Transcriber’s Note: To see transliteration of Greek text, hover your mouse over the text: βιβλος.

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

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]

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?”