with
questions, I would say, Why, for what has God made it so, that some,
knowing the undoubted truth, burn wholly with its fire, while others
do not want it, cannot understand or accept it, and even hate it.
It is now past one. The same weakness, but keen in spirit, when I
remember the significance of the whole of life, and not only this
one which I have lived through as Leo Nicholaievich (Tolstoi). Help
me, Lord, to do always, everywhere Thy will, to be with Thee. But
not my will, but Thine, be done.
_December 21, Moscow, if I live._
I am still writing _December the 20th, Moscow_.
Still the same depression. Father, help me. Relieve me. Strengthen
Thyself in me, vanquish, drive forth, destroy, the foul flesh and
all that I feel through it.
... Father, help me. Moreover, I feel better already. What is
especially calming is the task, the test of humility, of humiliation,
an entirely unexpected, exceptional humiliation. In chains, in a
prison, one can pride oneself on one’s humiliation, but here it is
only painful, unless one accepts it as a trial sent by God. Yes,
learn to bear calmly, joyfully and to love.
_December 21. Moscow._
I am learning badly. I continually suffer, helplessly, weakly. Only
in rare moments do I rise to the consciousness of the _whole_ of my
life (not only this one) and my duties in it.
I thought (and felt): There are people lacking both in æsthetic
feeling and in the ethical (especially the ethical), to whom it is
impossible to instil that which is good--the less so when they do
and love that which is bad, and think that the bad is good ...
_December 22, Moscow, if I live_, which is getting to be very
doubtful; my heart does not stop aching. Almost nothing gives me
rest. To-day Posha alone refreshed me. It is so disgusting I want to
cry over myself, over the remnant of my life which is being futilely
ruined. But perhaps it must be so, yes, in fact, it must be so ...
_December 25, Moscow._
9 o’c. at night. Spiritually I feel better. But I have no intellectual,
artistic work, and I am melancholy. Just now I felt that particular
Christmas softening and gentleness, and poetical impulse. My hands
are cold, I want to cry and to love ...
_December 26, Moscow._
I am still not writing anything, but I feel my thoughts revive. The
devil still does not leave me.
I thought to-day about _The Diary of a Mad Man_.[165] The principal
thing is that I have understood my filial relation to God,
brotherhood,--and my attitude to the whole world has changed.
1897
_Jan. 5, Moscow._
There is still nothing good to write about myself. I feel no need
of working and the devil does not leave me. Have been ill for about
6 days.
Began to reread _Resurrection_ and reached up to _his_ decision to
marry and threw it away with disgust. It is all untrue, invented,
weak. It is hard to repair a spoiled thing. In order to repair it,
there is necessary: 1) alternately to describe his feeling and
life, and hers,[166] and 2) sympathetically and seriously hers, and
critically and with a smile, his. I shall hardly finish it. It is
all very spoilt.
Yesterday I read Arkhangelsky’s[167] article “Whom to Serve” and
was very delighted.
Have finished the notebook. And here I am writing from it:
1) My article on ... must be written for the people ...
2) (For _The Notes of a Madman_ or for _The Drama_). Despair because
of madness and wretchedness of life. Salvation from this despair in
the recognition of God and one’s filiality to Him. The recognition of
filiality is the recognition of brotherhood. The recognition of the
brotherhood of man and the cruel, brutal, unbrotherly arrangement of
life which is justified by people--leads inevitably to a recognition
of one’s own insanity or that of the whole world.
3) I read Nakashidze’s[168] letter about the Congress of the
Dukhobors, where they discussed social questions. Here is an instance
of the possibility of administration without violence. One condition
is necessary--no, two conditions: the respect of the youth and of
the spiritually weak in general, to the resolutions of the elected
elders, the spiritually stronger--the “little old men” as the
Dukhobors call them; and the second condition that these “little
old men” be rational and loving. At this Congress the question of
uniting property (in common), was discussed and the “little old men”
were in favour of it, but constantly repeated: “Only let there be
no violence, let things be done voluntarily.”
Among the people and the Dukhobors this respect and recognition of
the necessity of fulfilling the resolutions of the old men exist. And
all this without forms; the election of the elders and the methods
of agreement.
4) No matter how you grind a crystal, how you dissolve it, compress
it, it will mould itself again at the first opportunity into the
same form. And so the structure of society will be always the same,
no matter to what changes you submit it. The form of a crystal will
only then be changed when chemical changes occur in it, inner ones;
the same with society.
5) It would be good to write a preface to Spier[169] containing the
following:
The world is such as we see it, only if there do not exist any other
beings differently built from us and endowed with other senses than
ours. If we see not only the possibility, but the necessity, of the
existence of other beings endowed with other senses than ours, then
the world is in no case, merely such as we see it. Our imagination of
the world shows only our attitude to the world, just as the visual
picture which we form for ourselves from what we see as far as the
horizon and the sky represents in no way the actual outlines of the
objects seen. The other senses, hearing, smell, principally--touch, in
verifying our visual impressions give us a more definite conception
of the seen objects; but that which we know as broad, thick, hard
or soft or how the things seen by us sound or smell, do not prove
that we know these things fully and that if a new sense (above the
five) were given us, it would not disclose to us that our conception
of things formed by our five senses was not just as deceptive as
that conception of the flatness of objects and their diminishing in
perspective which sight only gives us.
I see a man in the mirror, hear his voice and am fully convinced
that he is a real man; but I approach, I want to grasp his hand
and I touch the glass of the mirror and see my delusion. The same
thing must come to pass in a dying man; a new feeling is born which
discloses to him (through his new feeling and the new knowledge it
gives him) the delusion of recognising his body as himself, and of
all that he recognised as existing through the means of the senses
of this body.
So that the world is certainly not such as we know it to be: let
there be other instruments of knowledge--and there will be another
world.
But no matter how that which we consider as the world, our attitude
to the world, should change--one thing is unalterably such as we
know it and is always unchanging, it is _that which knows_. And it
knows not only in me, but in everything which knows. This thing
which knows is the same everywhere and in everything and in itself.
It is God, and it is that for some reason limited particle of God
which composes our actual “self.”
But what then, is this God, i. e., something eternal, infinite,
omnipotent, which has become mortal, finite, weak? Why did God
divide himself within himself? I do not know, but I know that this
is so, and that in this is life. All that we know is nothing else
than just such divisions of God. All that we know as the world is
the knowledge of these divisions. Our knowledge of the world (that
which we call matter in space and time) is the contact of the limits
of our divinity with its other divisions. Birth and death are the
transitions from one division into another.
6) The difference between Christian happiness and pagan is this,
that the pagan seeks happiness, prepares it for himself, awaits it,
demands it--the Christian seeks, prepares, awaits and demands the
kingdom of God and accepts happiness when it comes as something
unexpected, undeserved, unprepared. And it is no less.
_Jan. 18. Moscow._
Dismal, horrid. Everything repels me in the life they lead around
me. Now I free myself from sadness and suffering, then again I fall
into it. In nothing is it so apparent, as in this, how far I am from
what I want to be. If my life were really entirely in the service
of God, there would be nothing which could disturb it.
I am still writing on art. It is bad. A Dukhobor was here.
_Feb. 4. Nicholskoe with the Olsuphievs._
I am already here the 4th day and am inexpressibly sad. I am writing
badly on art. I just now prayed and became horrified at how low
I have fallen. I think, I ask myself, what am I to do; I doubt,
I hesitate, as if I did not know or had forgotten who I was and
therefore what I was to do. To remember that I am not master, but
servant and to do that to which I have been put. With what labour
have I struggled and attained this knowledge, how undoubted is this
knowledge and how I can forget it nevertheless--not exactly forget
it, but live without applying it.
... Well, enough about this.
I am going to write out what I thought during this time:
1) When all is said and done, it is those people over whom
violence is used who always rule, i.e., those who fulfil the law
of non-resistance. So women seek rights, but it is they who rule,
just because they are the ones subjected to force--they were and
they still are. Institutions are in the power of men, but public
opinion is in the power of women. And public opinion is a million
times stronger than any laws and armies. The proof that public
opinion is in the hands of women is that not only the construction
of homes, food, are determined by women, and not only do the women
spend the wealth, consequently control the labour of men, but the
success of works of art, of books, even the appointment of rulers,
are determined by public opinion; and public opinion is determined
by women. Some one well said that men must seek emancipation from
women, and not the contrary.
2) (For _The Appeal_).[170] Unmask the deceivers, spread the truth
and do not fear. If it were a matter of spreading deception and
murder, then of course, it would be terrible, but here you would be
spreading the freedom from deception and murder. Besides, there is
no ground for fear. Of whom? They ... are themselves afraid.
I remember there worked for us in our village a weak and phlegmatic
12 year-old boy who once caught on the road and brought back, an
enormous healthy peasant, a thief, who had taken a coat from the
hall.
3) The poets, the verse-makers torture their tongues in order to
be able to say every possible kind of thought in every possible
variety of word and to be able to form from all these words something
which resembles a thought. Such exercise can only be indulged in by
unserious people. And so it is.
4) If we never moved, then everything which we saw would appear to us
flat and not in perspective. Motion gives us a conception of things
in three dimensions of space. The same thing is true concerning the
material side of things: if we weren’t living, were not moving in
life, we would see only the material side of things; but moving in
life, moving our spiritual side across the material side of the
world, we recognise the falseness of the idea that the material is
actually such as it appears to us.
5) Twenty times I have repeated it, and 20 times the thought comes
to me as new, that release from all excitement, fear, suffering,
from physical and especially from spiritual, lies in destroying in
one’s self the illusion of the union of one’s spiritual “self” with
one’s physical. And this is always possible. When the illusion is
destroyed then the spiritual “self” can suffer only from the fact
that it is joined to the physical, but not from hunger, pain, sorrow,
jealousy, shame, etc. In the first case, as long as it is joined it
does that which the physical “self” wants: it gets angry, condemns,
scolds, strikes; in the second case, when it is separated from the
physical, it does only that which can free it from the torturing
union. And only the manifestations of love frees it.
6) For the article on Art. When it is beauty that is recognised as
the aim of art, then everything will be art which for certain people
will appear as beauty, i.e., everything which will please certain
people.
7) I have noted, “the harm of art, especially music” and I wanted to
write that I had forgotten, but while I was writing, I remembered.
The harm of art is principally this, that it takes up time,
hiding from people their idleness. I know that it is harmful when
it encourages idleness both for the producers and those who enjoy
it, but I cannot see a clear definition of when it is permissible,
useful, good. I should like to say only then when it is a rest from
labour, like sleep, but I do not yet know if that is so.
8) (For _The Appeal_). You are mistaken, you poor, if you think that
you can shame or touch or convince the rich man to divide with you.
He cannot do that because he sees that you want the same thing that
he wants and that you are fighting him with the same means with which
he fights you. You will not only convince him, but you will compel
him to yield to you only by ceasing to seek that which he seeks,
ceasing to struggle with him, but if you cease to struggle you will
cease also ... (very important).
9) If the end of art is not the good, but pleasure, then the
distribution of art will be different. If its end is the good, then
it will inevitably be spread among the greatest number of people;
if its end is pleasure, then it will be confined to a small number
(not exact and still unclear).
10) Art is--I was going to write food, but it is better to say--sleep,
necessary for the sustenance of the spiritual life. Sleep is useful,
necessary after labour. But artificial sleep is harmful, does not
refresh, does not stimulate, but weakens.
11) I heard counterpoint singing and ...[171] This is the destruction
of music, a means of perverting it. There is no sense to it, no
melody, and any first senseless sequence of sounds are taken and
from the combination of these insignificant sequences is formed some
kind of a tedious resemblance to music. The best is when the last
chord is finished.
12) The most severe and consequential agnostic, whether he wants it
or does not want it, recognises God. He cannot but recognise that in
the first place, in the existence both of himself and of the whole
world, there is some meaning inaccessible to him; and in the second,
there is a law of his life, a law to which he can submit or from which
he can escape. And it is this recognition of the highest meaning of
life, inaccessible to man but inevitably existing, and of the law of
one’s life, which is God and His will. And this recognition of God
is immensely stronger than the recognition of ... etc. To believe
like this means to dig to bedrock, to the mainland, and to build
the house on that.
13) Stepa[172] related the physiologic process which takes place in
the infant when it separates from its mother. Truly it is a miracle.
This thought occupied me in relation to the doctrine that everything
material is illusion. How can illusion take place there where I do
not see it? As you see it, so it takes place. You see everything
through your glasses. That is well enough as regards all other
phenomena, but here the most fundamental thing is taking place,
that from which the whole of my life and of everything living is
composed: the detachment from the world. And here right in front of
my eyes this detachment is taking place; there was one and there
became two, like among the first cells, (unclear.)
14) Every living being carries within himself all the possibilities
of its ancestors. Having been detached, he manifests several of them,
but carries in himself the remaining ones and acquires new ones.
In this lies the process of life; to unite and to separate. (Still
more unclear.)
I have decided no matter what happens, to write every day. Nothing
strengthens one so much for the good. It is the best prayer.
_Evening, February 4. Nicholskoe._
In the morning I wrote this diary and later tried to write, but
could do nothing; had no desire. Undoubtedly if there be strength
and capacity to write, then one ought to serve God.
It is just as gloomy. I do not pray enough, hourly.
_February 5, Nicholskoe. If I live._
_February 5, Nicholskoe._
Still the same intellectual, creative, weakness. But I think it is
almost hopeless. There was a search at Chertkov’s. S. arrived.
I thought: I, a worker, am I doing the work commanded? In this is
everything. Lord, help me.
_Feb. 6. Nicholskoe._
In the morning Gorbunov arrived; in the evening a telegram that
the Chertkovs are leaving on Thursday.[173] I prepared to go with
Sonya.[174] Am just going. Health better.
_Feb. 7. Petersburg._
Went to Chertkov. It is joyous there. Then to Yaroshenko.[175]
... I pray that I do not abandon here or anywhere the consciousness
of my mission, to be fulfilled by kindness.
_Feb. 8. Petersburg. If I live._
I was alive, but made no entries the two days. _To-day, Feb. 10._
It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, silence. I was at Stasov’s and
Tolstoi’s.[176] Did nothing bad, but nothing good either. Rather
some good. Lord keep me from a spell, but I am better. Have thought
nothing.
_Again at the Olsuphievs in Nicholskoe, Feb. 16._
I returned on the morning of the day before yesterday, and fell ill.
Yesterday I was better, wrote on art. Good.
... Women do not consider the demands of reason binding upon
themselves and cannot progress according to them. They haven’t got
this sail spread. They row without a rudder.[177]
I am again feeling unwell and very sweetly sad. Wrote a letter to
the Chertkovs and to Posha. Am not working.
_Feb. 17. Nicholskoe._
I do not feel well. I tried to write on art....
... Received letters; an adaptation of _On Life_ from the
American.[178] Wrote two letters to Sonya yesterday and sent them
to-day.[179]
Having been thinking even before Petersburg:
1) (For _The Appeal_): To describe the condition of the factory
workers, the servants, soldiers, agricultural labourers in comparison
with the rich, and show that it all comes from....
2) In the Middle Ages, in the XIth Century, poetry was general--the
people and the masters, _les courtois et les vilains_; then they
separated and _les vilains_ began to mimic the masters’ and the
masters the people’s. A union ought to take place again.
3) A hundred times I have said it to myself and have written it
down: the real and only salvation from all sorrow is the knowledge
of one’s mission, the anxiety whether you have done that for which
you were sent.
4) Nearly every husband and wife reproach each other for things for
which they do not consider themselves guilty. But on the one side
there is no ceasing to accuse, nor on the other to vindicate.
5) They do not run after a poet or a painter so much, as after an
actor, and especially after a musician. Music calls forth a direct
physical effect, sometimes acute, sometimes chronic.
6) We absolutely falsely ascribe intelligence and goodness to talent,
and the same to beauty. In this lies great self-delusion.
7) It came into my head with remarkable clearness that in order
to always feel good, it is necessary always to think of others,
especially when you speak with some one.
8) The movement of life, the broadening of a separate being gives
time. If there would be no movement, no enlarging of love, then there
would be no time; as to space, it is the representation of other
beings. If there were no other beings, there would be no space.
(All nonsense, unthought).
9) Women are deprived of a moral sense for a motor. They haven’t
got this sail spread and therefore it does not carry.
_Feb. 18, Nicholskoe. If I live._
_Feb. 18. Nicholskoe._
Forty-five years ago I was in battle.[180]
I feel a great sinking in energy. I am very weak, cannot work. But
is it not possible to live unceasingly before God, doing His work
in proportion to His strength. I shall try. Help me, Lord. I shall
take up the letters. Here demands are made, and it is possible to
fulfil His work.
_Evening._ Indisposed. Apathy, weakness. Am not taking up the
essay,[181] wrote letters. Just now a letter from Biriukov. I
answered it.
_February 19. Nicholskoe._
I am just as apathetic, but am not worried. Wrote letters. Wrote to
every one. I am going to bed, it is past twelve.
_To-day, Feb. 20, Nicholskoe._ Seven o’clock in the evening.
I still feel just as badly; constipation and heart-burn. I fell asleep
in the morning. Then, not trying to work, I took a walk. Extreme
weakness. My soul is calm, only it is a bore that I am unable to
work. The house is full of people.
... Yesterday I wrote many letters.
I walked and thought:
There is no greater cause for error and confusion of ideas, the
most unexpected ones, and inexplicable in any other way, than the
recognition of authorities, i.e., the infallible truthfulness or
beauty of certain persons, of books or of works of art. M. Arnold[182]
was a thousand times right when he said that the business of criticism
lies in detaching the good from the bad, from all that has been
written and done, and mainly the bad from that which is recognised
as splendid, and the good from that which is recognised as bad, or
is not recognised at all. The most striking instance of this error
and its terrible consequences, holding back for ages the forward
movement of Christian mankind, is the authority of the Holy Scriptures
and the Gospels. How many of the most unexpected and remarkable
absurdities, sometimes necessary for its own justification, sometimes
not necessary for anything, are said and written in the text of the
Holy Scriptures.... The same thing happens in the Greek Tragedies,
in Vergil, Shakespeare, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Raphael and in the
new authorities.
_Perhaps I omitted the 21st. To-day, perhaps the 22nd. February,
Saturday. Nicholskoe._
Yesterday I did not work. I read through the first draft on
art--pretty good. I went for Yushkova’s[183] dress. It was a nice
trip. In the evening they spoke about Art and then I heard the
brothers Konius[184] who arrived....
To-day I am a little better in my health, I went on skiis and felt
weak at heart and uneasy when I went far. It is evening now. I feel
like writing letters.
I thought for _The Appeal_ when I looked at the numberless sons of
N. in their overcoats: He is bringing them up, “making” men of the
world of them. What for?
You will say: you live as you do for the sake of the children. What
for? Why bring up another generation of the same cheated slaves,
not knowing why they live, and living such a joyless life?
_Feb. 23. Nicholskoe. If I live._
_February 23, Nicholskoe._
To-day I wrote willingly and eagerly all morning and it seems to me
I advanced on the essay on art. Then I took a walk before dinner.
There is still a pile of people. No serious talk. Yesterday there was
music.... To-day an amateur theatrical. Tania and Michail Adamovich
played very well.[185] It is now evening. The day has passed almost
without heart-burn.
_February 24. Nicholskoe._
To-day I arose apathetic and fell asleep again right after luncheon.
After one, I went to meet the riders. Came home, dined. Am struggling
successfully with heart-burn. Went for a walk in the evening.
Read and am reading Aristotle (Bénard) on æsthetics. Very important.
Thought during these days:
1) Thought; why is it impossible to even speak to some people ...
about truth and good--so far are they away from it. This is so,
because they are surrounded by such a thick layer of temptations
that they have become impenetrable. They are unable to struggle with
sin, because they do not see the sin for the temptations. In this
lies the principal danger and all the horror of temptations.
2) They say to me when I condemn religious propaganda: You also are
preaching. No, I do not preach--mainly because I have nothing to
preach. Even to atheists I am not going to preach God (if I preached,
I erred). I only draw conclusions from what people accept, pointing
out the contradictions which are enclosed in what they accept, and
which they do not notice.
3) ... a general, respectable, clean, correct, with thick eye-brows
and important mien (and uncommonly good-natured, but deprived of
every moral motive sense) gave me the striking thought, as to how
and by what means those most indifferent to social life, to the good
of society--as to how just those people rise involuntarily to the
position of rulers of people. I see how he will manage institutions
upon which a million lives depend, and just because he likes
cleanliness, elegance, refined food, dancing, hunting, billiards
and every possible kind of amusement, and not having the means to
keep himself in those regiments, or institutions, or societies where
all this exist, is advanced little by little as a good and harmless
man and made a ruler of people. All are like N. and their name is
legion.
4) I am reading Aristotle. He says in _Politics_ (Book VII,
Chapter VIII): “Dans cette république parfaite, où la vertu des
citoyens sera réele, ils s’abstiendront de toute profession
méchanique, de toute spéculation mercantile, travaux dégradés
(dégradants?)[186] et _contraires_ à la vertu. Ils ne se livreront
pas davantage á l’agriculture. Il faut du loisir pour acquérir la
vertu” ...[187]
All his æsthetics has for its end (______)[188] virtue. And we with
the Christian understanding of the brotherhood of man want to be
guided by the ethical and æsthetical conception of the ancients!!
_Feb. 25. Nicholskoe. If I live._
_February 25. Nicholskoe._
I am alive. I have written a little--not as easily as yesterday. The
guests have departed. Went for a walk twice. Am reading Aristotle.
To-day I received letters ...
Yesterday, while walking, I prayed and experienced a remarkable
sensation which is perhaps similar to that which the mystics excite
in themselves by spiritual works; I felt myself to be a spiritual,
free being bound by the illusion of the body.
_Feb. 26. Nicholskoe. If I live._
_Feb. 26, Nicholskoe._
I am alive. I am writing, so as to keep my resolution. To-day I
wrote letters all morning, but I had no energy for work.
Went to Mme. Shorin.[189] I had a good talk with her. Perhaps even
to some purpose. Just as Anna Michailovna[190] said to-day, that I
helped her. And thanks be.
I copied the letter to Posha.
_Feb. 27. Nicholskoe._
Wrote this morning poorly, but cleared up something or other. Am
well. Took a walk. Spoke with Tania. And that is all.
_Yesterday was Feb. 28. Nicholskoe._
I have written nothing. In the morning I worked badly. Received a
letter from Chertkov and Ivan Michailovich and wrote to both. Walked
and went to Safonovo.[191]
This morning I thought of something which seemed to me important,
namely:
1) I wiped away the dust in my room and walking around, came to the
divan and could not remember whether I had dusted it or not. Just
because these movements are customary and unconscious I could not
remember them and I felt that it was impossible to. So that if I
dusted and forgot it, i.e., if I did an act unconsciously; then it is
just the same as if it never existed. If some one conscious saw it,
then perhaps it could be restored. But if no one saw it, or saw it
unconsciously; if the whole complex life of many people pass along
unconsciously, then that life is as if it had never existed. So that
life--life only exists then, when it is lit by consciousness.
What, then, is this consciousness? What are the acts which are lit
by consciousness? The acts which are lit by consciousness are those
acts which we fulfil freely, i.e., fulfilling them we know that we
might have acted otherwise. Therefore, consciousness is freedom.
Without consciousness there is no freedom and without freedom there
can be no consciousness (if we are subjected to violence and we have
no choice as to how we should bear that violence, we do not feel
the violence).
Memory is nothing else than the consciousness of the past, of the
past freedom. If I were unable to dust or not to dust, I would not
be conscious of dusting, if I were not conscious of dusting, I would
not have the choice of dusting or not dusting. If I did not have
consciousness and freedom, I would not remember the past, I would
not unite it into one. Therefore the very basis of life is freedom
and consciousness--a freedom-consciousness.
(It seemed to me clearer when I was thinking.)
_March 1, Nicholskoe._
... To-day I could not write anything in the morning at all--fell
asleep. I took a walk both in the morning and in the evening. It
was very pleasant.
I thought two things:
1) That death seems to me now just as a change: a discharge from a
former post and an appointment to a new one. It seems that I am
all worn out for the former post and I am no longer fit.
2) I thought about N as a good character for a drama; good-natured,
clean, spoilt, loving pleasure but good, and incapable of conceiving
a radical moral requirement.
I also thought:
3) There is only one means for steadfastness and peace: love, love
towards enemies.
Yes, here this problem was presented to me from a special, unexpected
angle and how badly I was able to solve it. I must try harder. Help
me, Father.
_March 2, Nicholskoe. If I live._
_March 2, Nicholskoe._
I am alive. Entirely well. To-day I wrote pretty well. In the evening
after dinner I went to Shelkovo. It was a very pleasant walk in the
moonlight.
Wrote a letter to Posha. Received a letter from Tregubov. He is
irritated because they intercept the letters. But I am not vexed.
I have understood that one has to pity them, and I pity truly.
To-morrow we go. We have been here a whole month.
_Yesterday was March 3rd. Moscow._
In the morning I did almost nothing. I stumbled up against the
historic course of art. I took a walk. After dinner I left. I arrived
at 10.
_March 4, Moscow._
Got up late. Handled my papers, wrote letters to Posha, Nakashidze.
Went to the public library, took books. In the evening Dunaev and
Boulanger were here. It is now late. I am going to bed. S. is at a
concert.
_March 5. Moscow. If I live._
Heavens, how many days I have skipped: _To-day, March 9. Moscow._
Out of the four days, I wrote two days on art and to-day pretty much.
I wanted to write _Hadji Murad_ very much and thought out something
pretty well--touching. A letter from Posha. Wrote to Chertkov and
Koni about the terrible thing that happened to Miss Vietrov.[192]
I am not going to write out what I have noted.
I am still in the same peaceful, because loving, mood. As soon as I
feel like being hurt or wearied I remember God and that my work is
only one, to love, not to think of that which will be--and I feel
better right away.
Tania is going to Yasnaya.
_To-day, March 15, Moscow._
Lived not badly. I see the end of the essay on art. Still the same
peace. I thank God. I have just now written letters. It is evening.
I am going into the tedious drawing-room.
_To-day, April 4, Moscow._
Almost a month I have not written (20 days), and I have lived the time
badly, because I worked little. Wrote all the time on art, became
confused these last days. And now for two days I haven’t written.
I have not lost my peace, but my soul is troubled, still I am master
of it. Oh, Lord! If only I could remember my mission, that through
oneself must be manifested (shine) divinity. But the difficulty is,
that if you remember that alone you will not live; and you must
live, live energetically, and yet remember. Help me, Father.
I have prayed much lately that my life be better. But as it is,
the consciousness of the lawlessness of my life is shameful and
depressing.
Yesterday I thought very well about Hadji Murad--that in it the
principal thing was to express a deception of trust. How good it
would have been, were it not for this deception. Also I am thinking
more and more often of _The Appeal_.
I am afraid that the theme of art has occupied me lately for
personal, selfish and bad reasons. _Je m’entends._
During this time I made few notes and if I had been thinking about
anything I have forgotten it.
1) The world which we know and represent for ourselves, is nothing
else than laws of co-relation between our senses (_sens_), and
therefore, a miracle is a violation of these laws of co-relation, it
therefore destroys our conception of the world. In the crudest form,
it is thus: I know that water (not frozen) is always liquid. And its
specific gravity is less than that of my body. My eyes, hearing,
touch, demonstrate to me liquid water; and suddenly a man walks on
this water. If he walked on the water, then it proves nothing, but
only destroys my conception of water.
2) A very common mistake: To place the aim of life in the service
of people and not in the service of God. Only in serving God, i.e.,
in doing that which He wants, can you be certain that you are not
doing something vain and it is not impossible to choose whom you
are to serve.
3) Church Christians do not want to serve God, but want God to serve
them.
4) Shakespeare began to be valued when the moral criterion was lost.
5) (For _The Appeal_.) We are so entangled that every one of our steps
in life is a participation in evil: in violence, in oppression. We
must not despair, but we must slowly disentangle ourselves from those
nets in which we are caught; not to tear ourselves through,--that
would entangle us worse--but to disentangle ourselves carefully.
6)[193]
I am in a very bad physical condition, almost fever, and the black
gloom that comes before, but up to now the spiritual is the stronger.
Escorted Maude’s colony.[194] Ivan Michailovich is still free.[195]
Everything is all right.
_Apr. 9. Moscow._
Have been ill. With calmness I thought that I would die. To-day I
wrote well on Art. They have taken Ivan Michailovich. There was a
search at Dunaev’s.[196] It is all right with the exiles.[197]
Outwardly I am entirely calm, inwardly not entirely. It is enough to
bear in mind that everything is for the good, and when I bear that
in mind as I do now--it is good.
_To-day May 3. Yasnaya Polyana._
Almost a month I have made no entries. A bad and sterile month.
I cut out and burned that which I wrote in heat.[198]
_To-day July 16. Y. P._
It is not one month that I have made no entries, but two and a half.
I have lived through much, both the difficult and the good.[199] Have
been ill. Very severe pains--I think in the beginning of July.[200]
I worked all this time on the essay on art, and the farther I get
the better. I finished it and am correcting it from the beginning.
Masha married.[201]...
We do not quiet, moderate passion, the source of the greatest
calamities, but kindle it with all our strength and then we complain
that we suffer....
Good letters from Chertkov. A Kiev peasant was here, Shidlovsky.[202]
I feel that I am alone--that my life not only does not interest any
one, but that they are bored and ashamed that I continue to occupy
myself with such trifles.
I thought during this time:
1) A type of woman--there are men such also, but mostly it is women
who are incapable of seeing themselves, as if their necks were
stationary and they could not look back at themselves. It isn’t
exactly that they don’t want to repent: but they can’t see themselves.
They live as they do and not in another way, because this way seems
good to them. And therefore if they do anything it is because it
seems good to them. Such people are terrifying. And such people
may be intelligent, stupid, good, wicked. When they are stupid and
wicked it is terrible.
2) With a low moral standard, a firmness of judgment. The acts of all
the best people are explained by what _I_ would have done. Christ
preached out of vanity, condemned the Pharisees from envy, etc.
3) The second condition of art is novelty. To a child everything is
new and therefore it has many artistic impressions. The new for us,
is a certain depth of feeling, that depth in which a man finds his
separate individuality from all. That is for indifferent art. For
the highest, novelty lies only in religion, as religion is the most
advanced world point of view.
4) (For the drama.) They bring to the table a man in tatters and they
laugh at the inconsistency of it and at his awkwardness. Revolt.
5) When it happens that you thought of something and then forgot
what you thought, but you remember and know the character of your
thoughts: sad, dismal, oppressive, joyous, keen--and even remember
their order: first it was sad, and then it became calm, etc.,--when
you remember things that way, then it is exactly what music expresses.
6) A theme: A passionate young man in love with a mentally diseased
woman.
7) God gave us His spirit--love, reason--in order to serve Him; but
we use His spirit to serve ourselves--we use the axe to plane the
handle.
I feel fully well and strong physically, but morally, weak. I feel
like working and am able. I am going to make notes.[203]
_July 17. Yasn. Pol. If I live._
_July 17. Y. P._
Got up late, worked badly. There is neither concentration nor capacity
to embrace everything. Nevertheless I have advanced. Masha came with
Kolia ...
Yesterday I talked about love with N: that we madly kindle this
passion and then we suffer from its exaggerations and excesses.
Went on my bicycle to Yasenki. I love this motion very much. But I
am ashamed.
A letter from Chertkov; he is very ill. I value him very much. And
how not value him.
It is now 10 o’clock. The Shenshins have left just now. I feel solemn
and gloomy.
_July 18, 1897. Y. P. If I live._
I skipped three days. To-day _July 21_. _Y. P._
I am working well enough. I am even satisfied with my work. Though
I change much. Everything has come to a head and has gained much.
I have been reviewing everything again from the beginning.
The life around me is very wretched....
I do not know why: whether from the stomach or the heat or from
excessive physical exercise--but in the evenings I feel very weak.
A good speech by Crookes as to how a microscopic man would look upon
the world.[204]
Yesterday Novikov was here and he brought splendid notes by Michael
Novikov.[205] Wrote letters: to Carus,[206] Ivan Michailovich. A
letter from Evgenie Ivanovich.[207]
_July 22. Y. P. If I live._
_July 28. Y. P._
Six days that I haven’t written. Three or four days ago at night, I
had an attack of cholera morbus and the day after I was absolutely
ill and for two days I have been very weak and have written very
poorly. To-day I am a little better.
The children were here: Iliushin’s family.[208] They are sweet
grandchildren, especially Andrusha. Whatever notes I made, I will not
write out to-day. Longinov[209] was here, a friend of Mme. Annenkov’s
and to-day Maude and Boulanger.
_July 29. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day Aug. 7. Y. P._
During this time a pile of guests[210] ... two Germans, decadents;
a naïve and a somewhat stupid one.... There were here: Novikov, the
scribe, a very powerful man, and Bulakhov,[211] also a powerful one
morally and intellectually. I live very badly, weakly. Very little
goodness. To-day the Stakhoviches[212] and the Maklakovs[213] arrived
also.
I continue to work on my essay on art and, strange to say, it pleases
me. Yesterday and to-day I read it to Ginsburg, Sobolev, Kasatkin[214]
and Goldenweiser. The impression it produces on them is exactly the
same as it produces on me.
A letter from Crosby with a joyful letter from a Japanese.[215] From
Chertkov good letters. The correspondence has been very neglected.
I am entirely alone and I weaken. I often say to myself that one
must live serving, but when I enter life, though I do not exactly
forget, yet I scatter myself.
I have written down much, but to-day I have no time to write it out.
Father, help me. I weaken.
I am going to write absolutely every day.
_Aug. 8. Y. P. If I live._
A peasant was here who had his arm torn by a tree and amputated. He
ploughs with a loop attached.
_Aug. 9._
Stakhovich arrived. Read the essay. The tenth chapter is bad. I
worked pretty much. Have written poor letters. I must write to Posha
and to Ivan Michailovich.
There is noted in the book:
1) A servant makes life false and corrupt. As soon as you have
servants, then you increase your wants, complicate life and make
it a burden. Instead of joy when you do things yourself, you have
vexation and the principal thing, you renounce the main duty of
life; the fulfilment of the brotherhood of man.
2) The æsthetic and the ethical are two arms of one lever: to the
extent that you lengthen and lighten one side, to that extent you
shorten and make heavier the other side. As soon as a man loses his
moral sense, he becomes particularly responsive to the æsthetic.
3) People know two Gods: one whom they want to force to serve them,
demanding from him by prayers the fulfilment of their desires, and
another God, one whom we ought to serve, to the fulfilment of whose
will, all our desires ought to be directed.
4) It is a common phenomenon that old people love to travel, to go
far and to change places. Is it not a foreseeing and a readiness
for the last journey?
_Aug. 15. Y. P._
I am continuing to work. Am advancing.
Lombroso was here--a limited, naïve little old man. The Maklakovs.
Leo arrived with his wife.[216] Boulanger--a nice man. Wrote letters
to everybody: Posha and Ivan Michailovich and Van-der-Veer. The
oppressive Leontev[217] was here.
There was something I wanted to write very much, but have forgotten....
A revolting report concerning the missionary congress in Kazan.[218]
There is noted: “Woman’s character”--and I remember that it was
something very good. Now I have forgotten. It seems to me that it
was that the peculiarity of woman’s character is that her feeling
alone guides her life, and that reason only serves her feeling.
She cannot even understand that feeling can be made subservient to
reason.
2) But there are not so many women--as there are such men--who do
not hear, do not see, the unpleasant, do not see it just as if it
didn’t exist.
3) When people haven’t the power to get rid of superstition and
they continue to pay tribute to it, and at the same time when they
see that others have freed themselves, they grow angry at those who
have freed themselves. “But I suffer when I commit stupidities and
he is free.”
4) Art, i.e., artists, instead of serving people, exploit them.
5) From the time I became old, I began to confuse people, ...
belonging or being marked in my mind as one type. So that I do not
know N, N N, but I know a collective personality to which N, N N,
belong.
6) We are so accustomed to the thought that everything is for us,
_that the earth is mine_, that when we have to die, we are surprised
that my earth, something belonging to me, will remain and I won’t.
Here the principal mistake is in thinking the earth as something
acquired and complementary to me, when it is I who am acquired by
the earth, an appendage to it.
7) How good it would be if we could live with the same concentration,
do the work of life--principally; communion among people--with that
concentration with which we play chess, read music, etc.
_Aug. 16. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day Sept. 19. Y. P._
More than a month I have made no entries. Things are the same and
the work has been advancing all the time. And it could advance still
more as to form, but there is absolutely no time. Such an amount
of work! A typist is making the final copy on a Remington. I have
reached the 19th chapter, inclusive.
During this time the important thing was the expulsion of
Boulanger.[219]
My work has been interrupted occasionally only by a letter to the
Swedish papers about the Dukhobors[220] on the occasion of the Nobel
prize.
Also ill health interrupted: a terrible boil on the cheek. I thought
it was a cancer, and I am happy that it was not very unpleasant to
think that: I am receiving a new appointment; one which in any case,
isn’t slipping past me.
St. John was here.[221]
My work was interrupted also by the arrival of the Molokans from
Samara--in reference to their children which were taken away.[222]
I wanted to write abroad and even wrote a very violent, and what
seemed to me, strong letter, but changed my mind. It was not to be
done before God. I have to try again.
To-day I wrote letters: to the Emperor,[223] to Olsuphiev,[224] to
Heath,[225] and to E. I. Chertkov,[226] and saw the Molokans off.
I wanted to write from my notebooks, but it is late. I am going
to bed.
_Sept. 20. Yasn. P. If I live._
_Sept. 20. Y. P._
Let me write even a few words. The boil still bothers me very much. I
have no full _liberté d’esprit_. I wrote the Swedish letter to-day,
and in the evening translated it into Swedish[227] with the Swede.
I am not writing from the notebook, but I will note that which
entered my head with special vividness.
Our life is so arranged that all our care for ourselves, the use of
our reason (our spiritual forces) for the care of ourselves, brings
only unhappiness. And yet this egotism is necessary in order to live
a separate life. That is His mysterious will. As soon as you live
for yourself, you perish; when you live beyond yourself, there is
peace and joy both for yourself and for others.
_Sept. 20. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day Sept. 22. Y. P._
... Yesterday I finished the translation with Langlet.
To-day I was busy with Art, but it didn’t go at all, and therefore
the preceding did not please me.
S. arrived to-day.
At night I thought of the separation of lust from love, and that
ether is a conception outside of the senses.
It is now past twelve in the morning. I am waiting for Ilya and
Andrusha. I have just now written a letter to the editor of the
_Tagblatt Stockholm_, and to Chertkov.
_September 23. Y. P. If I live._
_Oct. 2. Y. P._
I am working all the time on Art. The abscess is going away. I should
have liked more peace. Yes ...
_To-day Oct. 14. Y. P._
... I am still writing on art. To-day I corrected the 10th chapter.
I cleared up the vague parts.
I must write out the notebooks; I am afraid I have forgotten much.
1) There is no greater prop for a selfish, peaceful life, than the
occupation of art for art’s sake. The despot, the villain, must
inevitably love art. (I have jotted down something on this order,
but I can’t recall it now.)
2) I imagined clearly to myself how joyous, peaceful, and fully
free a life could be, if one gave oneself entirely to God, i.e.,
in every instance in life to seek only one thing: to do that which
He wants--to do that in sickness, in offence, in humiliation, in
suffering, in all temptations and in death--which would then be
only a change in appointment. Weakness, the non-fulfilment of that
which God wants--what happens then? Nothing: There is a return to
the consciousness that only in its fulfilment is life. The moments
of weakness--they are the intervals between the letters of life,
not life. Father, help me.
3) I saw in my sleep how I think, I say, that the whole matter lies
in making an effort, that very effort which is spoken of in the
Gospels: “The Kingdom of God is attained by effort.” Everything
that is good, everything that is real, every true act of life is
accomplished through efforts; make no effort, swim with the current
and you do not live. But, however, the ... doctrine preaches that
effort is sin, it is pride, it is relying on one’s own strength:
the lay doctrine says the same thing: effort by oneself is useless;
organisation, surroundings do everything. What error! Effort is more
important than anything. Every least little bit of effort: the
conquering of laziness, greed, lust, wrath, depression--is the most
important of important things; it is the manifestation of God in
life; it is _Karma_; it is the broadening of one’s “self.” Whatever
had been marked off is guess work.[228]
4) Details for _Hadji Murad_: 1) The shadow of an eagle over the
slope of a mountain; 2) at the river, on the sands, are tracks of
horses, animals, people; 3) riding into the forest, the horses snort
keenly; 4) from behind a clump of trees a goat jumped out.
5) When people are enthusiastic about Shakespeare, Beethoven, they
are enthusiastic about their own thoughts, dreams, which are called
forth by Shakespeare, Beethoven, just as people in love do not
love the object of their love, but what it calls forth in them.
In this enthusiasm, there is no true reality of art, but absolute
boundlessness.
6) Only then can one understand and feel God when one has understood
clearly the unreality of everything material.
7) Not long ago, in the summer, I felt God clearly for the first
time; that He existed and that I existed in Him; and that the only
thing that existed was I in Him: in Him, like a limited thing in
an unlimited thing, in Him also like a limited being in which He
existed.
(Horribly bad, unclear. But I felt it clearly and especially keenly
for the first time in my life.)
In general, I don’t know why, but I haven’t the same religious feeling
which I had when I formerly wrote my Journal for no one. The fact
that it was read and that it can be read, kills this feeling. But the
feeling was precious and helped me in life. I am going to begin anew
from the present date, the 14th, to write again as before--so that
no one will read it during my life time. If there will be thoughts
worth it, I can write them out and send them to Chertkov.[229]
8) A man incapable of repentance has no salvation from his sins.
Even if his sins are pointed out to him, he only gets angry at those
who point them out, and a new sin is added.
9) All attempts to live on the land and feed oneself by one’s own
labour have been unsuccessful, and could not help being unsuccessful
in Russia, because it is necessary for a man of our education feeding
himself by his own labour, to compete with the peasant--who fixes the
prices, beating them down by his offer. But he was brought up for
generations in stern life and stubborn work, while we were brought
up for generations in luxurious life and idle laziness. From this
it does not follow that one ought not to try to feed one’s self by
one’s own labour, but only that it is impossible to expect its
realisation in the first generation.
10) All calamities which are born from sex relations, from being in
love, come from this, that we confuse fleshly lust with spiritual
life, with--terrible to say--love; we use our reason not to condemn
and limit this passion, but to adorn it with the peacock feathers
of spirituality. Here is where _les extremes se touchent_. To
attribute every attraction between the sexes to sex desire seems very
materialistic, but, on the contrary, it is the most spiritual point
of view: to distinguish from the realm of the spiritual everything
which does not belong to it, in order to be able to value it highly.
11) Everything that I know is the product of my senses. My senses
demonstrate to me my limits, coming in contact with the limits of
other beings. This sensation, or the knowledge of limits, we recognise
and cannot recognise otherwise, than as matter. And in this matter
we see either only matter or beings who like us are bound by limits.
The beings near to us in size, from the elephant to the insect,
we know--we know their limits. The beings that are far from us in
size, like atoms or like the stars, we recognise as matter only.
But besides these two kinds of beings which we know by our senses,
we must inevitably acknowledge still other beings (not spiritual
beings like us,--that is obvious) not recognisable by our senses,
but which are material, i.e., they also form limits. Such beings are
atoms, ether. The presence of these beings, the admission of which
is demanded by our reason, undoubtedly proves that our senses give
us only a one-sided and a very limited knowledge of other beings
and of the outer world. So that we can imagine for ourselves such
beings endowed with such senses (_sens_) for whom ether would give
the very same reality, as matter for us.
(It is still unclear, but understandable.)
12) If we would always remember that our tongue was given us for
the transmission of our thoughts, and the capacity of thinking for
the understanding of God and His law of love, and that therefore
you must talk only then when you have something good to say! But
when you cannot say anything good, cannot keep back the bad--then
be silent, even all your life.
13) As soon as you have a disagreeable feeling towards a man, it
means there is something you don’t know. And you ought to find out:
you ought to find out the motives of that act which was disagreeable
to you. And as soon as you have understood the motives clearly then
it can anger you as little as a falling stone.
14) You get angry at a woman because she does not understand--or she
understands, but does not do that which her reason tells her. She
is unable to do it. Just as a magnet acts on iron and does not act
on wood, so are the conclusions of reason not binding on her--have
no motor power. For her feeling is binding, and the conclusions
of reasons are so only when they are transmitted by authorities,
i.e., by the feeling of the desire not to remain behind others. So
that she will not believe and will not follow an obvious demand of
reason, if it be not confirmed by an authority; but she will believe
and follow the greatest absurdity if only every one does it. She
cannot do otherwise. But we get angry. There are also many men like
that--womanish.
15) One has to serve others, not oneself, if only for the reason
that in the serving of others there is a limit and therefore it
is possible here to act rationally, build a house for him who is
without, buy cattle, clothes; but in the serving of oneself there
is no limit: the more you serve, the worse it is.
16) Time is only for the body: it is the relationship of beings with
the various limits seen by us, to beings whose limits we do not see;
to the movement of the sun, the moon, the earth, to the movement of
the sands in the hour-glass. And therefore time is for that which we
call the body, for that which has limits; but for that which has no
limits: for the spiritual--there is no time. Therefore you remember
only those times in which you lived spiritually. (Unclear, but was
clear.)
17) We suffer from ourselves, from the demands of our “self,” and
we all know that the only means for not suffering from that “self,”
is to forget it. And we seek forgetfulness in distractions, in
occupations with art, science, in wine, in smoking--and there is no
real forgetfulness. But God made it so that there should be only
one real forgetfulness, one that is real and always at hand--in the
care for others, in the serving of others.
But I forgot this and I live a terribly selfish life, and therefore
I am unhappy.
18) I went past the out-houses. I remembered the nights that I spent
there, and the youth and the beauty of Duniasha (I never had any
relation with her), her strong, womanly body. Where is it? It has
been long nothing but bones. What are those bones? What is their
relation to Duniasha? There was a time when those bones formed a
part of that separate being which had been Duniasha. Then this being
changed its centre and that which had been Duniasha became a part
of another being, enormous, inconceivable to me in magnitude, which
I call earth. We do not know the life of the earth, and therefore
we think it dead, just like an insect who lives one hour thinks my
body dead, because he does not see its movement.
19) Space is the relation of various limited beings among themselves.
It exists. But time is only the relation of the movement of living
beings among themselves, and the movement of matter which we consider
dead.
20) The most horrible of all is intoxication: of wine, of games, of
money greed, of politics, of art, of being in love. It is impossible
to speak with such people as long as they haven’t slept it off. It
is terrible.[230]
The letter to Stockholm has been printed.
_Oct. 15. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day Oct. 16. Y. P._
Did not write yesterday. My health is entirely improved.... From
Olga Dieterichs, a letter from Chertkov. It is evident that as a
result, he and she also have lived through difficult times.[231]
Last night and to-day, I wanted to write _Hadji Murad_. Began it.
It has a semblance of something, but I did not continue it, because
I was not in full mastery. I ought not to spoil it by forcing. Up
to now the _Peterburgskia Viedomosti_ has not printed it.[232]
I have noted:
1) I have noted many resolutions, rules, which if I could remember,
I would live well. But the rules are too many, and it is impossible
to remember them always. The same thing as to imitations of art: the
rules are too many, and to remember them always is impossible; it
ought to come from within, be guided by feeling. The same thing in
life. If only you are touched by feeling, if you live in God, then
you would not recede from a single rule and you would do more than
is in the rules. If one could only always be in this state.
But to-day, just now, I was in the worst mood. I was angry with
everything. What does it mean? How explain this state to oneself?
2) This explanation came to me: the soul, the spiritual essence,
can live in its own centre or within its own limits. Living in
itself, it is not conscious of its limits; living in the periphery
it incessantly and painfully feels its limits. A release from this
state is the recognition of the illusion of the material world, to
go away from the limits, to concentrate in oneself. (Unclear.)
_Oct. 17. Y. P. If I live._
_Oct. 17. Y. P. 12 midnight._
... Help me, Lord, to act not according to my will, but according
to Thine. Received a letter from N about Beller and other
ministers who preach the inconsistency of military service and
Christianity,[233] and about Chertkov, that he was fussy, had sinned
and had fallen ill.[234]
Am correcting the 10th chapter, it is about to be sent off.[235]...
My letter was printed in the _Peterburgskia Viedomosti_.
I thought: The road of all evil and of all suffering is not so much
ignorance as false knowledge--deception. _The Appeal_ ought to be
finished with an appeal for all to help towards the abolition of
deception.
_Oct. 18. Yasn. Pol. If I live._
Yesterday I made no notes; _to-day Oct. 19_. _Y. P._
... Both yesterday and to-day I felt great apathy, although I was
well. I don’t feel like working. Corrected Chapters 13, 14, 15. I
received the re-copied chapters from Moscow and the conclusion.
Yesterday I went to Yasenki. To-day I chopped wood and carried it.
Novikov was here. Viacheslav[236] spent the night. To-day a letter
from Boulanger. I want to write to him right away and to my wife.
I ought to write to Salomon.
Solitude nevertheless is very pleasant.
_Oct. 20. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day Oct. 21. Y. P._
Received proof of the Carpenter article from _Sieverni Viestnik_ and
began to write a preface. Corrected _Art_, received letters from
Chertkov and Boulanger.
Yesterday my work didn’t go. Went to Yasenki.
Just now, remaining alone after my work, I asked myself what I should
do, and having no personal desire (except the bodily demands arising
only when I want to eat or sleep) I felt so keenly the joy of the
knowledge of the Will of God, that I need and want nothing but to do
what He wants. This feeling arose as a result of the question which
I myself put to myself when I remained alone in the silence: Who am
I? Why am I? And the answer came so clearly by itself: No matter
who and what I am, I have been sent by some one to do something.
Well, let me do that work. And so joyously and so well did I feel
my fusion with the Will of God.
This is my second live feeling for God. Then I simply felt love for
God. At this moment, I cannot remember how it was; I only remember
that it was a joyful feeling.
Oh, what happiness is solitude! To-day it is so good: you feel God.
_Oct. 22. Y. P. If I live._
_Oct. 22. Y. P._
I am writing in the evening. All day I did not feel like working.
I slept badly.... I corrected the 11th chapter in the morning, in
the evening I began the 12th. I was unable to do anything--there
is a boil on my head and my feet perspire. Is it from the honey?
Aphanasi[237] and Maria Alexandrovna were here.
It is evening now. I am alone and horribly sad. I have neither doubts
nor hurts, but am sad and want to cry. Oh, I must prepare myself
more, more, for the new appointment.
A letter from Grot;[238] I ought to give him “Concerning Art.”
Thought only this:
In childhood, youth, the senses (_sens_) are very definite, the
limits are firm. The longer you live, the more and more do these
limits become wiped out, the senses get dulled--there is established
a different attitude towards the world.
_Oct. 23. If I live._
_Oct. 26. Y. P._
A very strange thing: It is the third day that I cannot write. Am
displeased with everything that I have written. There is something
new and very important for _Art_, but I cannot express it clearly
in any way.
A letter from Vanderveer. It is now morning, will go to the post.
_To-day Nov. 10. Y. P._
I have lived through much these two weeks. The work is still the
same; I think I have finished it. To-day I have written letters and
among them one to Grot to be set up in type. S was here, she left
for Moscow from Pirogovo, where we went together. It was good there.
Since I have come home, my back has ached and in the evening I have
fever. Alexander Petrovich[239] is writing in the house....
To-day I wrote 9 letters. One letter to Khilkov,[240] remained. How
terrible, his affair and condition. Mikhail Novikov was here and
also a peasant-poet from Kazan.
Have been thinking:
1) The condition of people who are befogged by a false religion is
just the same as in blindman’s-buff: they tie their eyes, then they
take them by their arms, and then they turn them around and finally
let them go. The same with everybody. Without this they do not let
them go. (For _The Appeal_.)
2) The most usual judgment about Christianity, especially among the
new Nietzschean reasoners, is that Christianity is a renunciation of
dignity, a weakness, a submissiveness. It is just the contrary. True
Christianity demands above everything else the highest consciousness
of dignity, a terrible strength and steadfastness. It is just the
contrary: The admirers of strength ought to debase themselves before
strength.
3) I walked in the village, and looked into the windows. Everywhere
there was poverty and ignorance. And I thought of the former slavery.
Formerly, the cause was to be seen, the chain which held them was
to be seen; but now it is not a chain--in Europe they are hairs,
but they are just as many as those which held Gulliver. With us the
ropes are still to be seen, well--let us say the twine; and there
there are hairs, but they hold so tightly that the giant-people
cannot move.
There is one salvation: not to lie down, not to fall asleep. The
deception is so strong and so adroit that you often see that those
very people which it sucks and ruins, defend the vampires with
passion and attack those who are against them....
_November 11, Y. P. If I live._
_November 11, Y. P._
Since morning I have been writing _Hadji Murad_--and nothing has
come of it. But it is becoming clear in my head and I feel like
writing very much. I wrote a letter to Khilkov and to others, but I
shall hardly send the one to Khilkov. Maria Alexandrovna was here.
My health is entirely good.
_November 12, Y. P. If I live._
_November 12, Y. P._
To-day Peter Ossipov came:[241] “In our place they have begun to sell
indulgences.” The Vladimir-ikon was there and it was ordered through
the village elder, that the people be driven to the Church.[242]
N. found ore and considers it very natural that people shall live
under the ground, in danger of their lives, and he will receive the
income.
... The most important thing is that I have decided to write _The
Appeal_; there is no time to postpone it. To-day I corrected _On
Science_. It is evening now, have taken up two versions of _The
Appeal_, and am going to work on it.
_Nov. 14, Y. P._
... One thing I want: To do what is better before God. I don’t know
how yet. I slept badly at night; bad thoughts, wicked ones. And I am
apathetic, no desire to work. Corrected the preface _On Science_.
I made the following notes:
1) I read of the behavior of the English in Africa. It is all
terrible. But the thought came to my head: Perhaps it was unavoidably
necessary in order that enlightenment should penetrate these peoples.
At first I was absorbed in the thought and it occurred to me that
thus it had to be done. What nonsense! Why should not people, living
a Christian life, go in simply like Miklukha-Maklai,[243] live with
them, but is it necessary to trade, make drunkards of them, kill?
They say: “If people were to live as Christians, they would have
no work.” Here is the work and it is an enormous work: while the
Gospels are being preached to all creation.
2) Science, losing its religious basis, has begun to study trifles--in
the main, it has ceased to study important things. From that time
on was formed the theory of experimental science, Bacon.
3) I was thinking, _pendant_ to _Hadji Murad_, of writing about
another Russian brigand, Gregori Nicholaev. He should see the whole
lawlessness of the life of the rich, he should live as a watchman
of an apple-orchard on a rich estate with a _lawn-tennis_.[244]
4) To-day I am in a very bad mood, and it is very difficult for me to
remember, to imagine to myself what I am when I am in a good mood.
But it is absolutely necessary, so as not to despair and not do
something bad when in a bad mood, to abstain from every activity.
Is it not the same in life? One ought not to believe that I am this
good-for-nothing which I feel myself to be, but to make an effort,
remember what I am _there_, what I am in _spirit_, and live according
to that remembered “self,” or do not live at all--abstain.
5) “_Toute réunion d’hommes est toujours inférieure aux éléments qui
la composent._”[245] This is so because they are united by rules. In
their own natural union, as God has united them, they are not only
not lower, but many times higher.
I read Menshikov’s article. There is much that is good in it: about
one-God and many Gods, and much that is very weak; the examples.[246]
_Nov. 15, Y. P. If I live._
_Nov. 15, Y. P._
I worked badly on the preface to Carpenter. After dinner, in the
blizzard, I went to Yasenki. Took Tania’s letter. Returned--and here
for the first time I knew prostration. Then drank tea--recovered.
Read but did nothing. Wrote a letter only to Maude in answer to his
remarks.[247]
I thought this trifle: that love is only good then when you are
not conscious of it. It suffices to be conscious of the love, and
moreover to rejoice in it--and there is an end to it.
_Nov. 16, Y. P. If I live._
_To-day, Nov. 17. Y. P._
For the second day, I have been thinking with special clearness
about this:
1) My life, my consciousness of my personality, gets weaker and
weaker all the time, will become still weaker and will end in coma,
and in an absolute end of the consciousness of my personality. At
the same time, absolutely simultaneously and in the same tempo with
the destruction of my personality, that thing will begin to live,
and will live ever stronger and stronger, that which my life made,
the results of my thought, feelings; it is living in other people,
even in animals, in dead matter. And so I feel like saying that this
is what will live after me.
But all this lacks consciousness, and therefore I cannot say that
it lives. But who said that it lacked consciousness? Why can I not
suppose that all this will be united in a new consciousness which
I can justly call _my_ consciousness, because it is all made from
my consciousness? Why cannot this other new being live among these
things which live now? Why not suppose that all of us are particles
of consciousness of other higher beings, such as we are going to be?
“My Father has many dwellings.”[248] Not in the sense that there
are various places, but that the various consciousnesses,
personality, are inter-enclosed and interwoven one into the other.
In fact, the whole world as I know it, with its space and time, is
a product of my personality, my consciousness. As soon as there
is another personality, another consciousness, then there is an
entirely different world, the elements of which are formed by our
personalities. Just as when I was a child, my consciousness awoke
little by little (which made it so that even when a child, an embryo,
I saw myself as a separate being), so it will awake and is awakening
now--in the consequences of my life, in my future “self” after my
death.
“The Church is the body of Christ.”[249] Yes, Christ, in his new
consciousness, lives now through the life of all the living and
dead and all the future members of the Church. And in the same way
each one of us will live through his own church. And even the most
valueless man will have his own valueless and perhaps bad church,
but a church which will create his new body. But how? This is what
we cannot imagine, because we cannot imagine anything which is
beyond our consciousness. And there are not many dwellings, but many
consciousnesses.
But here is the last, most terrible, insoluble problem: What is it
for? For what is this movement, this passing over from some lower,
more separate consciousnesses, into a more common, higher one? For
what--that is a mystery which we cannot know. It is for this that
God is necessary and faith in Him. Only He knows it and one must
have faith that so it ought to be.
2) And again I thought to-day, entirely unexpectedly, about the
charm--exactly the charm--of awakening love, when against the
background of joyous, pleasant, sweet relationships, that little
star suddenly begins to shine. It is like the perfume of the linden
or the falling shadow from the moon. There is no full-blown blossom
yet, no clear light and shadow, but there is a joy and fear of the
new, of the charming. This is good, but only when it is for the
first time and the last.
3) And again I thought about that illusion which all are subjected
to, especially people whose activity is reflected on others--the
illusion that, having been accustomed to see the effects of your
acts on others, you verify the correctness of your acts by their
effect on others.
4) I thought still further: For hypnotism it is necessary to have
faith in the importance of that which is being suggested (the
hypnotism of all artistic delusions). And for this faith, it is
necessary to have ignorance and cultivation of credulence.
To-day I corrected the preface to Carpenter. Received a telegram
from Grot. I want to send off the 10th chapter. A sad letter from
Boulanger.
Well, _Nov. 18, Y. P._ _If I live._
_To-day, Nov. 20. Evening._
Wrote the preface to Carpenter. Thought much about _Hadji Murad_
and got my materials ready. I still haven’t found the tone.
... I think with horror of the trip to Moscow.[250]
Last night I thought about my old triple remedy for sorrow and
offence:
1) To think how unimportant it will be in 10, 20 years, just as is
unimportant now that which tortured you 10, 20 years ago.
2) To remember what you did yourself, to remember those deeds which
were no better than those which are hurting you.
3) To think of that which is a hundred times worse, and might be.
This could be added; to think out the condition, the soul of the
man who makes you suffer, to understand that he cannot act in any
other way. _Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner._
The most important and the strongest and the surest of all is to say
to oneself: Let there not be my will, but Thine, and not as I wish
but as Thou wilt; and not that which I wish but that which Thou
wilt. My work, then, is under those conditions in which Thou hast
placed me, to fulfil Thy Will. To remember that when it is difficult,
it is just this very thing which has been assigned to you, it is
the very instance which will not be repeated, in which you may have
the happiness of doing that which He wishes.
Father, help me to do only Thy Will.
...
To-day I corrected the Carpenter translation. My stomach is not
good; bad mood and weakness.
_Nov. 21, Y. P. If I live._
_Nov. 21, Y. P._
I am still thinking and gathering material for _Hadji Murad_. To-day
I thought much, read, began to write but stopped at once. Went to
Yasenki, took S’s letter.[251] Received nothing.
Maria Alexandrovna was here. She is evidently tired, a poor girl
and nice.[252]
I thought and noted down:
1) I thought about death--how strange it is that one does not want
to die, although nothing holds one--and I thought of prisoners who
have become so at home in their prisons that they do not want to
leave them for freedom and are even afraid to. And so we have become
at home in the prison of our life and are afraid of freedom.
2) We have been sent here to do the work of God. In this sense, how
good is the parable about the servants who in the absence of their
master, squander his fortune away instead of doing his work.
3) When you are angry, when you do not love some one, know that it
is not you, but a dream, a nightmare, a most horrible nightmare.
As when they stop mowing in order not to spoil the grass, so it is
here. One ought to pray.
Rozanov discusses Menshikov and makes fun of him.[253] How ... (I
have forgotten) made fun of Nicholai, but he remained silent and
smiled at me gaily. How touching this always is.
_Nov. 22, Y. P. If I live._
_Nov. 22, Y. P._
I saw very clearly in a dream, how Tania fell from a horse, has
broken her head, is dying, and I cry over her.
_Nov. 24, Y. P._
... Yesterday and to-day I prepared some chapters to send them off
to Maude[254] and to Grot. There have been no letters for a long
time either from Maude, or from Chertkov. To-day there was a nice
letter from Galia. Exquisite weather; I took a walk far on the Tula
road.
In the morning I worked seriously revising _Art_. Yesterday I worked
on _Hadji Murad_. It seems clear.
During this time I thought:
1) What a strange fate: at adolescence--anxieties, passions begin,
and you think: I will marry and it will pass. And indeed it did pass
with me, and for a long period, 18 years, there was peace. Then
there comes the striving to change life and again the set-back.
There is struggle, suffering, and at the end, something like a haven
and a rest. But yet it wasn’t so. The most difficult has begun and
continues and probably will accompany me unto death....
2) It would be easy to treat erring people mildly, simply, patiently,
with compassion, if these people would not argue and would not argue
in such a truth-like fashion. One has to answer these arguments
somehow or other, and this you cannot stand.
3) Each of us is in such a condition that whether he wants to or
does not want to, he has to do something, to work. Every one of us
is on the treadmill. The question lies only in this, on which step
will you stand?
_Nov. 25. Y. P. If I live._
_Nov. 25, Y. P._
... Corrected _Art_, it is pretty good; wrote a letter to Maude. A
good letter from Galia.
Have been thinking:
1) It always seems to us that we are loved because we are good, but
it does not occur to us that we are loved because they who love us
are good. This can be seen if you listen to what that miserable,
disgusting and vain man says whom with a great effort you have pitied:
he says that he is so good you could not have acted otherwise. The
same thing, when you are loved.
2) “Lobsters like to be boiled alive.” That is no joke. How often do
you hear it, or have said it yourself or are saying it: Man has the
capacity of not seeing the suffering which he does not want to see.
And he does not want to see the suffering which he himself causes.
How often I have heard it said about coachmen who are waiting, about
cooks, lackeys, peasants at their work, that they are having a good
time--“Lobsters like to be boiled alive.”
_Nov. 26. Y. P. If I live._
_To-day, Nov. 28, Y. P._
Two days I haven’t written. I am still busy with _Art_ and the
preface to Carpenter....
This morning Makovitsky arrived, a nice, mild, clean man. He told me
many joyful things about our friends. I went to Yasenki: a letter
from Maude, a good one, and from Grot--not a good one.[255]
All these days, have not been in a good mood. How to be in Moscow
in such a state?
Have been thinking:
1) Often it happens that you are speaking to a man and suddenly he
has a tender, happy expression, and he begins to speak to you in
such a way that you think he is going to tell you something most
joyful, but it turns out--he is speaking about himself. Zakharnin[256]
about his operation, Mashenka[257] about her audience with Father
Ambrose[258] and his words.
When a man speaks about something which is very near to him, he
forgets that the other one is not he. If people do not speak about
abstract or spiritual things, they all speak necessarily about
themselves, and that is terribly tedious.
2) You dash about, struggle--all because you want to swim in your
own current. But alongside of you, unceasing and near to every one,
there flows the divine and infinite current of love, in one and
the same eternal course. When you are thoroughly exhausted in your
attempts to do something for yourself, to save yourself, to secure
yourself--then drop all your own courses, throw yourself into that
current--and it will carry you and you will feel that there are no
barriers, that you are at peace forever and free and blessed.
3) Only not to love oneself, one’s very self, one’s own Leo
Nicholaievich (Tolstoi)--and you will love both God and people.
You are on fire and you can’t help but burn; and burning you will
set fire to others and you will fuse with that other fire. To love
oneself means to be niggardly with one’s light and to put out the
fire.
4) When a man says an obvious untruth or an offence to you, then
certainly he doesn’t do it from joy: and both are very difficult.
If he does it then evidently he can’t do otherwise, and doing it,
he suffers. And you, instead of pitying him, get angry at him. On
the contrary, you ought to try to help him.
5) The tragedy of a man kindly disposed, wishing only the good, when
in this state and for this state, which he cannot help but count as
good, he meets hissing malice and the hatred of people.
_Nov. 28. If I live. Y. P._
_To-day, Dec. 2. Y. P._
Agonising, sad, depressed state of body and spiritual force, but I
know that I am alive and independent of this condition, yet I feel
this “self” but little....
I was busied all this time with corrections and additions to _Art_.
The principal thing during this time, was that Dushan was here whom
I love very much and learned to love still more. Together with the
Slavonian Posrednik, he is forming a center of a small, but I think
divine work.[259] From Chertkov there is still no news.
An anguish, a soft, mild, sweet anguish, but yet an anguish. If I
were without the consciousness of life, then probably I would have
had an embittered anguish.
Have been thinking:
1) I was very depressed at the fear of vexation and severe
conflicts, and I prayed God--prayed almost without expecting aid,
but nevertheless I prayed: “Lord, help me to go away from this.
Release me.” I prayed like this, then rose, walked to the end of
the room and suddenly I asked myself: Have I not to yield? Yes, to
yield. And God helped--God who is in me, and I felt light-hearted
and firm. I entered that divine current which flows there alongside
of us always and to which we can always give ourselves when things
are bad.[260]
2) I had a talk with Dushan. He said that since he has become
involuntarily my representative in Hungary, then how was he to act.
I was glad for the opportunity to tell him and to clarify it to
myself that to speak about Tolstoyanism, to seek my guidance, to ask
my decision on problems, is a great and gross mistake. There is no
Tolstoyanism and has never been, nor any teaching of mine; there is
only one eternal, general, universal teaching of the truth, which
for me, for us, is especially clearly expressed in the Gospels. This
teaching calls man to the recognition of his filiality to God and
therefore of his freedom or his slavery (call it what you want): of
his freedom from the influence of the world, of his slavery to God,
His will. And as soon as man understands this teaching, he enters
freely into direct communication with God and he has nothing and no
one to ask.
It is like a man swimming in a river with an enormous overflow. As
long as the man isn’t in the middle current, but in the overflow, he
has to swim himself, to row, and here he can be guided by the course
taken in swimming by other people. Here also I could direct people
while I myself approach the current. But as soon as we enter the
current, then there is no guide and cannot be. We are all carried
along by the strength of the current, all in one direction, and
those who were behind can be in front. When a man asks where shall
he swim, that only shows that he has not yet entered the current
and that he from whom he asks, is a poor guide if he were unable
to bring him into the current, i.e., to that state in which it is
impossible--because it is senseless--to ask. How ask where to swim,
when the current with irresistible force is drawing me in a direction
that is joyous to me?
People who submit themselves to a guide, who have faith in him and
listen to him, undoubtedly wander in the dark together with their
guide.
I think I have finished _Art_.
_Dec. 3. Y. P. If I live._
My work on _Art_ has cleared up much for me. If God commands me to
write artistic things, they will be altogether different ones. And to
write them it will be both easier and more difficult. We shall see.
_To-day, Dec. 6, Moscow._
On the 4th I went to Dolgoe.[261] I had a very tender impression
from the ruined house; a swarm of memories.
Almost two days that I haven’t written. I only prepared the chapters
on _Art_ and packed my things ... I have jotted down nothing. I woke
feeling badly.
_Dec. 7, Moscow._
... I was at Storozhenko’s.[262] Kasatkin was here[263] in the
evening. I asked for examples. In the morning I corrected _Art_.
I jotted down nothing: there is much bustle. Health good.
_Dec. 8, Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, 11th._
I have already spent so many days in Moscow. I have done almost
nothing, only corrected _Art_. A pile of people and letters. Thank
God the most important is good, i.e., I have done nothing that I
ought not to have done. To-day I wrote a letter to Gali.
It seems to me that the divisions of _Art_ have turned out just as
they were before.
A sad impression was produced by what N told about Chertkov[264]
and by the letter of Ivan Michailovich. Moreover, A, B, C, D,--they
are all suffering. Well, it is forgivable in them, but how can a
Christian suffer?
During this time N N’s condition became clear. He is mentally
diseased, like all people who are non-Christians.
I have consented to give to Troubetskoi by instalments.[265]
A sad letter from Chertkov. I want to write to him.
_Dec. 12, Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, the 13th. Morning._
I wrote a letter to the Chertkovs. It seems to me I have corrected
the 16th chapter very well.
Yesterday I read the correspondence of Z on the sex-problem and I
was very indignant and I spoke disagreeably to him at Rusanov’s.
Rusanov has the head of Hadji Murad. This morning I wanted to write
_Hadji Murad_--I lost the outline.
I wrote down something. I now want to write out the themes which
are worth while and which can be treated as they ought to be:
1) Sergius, 2) Alexander I, 3) Persianninov, 4) the tale of
Petrovich--the husband, who died a pilgrim. The following are
worse: 5) the legend of the descent of Christ into hell and the
reconstruction of hell, 6) a forged coupon, 7) Hadji Murad, 8) the
substituted child, 9) the drama of the Christian resurrection and
perhaps 10) Resurrection--the trial of a prostitute, 11) (excellent)
a brigand killing the defenceless, 12) a mother, 13) an execution
in Odessa.[266]
It is depressing in the house, but I want to be and will be joyous.
I am going to write out only two things:
1) That the physical union with an accidental husband is one of the
means established by God for the spread of His truth: for the testing
and the strengthening of the stronger and for the enlightenment of
the weaker.
2) For people professing filiality to God, not to rejoice in life, to
yearn, is a dreadful sin, an error. If you understood that the end
of life is the activity for God for no personal ends, then nothing
could hinder this activity, could hold it back. The main thing is
that life willy-nilly goes forward to the better: one’s own life
and the life of the world. How not rejoice at this movement? One
has only to remember that life is movement.
I write and I sleep and therefore express myself badly. Until evening,
if I live.
_To-day, December 14, Moscow. Morning._
Yesterday I received an unpleasant letter from Chertkov and sent
him an answer (about the publications).[267]
The day before yesterday, I read the correspondence of Z about sex
relations and became vexed and went to the Rusanovs’ and met Z there
and showed my condemnation of him sharply. That tortured me and I
wrote him a note yesterday apologising and I received a nice answer
which touched me.
I feel very ill. I am in the worst mood and therefore am dissatisfied
with everything and cannot love. And just now am thinking:
We find sickness a burden; but sickness is a necessary good condition
of life. Only it alone (perhaps not alone, but one of the most
important and generally common conditions) prepares us for death,
i.e., for our crossing over into another life. Therefore indeed it
was sent to every one: to children, to adults, to old people, because
all, at all ages, die. And we find it burdensome. The fact that we
find sickness burdensome shows only that we do not live as we ought
to: both a temporary and at the same time an eternal life--but we
live only a temporary life.
Sickness is the preparation for the crossing-over and therefore to
grumble against sickness is just the same as grumbling against cold
and rain. One ought to make use of them and not grumble. In fact,
only those who live playing, get angry at the rain, but those who
live seriously rejoice at it. The same with sickness. More than
this: not only sickness but a bad mood, disappointment, sorrows,
all these help to detach oneself from the worldly and facilitate
the crossing-over into the new life.
I am now in such a state of crossing-over.
_Evening, the 14th._
The whole day I have been ill and I am in the worst mood. I cannot
master myself and everything is disagreeable and burdensome. I did
nothing. I read and talked.
_Dec. 15, Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, December 17._
To-day, I am still in the very worst spirits. I am struggling with
ill-will. I gave the essay away.[268] Telegraphed to England. No
answer as yet.[269]
A pile of people here, all evening. To-day I wrote twelve letters,
but did not work at all.
To-day I thought the very oldest thing: That one ought to perfect
oneself in love, in which no one can interfere and which is very
interesting. But love is not in exclusive attachments, but in a
good, not in an evil attitude to every living being.
Wrote letters: 1) Posha, 2) Masha, 3) Ivan Michailovich, 4) Prince
Viazemsky, 5) Bondarev, 6) Strakhov, 7) the school teacher Robinson,
8) Priest, 9) Crosby, 10) Chizhov,[270] 11) Nicholaev in Kazan, and
12) ----[271]
I am finishing the note-book in a bad mood. To-morrow I begin a new
one. To-day I am also displeased with the essay on art.
_The diary of the year 1897, Dec. 21, ’97. Moscow._
I am beginning a new notebook, almost in a new spiritual mood. Here
are already 5 days that I have done nothing. I am thinking out _Hadji
Murad_, but I have no desire or confidence. _On Art_ is printed.
Chertkov is displeased and those here also.[272]
Yesterday I received an anonymous letter with a threat to kill, if
I do not reform by the year 1898; time is given only up to 1898. I
was both uneasy and pleased.[273]
I am skating. A sign of an inactive mood is that I have noted down
nothing.
Just now I read through Chekhov’s, _On a Cart_. Excellent in
expressiveness, but rhetorical as soon as he wants to give meaning
to his story. There is a remarkable clearness in my mind, thanks to
my book on art.
_Dec. 26, ’97. Moscow._
The day before yesterday I fell ill and I am still not well.[274]
I am reading much. My heart is heavy. Evening.
_Dec. 27, ’97. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, Dec. 29, ’97. Moscow. Morning._
I thought of _Hadji Murad_. All day yesterday a comedy-drama, “The
Corpse,”[275] took shape. I am still unwell. Yesterday I was at
Behrs’.[276]
I have received letters with threats of killing. I regret that there
are people who hate me, but it interests me little and it doesn’t
disturb me at all.
Have jotted down something.
A conversation with N: what a pitiable youth: understanding everything
and at the same time not having the capacity to put anything in the
right place and therefore he is living in unimaginable confusion.
Have been thinking:
1) They say usually that Christ’s teaching, the real Christ’s
teaching ... destroys all union, that it is a disuniting
“individualism.” How false this is! Christianity only therefore
preaches personal salvation, “individualism,” as they say, because
this personal salvation is indispensable, accessible, joyous to
all, and therefore inevitably unites people--not mechanically by
the pressure of force from without or by stirring with “culture,”
but chemically by an inner, indissoluble union.
2) Sometimes you complain that they do not love your soul, but love
or do not love your body, and you are angry at them, condemning them,
but you do not see that they cannot do otherwise: for them your
soul, the holy of holies of your soul, that which--as you know--is
the only real thing, the only thing that acts--is nothing, because
it is invisible, like the chemical rays of the spectrum.
3) There are people, mainly women, for whom the word is only the
means for an attainment of an end, and it is entirely devoid of its
fundamental significance which is to be an expression of reality.
These people are sometimes terribly strong. Their advantage is like
that which a man would have who in fencing took off the cork from
the rapier. His adversaries are bound by conditions that ... No, the
comparison is not good. The best of all: they are like a gambler in
cards, a sharper. I will find one.
The examples of this are such: a man wants, for instance, to steal;
he takes other people’s money; he says that he was charged to do
it, they asked him to, and he believes that he was asked to. And
the proof of the untruth of his evidence he refutes with a new lie.
He kills: the murdered one suffered so, that he begged him to kill
him. He wants to do something nasty or something foolish. Well, to
turn all the furniture upside down or to debauch--and he explains in
detail, how it was recognised by doctors, that it was necessary to
do this periodically, etc. And he convinces himself that it is so.
But when this proves to be not so, he does not hear, he brings forth
his own arguments and then at once forgets both his own arguments
and other people’s. These people are terrible, horrible.
4) The spiritualists say that after death the soul of people lives
on and communicates with them. Soloviev, the father,[277] said
truly, I remember, that this is the Church dogma of saints, of
their intercession and of prayers to them. Evgenie Ivanovich also
said truly that as the Pashkov Sect is a taking out of the dogma
of the Redemption alone and the adaptation of everything to it,
so spiritualism is the taking out of the dogma of saints, and the
adaptation of everything to it.
5) But I say the following in regard to this dogma of the soul:
What we call the soul, is the divine, spiritual, limited in us in
our bodies. Only the body limits this _divine_, this _spiritual_.
And it is this limiting which gives it a form like a vessel gives
form to a liquid or a gas which is enclosed in it. But we only know
this form. Break the vessel and that which is enclosed in it will
cease to have that form which it has and will spread out, be carried
off. Whether it combines with other matter, whether it receives a
new form--we know nothing about this, but we know for a fact that
it loses that form which it had when it was limited, because that
which limited it was destroyed. The same with the soul. The soul
after death ceases to be the soul and remaining a spirit, a divine
essence, becomes something other, such that we cannot judge.
I wrote the preface to Chertkov.[278]
_Dec. 30. Moscow. If I live._
1898
Two days have passed. _Jan. 1st._
I meet the new year very sad, depressed, unwell. I cannot work and
my stomach aches all the time.
Received a letter from Verkholensk from Phedoseev about the Dukhobors,
a very touching one.[279]
Still another letter from the editor _The Adult_ about free love.[280]
If I had time, I would like to write about this subject. Probably I
shall write. The most important is to show that the whole matter lies
in appropriating to oneself possibilities of the greatest enjoyment
without thinking of consequences. Besides, they preach something
which already exists and is very bad. Why would the absence of outer
_restraint_[281] improve the whole thing? I am, of course, against
any regulation and for full freedom, but the ideal is chastity and
not pleasure.
I have been thinking during this time only one thing and it seems
an important thing, namely:
1) We all think that our duty, our vocation, is to do various things:
bring up children, make a fortune, write a book, discover a law in
science, etc. But for all the work is only one thing: to carry out
one’s own life--to act so that life would be a harmonious, good, and
rational matter. And the work ought to be not before people, to leave
behind one a memory of a good life, but the work is before God: to
present to Him oneself, one’s soul, better than it was, nearer to
Him, more submissive to Him, more in harmony with Him.
To think so--and principally to feel so--is very difficult: One
always wanders off for human praise. But it is possible and ought
to be done.
Help me, Lord. I sometimes feel this and do at this moment.
_Jan. 2. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, already the 4th._
I am a little better. I want to work. Yesterday Stasov and
Repine,[282] coffee.... When will I remember that _much talk is much
bother_?
I received a pamphlet uncensored.
Only one thing has to be noted down: that all life is senseless,
except that which has for its end the service of God, the service
of the fulfilment of the work of God, which is unattainable to us.
I shall write that out later. Now I am in a hurry.
Dear Masha arrived, later Tania with Sasha.[283]
_Jan. 5. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, Jan. 13._
It is more than a week that I haven’t written and I have done almost
nothing. I have been ill all the time, and depressed. At times, I
am good and calm, and at times uneasy and not good. The day before
yesterday was difficult. Then the peasants arrived: Bulakhov, with
St., Pet., and two from Tula. I felt so light-hearted and energetic.
One need not yield to one’s own circle, one can always enter the
circle of God and His people.
It is long since I have been so depressed. A letter from Posha.
Wrote to Posha, Ivan Michailovich, Chertkov, Maude and Boulanger.
I am still endeavouring to find a satisfactory form for _Hadji Murad_
and I still haven’t it, although it seems I am nearing it.
... To-day a telegram about the work, “_What is Art?_”
Have made some notes and I think important ones.
1) Something of enormous importance and ought to be expounded well.
Organisation, every kind of organisation, which frees from any kind
of human, personal, moral duties. All the evil in the world comes
from this. They flog people to death, they debauch, they becloud
their minds and no one is to blame. In the tale of the resurrection
of hell, this is the most important and new means.[284]
2) Each one of us is that light, that divine essence, love, the Son
of God, enclosed in a body, in limits, in the coloured lantern which
we have painted with our passions and habits--so that everything we
see, we see only through this lantern. To raise oneself so as to
see above it, is impossible; on top there is the same kind of glass
through which we see even God, through the glass which we ourselves
have painted. The only thing which we can do is not to look through
the glasses, but to concentrate in ourselves, recognise our light
and kindle it. And this is the one salvation from the delusions of
life, from its suffering, from its temptations. And this is joyful
and always possible.
I do this, and it is good.
3) Dreams--they are nothing else than the looking on the world not
through the glasses, but only on the glasses, and on the interweaving
of various designs interwoven on the glasses. In sleep you only see
the glasses; when awake, the world, through the glasses.
4) A woman can, when she loves a man, see merits in him which he
has not, but when she is indifferent, she is unable to see a man’s
merits other than through the opinion of others. (However, I think
it is untrue.)
5) The following when I wrote it, seemed to me very important:
Christians strive to a union, and unite among themselves and with
other people by the Christian tool--by unity, humility, love. But
there are people who do not know this means of union, do not believe
in it and who endeavour to unite (all people endeavour to unite)
with other means, outer ones, with force, threats. It is impossible
to demand of these people who do not know, who cannot understand the
Christian means of union, that they do not make use of their means;
but it is absolutely unjust and unreasonable when these un-Christian
people impose their own lower means of union upon people knowing
and using a higher means. They say, “You Christians, you profit by
our means; if you have not been robbed and killed, it is thanks to
us.” To this the Christians answer, that they don’t need anything
which force gives them (as is really the fact for a Christian).
And that is why, though it is legitimate for people not knowing a
higher means of union, to use a lower, it is illegitimate, that they
look upon their own lower means as a general and unique one, and
want to compel those for whom it cannot be necessary to use it. The
principal step before humanity now consists in this, that people
should not only recognise and admit the means of Christian union, but
that they should recognise that it is the highest, the one to which
all humanity is striving and to which it will inevitably reach.
6) When you are full of energy, then you live, and you ought to live
for this world; when you are sick, then you are dying, i.e., you
begin to live for that other after-death world. So that in either
phase, there is work. When you are sick, dying, then concentrate in
yourself and think about death and about life after death, and stop
longing for this one. Both processes are normal and in both there
exists work proper to each state.
I feel somewhat fresher spiritually.
_Jan. 14, Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, 18._
My health is a little better. It is now evening. Wrote letters,
1) Chertkov; 2) Dubrovin; 3) Dubrovsky; Tver; 4) Tula: N. l. Kh.;
5) Nakashidze; 6) Ivan Michailovich.
To-day the plot of _Hadji Murad_ became clearer than ever before.
_Jan. 19. Moscow._
Depressing and unproductive. I cannot work. Several times a week I
remember that everything disagreeable is only an _Ermahnung_ for an
advance onward towards perfection.
Help, Father. Come and dwell within me. You already dwell within me.
You are already “me.” My work is only to recognise Thee. I write
this just now and am full of desire. But nevertheless I know who
I am.
_To-day, Feb. 2. Moscow._
Very weak and apathetic. All the time I either read or corrected
proofs of _Art_. There is much to be noted. But I have neither
strength nor desire. There have been no events, no letters.
_Feb. 3, Moscow. If I live._
_February 3, Moscow._
I am still as unproductive intellectually. In the morning it flashed
across my mind that I left out the places in _Art_ about the trinity,
and doing no work, I went to Grot and from there to the publishing
house. I returned past two, read, lay down, dined. _Tarovat_[285]
arrived, then Menshikov, Popov, Gorbunov, and then--Gulenko,[286]
Suller.[287]
Read Liapunov’s _The Ploughman_. I was very touched.[288]
Have noted down the following:
1) In moments of depression I want to ask help from God. And I may
ask it. But only such help which might help me and not interfere
with any one else. And such help is only one thing: love. Every
other kind of help, material help, not only might, but must come in
conflict with the material good of others. Only love alone--the
enlargement of love in oneself--satisfies everything which one can
want and does not come in conflict with the good of others. “_Come
and dwell within us._”
2) Women do not use words to express their thoughts, but to attain
their ends, and it is this purpose they hunt in the words of others.
That is why they so often understand people wrong side out. And this
is very disagreeable.
3) The meaning of life is only one: self-perfection--the bettering
of one’s soul. “Be perfect like our Father in Heaven.”
When things are difficult, when something tortures you, remember
that in life, only you are the life--and immediately it will become
easier. And joyful. As a rich man rejoices when he gathers his
wealth, so will you rejoice if you place your life only in this.
And for the attainment of this, there are no barriers. Everything
which appears like sorrow, like a barrier in life--is a wide step
which offers itself to your feet that you may ascend.
4) If you have the strength of activity then let it be a loving one;
if you have no strength, if you are weak, then let your _weakness_
be a loving one.
5) Inorganic matter is simply the life of that which we do not
understand. For fleas the inorganic is my finger-nail. In the same
way, evil is the non-understood good.[289]
6) To serve God and man, but how, with what? Perhaps the possibility
doesn’t exist? It is not true: the possibility has always been given
you--to become better.
7) Man is an ambassador, as Christ said, an ambassador indeed for
whom the important thing is only to fulfil the errand given to him,
and it doesn’t matter what is thought about him. Let them think
badly--sometimes it is necessary. Only let the errand be fulfilled.
8) One of the most common errors consists in this, that people
are considered good, malicious, stupid, intelligent. Man flows on
and every possibility is in him: he was stupid, and has become
intelligent; he was wicked and has become good, and the reverse.
In this is the greatness of man. And therefore it is impossible to
judge man as he is. You have judged and he is already another. It
is impossible to say--I do not love him: you have said it and he is
already another.
9) ...
10) The fact that the end of life is self-perfection, that the
perfection of the immortal soul is the only end of the life of man,
is already true because _every other end_ in the view of death, is
senseless.
11) If man deliberates upon the consequences of his act, then the
motives of his act are not religious.
12) The paper-knife on my knees fell over on account of its weight,
and it seemed to me that it was something alive, and I shuddered. Why?
Because there is a duty to everything living and I grew frightened
lest I hadn’t fulfilled it, and lest I had crushed, squeezed a living
being.
13) ... In this lies the whole matter--to destroy this hypnosis.
14) It is impossible not to wish that our acts be known and approved.
For him who has no God, it is necessary that his acts be known and
approved. But for him who has God, it is sufficient that they be
known. By this can it be verified if a man has God.
_4th Feb. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, the 5th. Morning._
I do not feel like writing at all. All these last days, especially
yesterday, I have been feeling and applying to life, the consciousness
that the end of life is one: to be perfect like the Father, to do
that which He does, that which He wants from us, i.e., to love; that
love should guide us in the moments of our most energetic activity,
and that we breathe with it alone in the moments of our greatest
weakness. Whenever there is something difficult, painful, then it
suffices to remember this, and all this difficulty, this pain, will
vanish and only the joyous will remain.
To a man who seriously, truly uses his reason, it is obvious that
all ends are closed to him. One alone is reasonable: to live for the
satisfaction of the demands of God, of his conscience, of his higher
nature. (It is all the same thing.) If this is to be expressed in
time, then to live so as to prepare one’s soul to the passing-over
into a better world: if this is to be expressed accurately in terms
outside of time, then it is to fuse one’s life with its timeless
principle, with the Good, with Love, with God. I am afraid only of
one thing, that this strong consciousness acting beneficially on
me, that the only thing reasonable and free and joyous is the life
in God, be not calloused, that it do not lose its effect of lifting
me out of the petty annoyances of life, and of freeing me. Oh, if
that could be so to every one and if it could be so forever! In this
light last night I considered the various manifestations of life and
I felt so well and joyous. I will await the examination. I shall
prepare for it.
When I wrote out the notes, I forgot:
1) How absurd is the argument of the enemies of moral perfection,
that a man, sacrificing himself really, will sacrifice his perfection
for the good of others, i.e., that a man is ready to become evil,
in order to act well. If one understands by this that a man is
ready to act badly before people, if only he could thereby fulfil
the demands of his conscience and not serve a certain cause or
even certain people, then this is true. The serving of a cause and
of people can sometimes coincide, and can sometimes not coincide
with the demands of conscience; and not serving a certain cause or
people, can sometimes coincide and can sometimes not coincide with
the demands of conscience. These are individual cases.
2) To doubt that the source of all evil is false religious teaching,
can only be done by a man who hasn’t thought of the causes of
the daily manifestations of social life. The causes of all these
manifestations are thoughts--thoughts of people. How then could false
thoughts not have an enormous influence on the social system? People,
some of them, are well off in a false system based on false thoughts;
it is natural that they support false thoughts, false-religious
teaching.
3) I cannot write and I suffer, I force myself. How stupid! As if
life lay in writing. It does not even lie in any outer activity.
It is not as I will, but as Thou wilt. It is even fuller and more
significant without writing. And here now I am learning to live
without writing. And I am able to.
4) I see that I have made a note and have already said it here,
namely, that to perfect oneself does not mean to prepare oneself for
a future life[290] (that is said for convenience, for simplicity of
speech); but to perfect oneself means to get nearer to that basis
of life for which time does not exist and therefore no death, i.e.,
to carry one’s “self” more and more away from the bodily life into
the spiritual.
5) Evgenie Ivanovich says about N: she is at peace only when one
occupies oneself with her. Any occupation with anything not concerning
her, does not interest her. Every such occupation with other people
offends her. It seems to her that she bears the life of every one
near her, that without her everybody would be lost. For the least
reproach, she insults every one. And in 10 minutes she forgets it,
and she hasn’t the least remorse.
This is the highest degree of egotism and madness, but there are many
grades approaching this. At bottom, to think that I live for myself,
for my own enjoyment, for fame, is absolute potential madness. In
living--it is impossible not to live for oneself, impossible not
to defend oneself when attacked,[291] not to fall on the food when
hungry; but to think that in this is life, and to use that very
thought given you to see the impossibility of such a life, to use
it for the strengthening of such a separate individual life, is
absolute madness.
6) A wife approaches her husband and caressingly speaks to him as
she did not speak before. The husband is moved, but this is only
because she has done something nasty.
7) Jean Grave,[292] “_L’individu et la Société_,” says that revolution
will only then be fertile when _l’individu_ will be strong-willed,
disinterested, good, ready to help his neighbour, will not be vain,
will not condemn others, will have the consciousness of his own
dignity, i.e., will have all the merits of a Christian. But how will
he acquire these virtues if he knows that he is only an accidental
chain of atoms? All these virtues are possible, are natural,
in fact, their absence is impossible when there is a Christian
world-point-of-view--that is, that we are sons of God sent to do
His Will; but in a materialistic world-point-of-view these virtues
are inconsistent.
It is now past one. I am going downstairs. I am going to write
to-morrow.
_Feb. 6. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day, Feb. 19. Moscow._
It is long since I have made any entries.[293] At first I was
ill. For about 5 days I have been better. During this time I was
correcting, putting in things and spoiling the last chapters of _Art_.
I decided to send away Carpenter with the introduction to _Sieverni
Viestnik_. Was correcting the preface also. The general impression
of this article “On Science” as well as that of the 20th chapter--is
remorse.[294] I feel that it is right, that it is necessary, but it
is painful that I hurt and grieve many good people who err. It is
obvious that .0999 will not understand why and in the name of what
I condemn science, and will be indignant. I should have done that
with greater kindness. And in this I am guilty, but it is now too
late.
The last time I wrote, I expressed fear lest the carrying over of
myself from this worldly life, the offending, the irritating one,
into the life before God, the eternal life (now, here) which I
experienced would become lost, would become calloused. But here 13
days have passed and I still feel this and felt it all the time and
rejoiced and am rejoicing.
Sometimes I begin to lay out patience, or hear an irritating
conversation, contradiction, or am dissatisfied with my writing,
with the condemnation of people, or I regret something--and suddenly
I remember that it only seems so to me, because I am bent over
searching on the floor, and it suffices to straighten up to my full
height and everything that was disagreeable, irritating, not only
vanishes, but helps the joys of triumph over my human weakness.
I haven’t yet experienced this in strong physical suffering. Will
it endure? It ought to endure. Help, Lord.
Otherwise I am very joyous.
I am joyous, that in old age there has been disclosed absolutely
a new condition of the great indestructible good. And this is not
imagination, but a change of soul as clearly perceived as warmth and
cold, it is a going over from confusion, suffering, to a clearness and
peace and a going over which depends upon myself. Here, in truth, is
where wings have sprouted. As soon as it becomes difficult, painful,
to walk on foot, you spread the wings. Why not always then on wings?
Evidently, I am still too weak; still untrained; and perhaps a rest
is necessary.
It is interesting to find out if this state is an attribute of old
age, if young people can experience it also? I think that they can.
One must accustom oneself to this. This indeed is prayer.
“You must hide something, be afraid of something, something tortures
you, something is lacking,”--and suddenly: there is nothing to hide,
nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be tortured over, nothing to
want. The main thing is to go away from the human court into God’s
court.
Oh, if this would only hold out unto death! But even for that which
I have experienced, I am grateful to Thee, Father.
I jotted down the following:
1) People can in no way agree to the unreality of all that is
material. “But a table exists and always, even when I go out of the
room it is there, and for all it is the same as it is for me,”--they
generally say. Well, and when you twist two fingers and roll a little
ball under them do you not unquestionably feel two? It is certainly
so, every time I take up a little ball in that way there are two
and for every one who takes up a ball in that way there are two,
and nevertheless there are no two little balls. In the same way,
the table is a table only for the twisted fingers of my senses, but
it is perhaps half a table, a thousandth of a table--in fact, no
part of a table at all, but something altogether different. So that
what is real is only my ever recurring impression, confirmed by the
impressions of other people.
2) ... I acted badly when I gave my estate to the children. It would
have been better for them. Only it was necessary to have been able
to do this without violating love, and I was unable.
3) You are often surprised how intelligent, good people can defend
cruelty, violence, savage superstitions...? But it is sufficient
to remember the exilings, the oppressions, the offences, which are
beginning to penetrate the working-classes and you see that this is
only a feeling of self-preservation. Only by this is explained the
tenacity of life....
4) Pharesov told me about Malikov’s[295] teaching. All this was
beautiful, all this was Christian: be perfect like your Father; but
it was not good that all this teaching had for its end influence
over people and not inner satisfaction, not an answer to the problem
of life. Influence on others is the main Achilles’ heel.
So that my condition, which is false for people, is perhaps the very
thing necessary.
5) ... In order to wipe out one’s sin, one ought to ... repent before
all the people for the deception, to say: forgive me that I have
deceived you ... What a strong scene! And a true one.
6) Our art with its supplying of amusement for the rich classes,
is not only similar to prostitution, but it is nothing else than
prostitution.
_Feb. 20. Moscow._
_To-day, Feb. 25. Moscow._
Have made no entries; corrected something. Wrote letters to-day,
more than 7 letters. But I can’t write anything, although I haven’t
stopped thinking about _Hadji Murad_ and _The Appeal_.
_Feb. 26. Moscow. If I live._
Have made no entries for more than three weeks. To-day _March 19_.
_Moscow._
Finished all my letters. During this time wrote serious letters:
1) To the American colony,[296] 2) _Peterburgskia Viedomosti_ about
the Dukhobors;[297] 3) to the English papers also about the Dukhobors,
and 4) a preface to the English edition _What is Art_--about the
censor distortions.[298]
My inner life is the same. As I foresaw, the new consciousness of life
for God, for the perfection of love, has become dulled, weakened,
and when I needed it, these days, it proved itself to be, if not
exactly ineffectual, yet less effectual than I expected.
The principal event during this time was the permission to the
Dukhobors to emigrate.
_What is Art?_ seems to me to be entirely finished now.
...
I have worked very little during all this time. I made rather many
notes; I shall try to write them out:
1) One of the greatest errors in summing up a man, is that we call,
we define a man as intelligent, stupid, good, evil, strong, weak. But
man is everything, all possibilities, is a flowing matter.[299] This
is a good theme for an artistic work and a very important one and a
good one, because it destroys malicious judging--“the cancer”--and
assumes the possibility of everything good. The workers of the devil,
convinced of the presence of bad in man, achieve great results:
superstition, capital punishment, war. The workers of God would
attain greater results, if they believed more in the possibility of
good in people.
2) They want to become the masters of China--the Russians, Japan,
England, the Germans: there are quarrels, diplomatic struggles, there
will even be military ones. And all this is only for the mixing of
the yellow race into one Christian batter, the propagating and the
assimilating of ideas like the Crusades and the Napoleonic wars.
3) Lebon writes: “Not only are they going to make food in
laboratories, but there will be no need for labour.” People have so
badly distributed their two functions, food and labour, that instead
of joy, these functions are a torture to them and therefore they
want to be freed from them. It is just the same as if people would
so pervert their functions of perspiration and breathing, that they
would seek a way of changing them by an artificial method.
4) The longer you live, the less time there remains for life. For an
endless duration of life, there would then be absolutely no life.
5) Only when you live without consideration of time, past or future,
do you live a real, free life for which there are no obstacles.
You are only then dissatisfied, in straits, when you remember the
past (the offences, the contradictions, even your own weaknesses)
and when you think of the future: will something be or will it not
be? Only at one point, do you fuse with God and live your divine
essence: in the present (even when you live your animal life).
Whenever you use your reason to consider what will be, then you are
weak, insignificant; but whenever you use it to do the will of Him
who sent you, then you are omnipotent, free. You can even see this
in the way you immediately weaken, become deprived of strength, when
you consider the consequences of your act.
_To-day, March 21. Moscow._
I continue copying. I am very indisposed, weak, but thank God, in
peace, I live in the present. Just now I put in order the papers
on _Art_.
6) Socialists will never destroy poverty and the injustice of the
inequality of capacities. The stronger, the more intelligent, will
always make use of the weaker, the more stupid. Justice and equality
of goods will never be attained by anything less than Christianity,
i.e., by negating oneself and by recognising the meaning of one’s
life in the service to others.
7) I have written down the same as in the 5th, but differently. In
order to live with God, by God and in God, it is necessary not to
be guided by anything from without. Neither by that which was nor
by that which can be; to live only in the present, only in this, to
fuse with God.
8) Intelligent Socialists understand that for the attainment of their
ends the principal thing is to lift the working men intellectually and
physically. This is possible to be done only by religious education,
but they do not understand this and therefore all their work is in
vain.
9) “Seek the Kingdom of God and His Right, the rest will follow
you”--this is the only means of attaining the ends of Socialism.
10) For _The Appeal_:
All are agreed that we live not as we ought to or as we could. The
remedy of some is this: a religious fatalism and, still worse, a
scientific, evolutionary one. Others comfort themselves by the
gradual bettering and bettering of things by themselves: the step
by step people. The third assert that everything will establish
itself when things will reach their very worst (Socialism), when the
Government and the rich classes will control everybody fully, i.e.,
the working-men, and then the power will somehow or other make a
somersault not only to working-men, but to unerring disinterested
self-sacrificing working-men, who will then direct all affairs
without error and without sin. The fourth say that to improve the
whole matter, it is possible only by the destruction of evil people,
the bad ones. But there is no indication where the bad people end
and where the harmless ones, if not the good ones, begin. Either
they will destroy every one as bad or as in the big revolution
they will catch the good ones with the bad. As soon as you begin
to judge strictly, no one will remain in the right. What is to be
done? But there is only one instrument: a religious change in the
soul of people. And it is this change which is interfered with, by
all imaginary remedies.
11) My body is nothing else than that piece of everything existing
which I am able to govern.
12) The whole world is that which I sense. But what am I? It is that
which acts.
13) How good it would be to write a work of art, in which there
would be clearly expressed the flowing nature of man: that he, one
and the same man, is now a villain, now an angel, now a wise man,
now an idiot, now a strong man, now the most impotent being.
14) Every man, as all people, being imperfect in everything, is
nevertheless more perfect in some one thing than in another. And
these perfections, he puts over another human being as a demand,
and condemns him.
15) It is impossible to serve, not “God and mammon,” but “mammon and
God.” The service of mammon--every kind of vanity--is a hindrance to
the service of God. Peace, solitude, even boredom, is a necessary
condition to the service of God. In Moscow religiously they are the
most savage of people. In Paris--they are still more savage.
16) There is a kind of English toy called _peepshow_: behind a
little glass, now one thing is shown, now another. This is the way
one ought to show man--_Hadji Murad_: a husband, a fanatic, etc.
17) Not long ago I experienced a feeling, not exactly a reasoning,
but a feeling--that everything that is material, and I myself with my
own body, is only my own imagination, is the creation of my spirit
and that only my soul _exists_. It was a very joyous feeling.
18) ... does on the other hand the same thing that a false religious
education does; it accustoms people to deny their reason.
19) There are two points of view of the world: 1) the world is
something definitely existing, that is, existing in definite forms,
and 2) the world is something continually flowing, being formed,
going towards something. In the first point of view, the life of
humanity also appears as something definite, consisting in the
peaceful use of the goods of the world. In this point of view--there
is a continuous dissatisfaction, and discontent with the construction
of the world. It does not fulfil the demands which are presented.
In the second point of view, the life of humanity is conceived as
something which in itself changes and helps to the change and the
attainment of the ends of the world. And in this point of view there
is no dissatisfaction or discontentment with the construction of
the world. And if there is discontent, it is only with one’s self,
for one’s insufficient harmony to the movement of the world and in
not helping this movement. (Unclear.)
20) Administrative ambition and greed of misers are therefore
alluring, because they are very simple. For every other end of
life one has to reflect much, to think, and often you do not see
the results clearly. And here it is so simple: where there was one
decoration there will be two: where there was one million there will
be two, etc.
21) I spoke to Evgenie Ivanovich and said to him that I envy his
freedom; but he said to me that things are very difficult for him
just on account of this freedom and even on account of the authority
and the responsibility which is connected with it. So that it only
seems to me, that some one is better off and that another is worse,
as the strong man to the weak, the healthy to the sick, the rich to
the poor. And it became suddenly clear to me that all the differences
in our conditions in the world are as nothing compared with our
inner conditions. It is just the same, as it would be a matter of
indifference if a man fell from a boat into the Azov Sea, the Black,
the Mediterranean or into the ocean, in comparison with whether he
was able to swim or not.
22) I spoke with P about the woman question. There is no woman
question. There is the question of freedom of equality for all human
beings. The woman question is only quarrel hunting.
23) The more one is guilty before his own conscience, though hidden,
the more willingly and involuntarily he seeks the guilt of others
and especially those before whom he had been guilty.
24) As soon as you go away into the past or the future, you go away
from God and then you immediately become lonely, deserted, unfree.
25) I began to think about myself, about my own hurts and my own
future life--and I came to my senses. And it was so natural to say
to myself: and you, what business is Leo Nicholaievich (Tolstoi) of
yours? And I felt better. Thus there is the one who is hindered by
the base, stupid, vain, sensual, Leo Nicholaievich.
26) As soon as you begin to think of the future, you begin to
guess. If the patience comes out, then this will happen. But this
is madness! And it is bound to come, because to think of the future
is the beginning of madness.
I have finished everything. It is now past one, the 21st.
_March 22. Moscow. If I live._
_April 12. Moscow._
Among the events during this time was the arrival of the Dukhobors,[300]
the cares for their emigration, the death of Brashnin.[301] Occupations:
_Carthago delenda est_[302] and _Hadji Murad_. Worked rather little.
The spiritual state rather good. Visitors--most of them peasants,
young, good ones.
Since yesterday have been in a very depressed mood. I am not
surrendering, I do not disclose myself to any one, but to God. I
think that is very important. It is important to keep silent and
to suffer a thing through. Otherwise the suffering will go over to
others and will make them suffer, but here it will burn itself down
in yourself. That is the most precious of all.
This thought helps very much, that in this lies my task, in this is
my opportunity to elevate myself, to approach perfection somewhat.
Come and dwell within me so that my baseness will be stifled. Awake
in me.
I want to cry all the time.
Thought and noted:
1) I found jotted down: “Every victory over the enemy is an
enlargement of one’s own strength.” I ought to remember that now
especially. There is a struggle going on between my spiritual and
animal self, and all that I gain for the former, by all this will
I weaken the latter. I carry over from one scale of the weights to
another. If I fall into temptation, it means a rolling down the road
to evil; if I resist, it is the beginning of a rolling on a new road
towards the good.
2) It is astonishing how we get accustomed to the illusion of one’s
own individuality, separateness from the world. We see, we feel--that
life compels us every minute to feel our union and dependence on
the world, makes us feel our incompleteness; and we nevertheless
believe that we ourselves, our very selves, is something in the name
of which we can live. However, when you understand this illusion
clearly, then you are surprised, how you could not have seen that
you are not a piece of a whole, _but a manifestation in time and
space, of something timeless and infinite_.
Women have always recognised the power of men over them. And it
could not have been otherwise in an unchristian world. Men are the
stronger and men have ruled. It was the same in all the worlds (with
the exception of the doubtful Amazons and the law of maternity),
and it is the same now among .0999 of mankind. But Christianity has
appeared and has recognised perfection not in strength but in love,
and by this all the subjected, the captive, the slaves and the women
have been freed. But that the freedom of slaves and women be not a
calamity, it is necessary that the freed be Christians, i.e., that
they affirm their life in the service of God and people, and not in
the service of themselves. Slaves and women are not Christians, and
nevertheless they are freed. And they are terrible. They act as the
main-spring of all the calamities of the world.
What must be done? Bring slaves and women back again into slavery?
That is impossible to do, because there is no one who will do
it: Christians cannot subject. And non-Christians will no longer
surrender themselves into slavery, but will fight. They will fight
among themselves and one or the other will subject and hold the
Christians in slavery. What must be done? One thing must be done:
attract people to Christianity, turn them into Christians. It is
possible to do this only by fulfilling in life the law of Christ.
Help me, Lord. Help me. Come into me, awake in me.
_Apr. 13. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day April 27. Grinevka._[303]
The 3rd day here. I am all right. A little indisposed....
The latter days in Moscow I spent finishing _Carthago delenda est_.
I am afraid I have not finished it, and that it is still before
me. Still I did quite a lot. Here I have not worked at all.
The misery of the famine is by far not as great as it was in 1891.
There are so many lies in all the affairs among the upper classes,
everything is so tangled up with lies that it is never possible to
answer any question, simply--for instance, is there a famine? I am
going to try to distribute as well as I can the money which has been
contributed.
Yesterday there was a conversation about the same thing: Is exclusive
love good? The résumé is this: a moral man will look on exclusive
love,--it is all the same whether he be married or single--as on
evil and will fight it; the man, who is little moral, will consider
it good and will encourage it. An entirely unmoral man does not even
understand it and makes fun of it.
The _Russkia Viedomosti_ was suspended because of the Dukhobors and
of me; that is too bad and I am grieved.[304]
1) The proverb: for a good son you do not have to make a fortune,
for a bad one, do not leave one.
2) I have made the following note: “God doesn’t know when the
awakening of people will take place.” This is what it means: I
think that the life of humanity consists in a greater and greater
awakening, in an enlightening. And this awakening, this enlightening,
will be done by people themselves (by God in people). And in this
is life, in this is the good, and therefore this life and this good
cannot be taken away from people.
3) My awakening consisted in this, that I doubted the reality of
the material world. It lost all meaning to me.
_To-morrow Apr. 28. Grinevka. If I live, I’ll finish._
_To-day Apr. 29. Morning. Grinevka._
Felt great weakness. Am better since yesterday. But unable to write
anything. Went to Lopashino,[305] took notes.[306]
Read Boccaccio--it is the beginning of the master-class, immoral art.
No letters. Serezha was here.[307]
I continue. Thought:
1) You look deeply into the life of man, especially of women,--and
you see from what world point of view their acts flow, and you see,
principally, how inevitably all argument against this world point
of view recoils and you cannot imagine how this world point of view
will be changed--in the same way as how a piece of a date-stone
has grown through a date. But there are conditions when a change
is produced and accomplished from within. Live man can always be
born, from seeds there are sprouts.
2) I look into the future, and ask: were I to act as I ought to,
would everything then be all right, would all obstacles then be
destroyed? This question is pleonism. The question is this, whether,
were I to act in a realm where there were no obstacles, would there
then be any obstacles?
3) It is remarkable how we are without understanding and without
gratitude. God arranged our life so, that he forbade us all false
paths, that everything drives us from these false, harmful paths,
impoverishing us to ruination, and making us suffer, onto the only
free, always joyous path of love--but we nevertheless do not go on
this path and we complain that we suffer from the attempts of going
on the false, ruinous paths.
4) One of the most urgent needs of man, equal with and even more
urgent than eating, drinking, sex desire, and the existence of which
we often forget, is the need to manifest oneself, to know that it
is I who have done a thing. Very many acts which are otherwise
inexplicable, are explained by this need. One ought to remember this
both in their bringing up, and in dealing with men. The main thing
is that one has to try to make this an activity and not a boast.