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
