The Journal of Leo Tolstoi First. Volume—1895-1899

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,³⁰¹ the cares for their emigration, the death of Brashnin.³⁰² Occupations: Carthago delenda est³⁰³ 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. ³⁰⁴

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.³⁰⁵

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,³⁰⁶ took notes.³⁰⁷

Read Boccaccio – it is the beginning of the master-class, immoral art.

No letters. Serezha was here.³⁰⁸

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.

5) Why is it that children and simple people are by such an awful height higher than the majority of people? Because their reason is not perverted by the deception of faith or by temptations or by sins. Nothing stands on their road to perfection, while adults have sin and temptation and deception on theirs. The former have only to walk forward, the latter must struggle.

6) They spoke about love and falling in love, and I made the following conclusion for myself: a moral man fights falling in love and exclusive love, an unmoral man – condones it.

7) Children are selfish without lies. All of life teaches the aimlessness, the ruination of selfishness. And therefore old people attain unselfishness without lies. These are two extreme limits.

8) I began to consider soup-kitchens and the purchase of flour, and money, and my soul became so unclean and sad. The realm of money, i.e., every kind of use of money, is a sin. I took money and undertook to use it only so as to have a reason for going away from Moscow and I acted badly.

9) I thought much about The Appeal, yesterday and to-day. It became rather clear how a bad arrangement of life results in religious deception. If something is unclear in one’s mind, if life is disorderly and you don’t want anything… (Somehow I haven’t succeeded.)

10) In my sleep I thought to-day that the shortest expression of the meaning of life is this: the world moves, perfects itself; the task of man is to take part in this movement, to submit himself to it and to help it.

My weakness still continues. I have written this out very badly.

May 4. Grinevka. (Evening.)

Yesterday there was a whole house full of guests: The Tsurikovs, Mme. Ilinsky,³⁰⁹ Stakhovich. I have done nothing during the day. In the morning I wrote a letter to Chertkov³¹⁰ and to S³¹¹ and to still some one else. The day before yesterday I was in Sidorovo and at Serezha’s.³¹² In the morning I read Chertkov’s article.³¹³ It is very good.

The 1st of May, Lindenberg³¹⁴ was here and a teacher³¹⁵ and they went to Kamenka. On the 30th, I went to Gubarevka.

What hurts me, is that I seem to have lost entirely the capacity for writing. To my shame I am indifferent. Latterly in my sleep, I thought keenly about the contrast between the crushed people and the crushers, but did not write it out.

To-day, yes and in the preceding days, it seemed to me that Hadji Murad became clear, but I could not write it. It is true they interfered.

Thought:

1) Just as an athlete follows the growth of his muscles, so you ought to follow the growth of love, or at least the decrease of evil and lies – and life will be full and joyous.

2) Yesterday there was a discussion about the old question: what is better – to take part in evil, to endeavour to diminish it (…) or to keep away from it? The eternal objection is: – “There will be anarchy” – yes, but now it is worse than anarchy: injustice. – “What, then, if to begin everything from the beginning; the strong will again offend the weak.” Yes, everything from the beginning again, but with this difference, that while now we continue the cruelty and injustice which have been established in heathen barbaric times, we now live in the light of Christianity and the cruelty and injustice will not be the same cruelty and injustice… (It isn’t quite all right, but it was.)

3) I look about me and the lines which I see I force into that form which lives in my imagination. I see white on the horizon and involuntarily I give this white the form of a church. Is it not in this way that everything we see in this world takes on the form which already lives in our imagination (consciousness), which we carried over from our former life? (An idea.)

Exquisite weather. Friendly, hot Spring. I am at peace and am well.

May 5. Grinevka. If I live.

To-day May 9. Grinevka.

During these days we had visitors: Masha, Varia. I go every day somewhere to open a soup-kitchen. I am not writing at all. I feel weak. Yesterday there was a rain storm. I went to Bobrika. To-day I went to Nicholskoe. I went to Gubarevka and returning through the wood, thought… I don’t feel like writing, later I shall write out two thoughts, very important ones:

1) One, that I cannot put before me, that which tortured me before: my destruction.

2) That the other life begins to attract me, only the process of getting there is terrible. If only I could arrive safely, everything there will be all right;

3) To-day I thought that the object of faith is only one – God. This I must write out, explain.

To-day I am in a very weak state.

May 10. Grinevka. If I live.

To-day May 11. Grinevka.

Yesterday I wrote a little on The Appeal.³¹⁶ Then I went to Mikhail’s Ford.

Saw Strakhov in my sleep,³¹⁷ who said to me that I should write out clearly, for the plain man, what God is. “You ought to write it, Leo Nicholaievich,” (Tolstoi.)

To-day my stomach ached a little. I didn’t dine and wrote much on The Appeal. It seems to be taking form. I am feeling fresh in the head, a thing I haven’t felt for a long time. Thanks to my gymnastic exercises, I have become convinced for the first time, that I am old and weak and I must stop physical exercise entirely. This is even pleasant.

I forgot for a moment, my rule, not to expect anything from others, but to do what one ought to do oneself before God, – and there arose in me an evil feeling… But I remembered, asked in good faith what was necessary and I felt better.

1) There is one object of faith – God, He who sent me. He who sent me, He who is everything of which I feel myself to be a part. This faith is indispensable and satisfying. If you have this faith then there is no room for any other. Everything else is trust and not faith. You can only have faith in that which undoubtedly is, but which we cannot embrace with our reason.

2) Yesterday I thought that the form of thinking – categories – are not seven but four: cause, matter, space, time. But only one: movement, encloses everything in itself. Movement is a change of place, therefore there is space; change of place can be swifter and slower, therefore there is time; and a preceding movement is a cause, a following one, an effect; that which is displaced is matter. Everything is movement. Man himself moves incessantly and therefore everything explains itself to him by movement alone.

3) The most harmful effect of an evil act is that when a man accomplishes it he frees himself from the demands of his conscience. “We eat animals, therefore why not hunt?” – … and so you have no need to stand on ceremony … etc.

4) A strange thought came to me. Our whole life is in this, that we consider ourselves a separate unit, an individual, a man. But besides this being specialised, individualised, from all others, chemistry discloses for us entirely different separate units, acids, nitrogen, etc. They are separate and therefore they have life. (Nonsense.)

May 12. Grinevka. If I live.

To-day May 15. Morning. Grinevka.

Within these two days I went to Mtsensk,³¹⁸ Kukuevka, and yesterday to Batyevo.³¹⁹ Wrote Hadji Murad unwillingly. I have exercised again.³²⁰ It is stupid, almost an insanity. Wrote a poor letter to Posha. I am pleased with every one here.

Just now I have reread this journal and it did not leave me very dissatisfied. Oh, if I would only remember more my transitory, subservient condition here!

Have made no entries. My health would be good if my back weren’t aching. Began to write letters. Not succeeding. One must wait peacefully and live before God.

May 16. Grinevka. If I live.

To-day May 19. Grinevka.

Sonya was here. She arrived the 17th. This morning she went away. I have been trying to write these two days. Can’t do anything. An exceptional weakness and pain in my spinal column.

To-day May 20. Evening. Grinevka.

This morning I wrote rather much on The Appeal. In the evening I wrote 13 letters. Went nowhere. My back is better. The main thing, is that my brain is working and I am happy.

Received 500 roubles, and 1000 roubles are lying in Cherni.³²¹

I am not going to write any more, although I have many notes.

To-day May 27. Grinevka. In the morning.

During this time I wrote The Appeal and finished the article on the condition of the people.³²²

Just now I am writing to write out my notes – there is much that has to be written out – that everything which is said in Paul (Corinthians xiii) about love has to be said, and even more – about the renunciation of oneself. It is impossible to lay up love within oneself – but the renunciation of oneself is possible. It suffices to renounce oneself and love will arise.

I thought this, because just now in the morning, I began to remember all the difficulties which might arise from the distribution of the contributions, about everything which had to be done for the Dukhobors, for my own writing, and of which I had done nothing, and about all my weaknesses, errors, about my joyless life with the children, and such as I had not wanted it to be, and my lack of consequence – and it sufficed only to negate myself, my own desires, and immediately all wrong passed away, both of the past and the future, and one thing remained, the need of service in the present. How time vanishes remarkably in the consciousness of one’s mission.

To-day, I think, June 12. Yasnaya Polyana.

I went with Sonya (my daughter-in-law)³²³ to the Tsurikovs, Aphremovs, and the Levitskys.³²⁴ I have a very pleasant impression and fell in love with many; but fell ill and did not do my work and made a lot of fuss both for Levitsky and the household.³²⁵…

It is four days since I arrived in Yasnaya and I am recovering nicely. Wrote many letters.

I received almost 4,000 roubles, which I cannot use this year.³²⁶

Masha is here with her husband and Iliusha. The Westerlunds were here.³²⁷…

To-day, entirely unexpectedly, I began to finish Sergius.³²⁸ No news from England.³²⁹

I have made many notes.

1) I cannot remember now what and how I thought it: this is the note: “You are often too strict with people, and he, poor man, is good for nothing.”

2) Although I noted it before, I can’t help but repeat: …

3) …

4) The life of the world is one, i.e., in the sense that it is impossible to apply the conception of number to it. Plurality comes only from the partitions of consciousness. For a universal consciousness there is no number, no plurality.

5) Non-resistance to evil is important not therefore only, because a man has to act so for himself, for attaining the perfection of love, but also because only non-resistance alone stops evil, localises it in itself, neutralises it, does not permit it to go farther, as it inevitably does, like the transmission of movement to elastic balls, if there be no force which would absorb it. Active Christianity is not in doing, creating Christianity, but in absorbing evil.

I feel very much like writing out the story, The Coupon.³³⁰

6) Death is the crossing-over from one consciousness to another, from one image of the world to another. It is as if you go over from one scene with its scenery to another. At the moment of crossing over, it is evident that that what we consider real, is only an image, because we are going over from one image into another. At the moment of this crossing-over, there becomes evident, or at least one feels, the most actual reality. Because of this, the moment of death is important and dear.

7) For a universal consciousness, for God, matter does not exist. Matter is only for beings, separated one from another. The limits of separateness is that which we call matter, in all its infinite forms.

8) It is impossible to remember sufficiently that the life of all beings is continuous movement. Almost all our misery comes from the fact that we do not know this or forget this. And imagining that we do not go forward, but that we stand still, we grasp the beings moving alongside of us – some going faster, some going slower than we – we grasp them and hold on as long as the force of the movement does not tear us away. And we suffer.

9) We are all rolling down a slope, going down lower and lower to the plain. Every attempt to hold to one’s place, only makes the fall bigger, the more you hold on.

10) We are sent to cross this sloping path, carrying across it that light which is entrusted to us. And all that we can do – is to help each other on the road to carry this light; but we hold back, pushing each other down, extinguishing our light and that of the others. (It isn’t good, not what I wanted to say.)

11) I know, that when people yawn in front of me, I can become infected, and therefore I say to myself: I don’t want to yawn and I won’t. I have learned to do this as to yawning, but I am only beginning to learn this as to anger.

12) The sight depresses me strangely … of those owning the land and compelling the people to work. How my conscience is struck. And this is not something reasoned, but a very strong feeling. Was I wrong in not giving my land to the peasants? I don’t know.

13) Lieskov made use of my theme and badly.³³¹ I had an exquisite thought – three problems: What was the most important time? what man? and what act? The time is the immediate, this minute; the man – he with whom you have immediate business; the act, to save your soul, i.e., to do the act of love.³³²

14) It is impossible to save humanity from that deception in which it is caught… Only a religious feeling can give the counterstroke and conquer.

June 13. Y. P. If I live.

June 14. Y. P. Evening.

Both days I wrote Father Sergius. It is coming out well. Wrote letters. To-day there was a christening.³³³

I still cannot be fully good… It is difficult, but I do not despair.

To-day June 22. Y. P.

On the 16th I fell very ill.³³⁴ I never had felt so weak and so near death. I am ashamed to have made use of the care which they gave me. I could do nothing. I only read and made some notes. To-day I am a great deal better. Ukhtomsky³³⁵ was pleased with my article,³³⁶ but nevertheless he refused to print it. I telegraphed to Menshikov that he should try the Viestnik Evropa and the Russki Trud.³³⁷ I am afraid I am going to become tiresome.

The youth have been driven away. For they have forbidden that the flour that was bought be sold.³³⁸

… Received a letter from Chertkov, a good one. The Dieterichs arrived.³³⁹ Dear Dunaev was here. They talked about the great riot of the factory workers. I shall finish later.

To-day June 28. Y. P. Evening.

I am only now recovered, and am experiencing the joy of convalescence. I feel nature very vividly, keenly, and have a great clarity of thought.

I wrote a little on The Appeal. To-day I wrote Father Sergius and both are good. Wrote many letters yesterday. All that I received yesterday were unpleasant: from N, but principally from Gali, with the news that they have all quarrelled.³⁴⁰ Posha is going to Switzerland and Boulanger to Bulgaria.

Tania went to Masha’s…

There is only one thing; one real thing that has been given us: to live lovingly with one’s brothers, with every one. One must renounce oneself. I wrote that to my friends and I am going to be strict with myself.

Here is what I have written down…

I have just read up to this point, where everything that is difficult can be made to vanish when you throw off the illusion of a personal life, when you recognise your mission in the service to God, and that it would be good to experience this in physical suffering, whether it will stand physical suffering. And here was a chance to experience it and I forgot and did not experience it. It is too bad. But the next time.

Have written down:

1) Paul Adam³⁴¹ gives the peasants a cruel characteristic, especially the working men: they are vulgar, selfish, slaves, fanatics – perhaps all this is just, but the one thing, that they can live without us and we cannot live without them, wipes out everything. And therefore it is not for us to judge. (Something is wrong here.)

2) It is especially disagreeable for me 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 were to argue with him. The difference is only in this, that the art of the veterinary, the cook, the samovar-maker or any kind of art or science, is recognised as an art or a science where only those people are competent who have studied that realm; in the matter of morality every one considers himself competent, because every one has to justify his life. But life is justified only by theories of morality. And every one makes them for himself.

3) I have often thought about falling in love, about the good, ideal falling in love, which is exclusive of every sensuality, and I cannot find either place or meaning for it. But its place and meaning is very clear and definite: it is to lighten the struggle between sex desire and chastity. Falling in love ought to be for a young man who cannot keep to full chastity before marriage, and to release the young men in the most critical years, from 16 to 20 or more, from the torturing struggle. Here is the place for falling in love. But when it breaks out in the life of people after marriage, it is out of place and disgusting.

4) I am often asked for advice as to the problem of owning land. It is my old custom to answer: that it is unsuitable for me to answer such problems, just as it would be unsuitable for me to answer the problem how to make use of the ownership or the labour or the rent of a bonded serf.

5) People who stand on a lower moral plane or religious world point of view cannot understand people standing on a higher plane. But that there should be a possibility of union between them, there has been given to people standing on a lower plane the instinct for the good and a respect for this good. If there is not this instinct and respect, then it is very bad. But in our society, among so-called educated people, this is getting to be less and less.

To-day June 30. Y. P.

I am still ill, and very weak. But I think I am improving, and my spiritual state is good. The day before yesterday I received a letter about the quarrel in England.³⁴² I wrote to them. It is very sad and very instructive. Yesterday I received a letter from Khilkov with a letter from Miss Pickard about the Dukhobors.³⁴³ I wrote letters to Crosby, and Willard³⁴⁴ and Khilkov. The affair of the Dukhobors is important and big and evidently something will come out of it which is entirely different from what we are preparing, but it is God’s affair. To-day Mme. Annenkov arrived. Menshikov telegraphed that Gaideburov³⁴⁵ will print with omissions. During these days I wrote Sergius– it isn’t good.

I am going to continue to write out the former:

6) …

7) A man is a being separated from all others, who feels his limits. Among the number of general limits by which he separates himself from other beings, are his limits which are in common with that being incomprehensible to him – the earth. Death is the destruction of all the various common limits with other beings and always of the common limit of the being of the earth – a fusion with earth. Every sickness, wound, old age, is a destruction of these limits.

8) The work of life is to love. It is impossible to love expressly those people unworthy of love; but it is possible not to love – to behave well, in a good way, toward such people in every given moment.

9) I remembered keenly what a matter of enormous importance was complete truthfulness in every detail, in everything, the avoidance of all outer false forms. And I decided to keep to this. It is never too late to mend.³⁴⁶

10) The minister said to the murderer: “Oh brother, don’t worry. God has pardoned even greater sinners. But who are you? Don’t lose heart. Pray.” The murderer burst into tears.

11) How great and stable seemed the happiness of the American people, and how unstable it proved to be, like all happiness not founded on life, according to the law of Christ. The Spanish-American War, Jingoism.

12) I have often prayed (almost without believing, to try out) that God arrange my life as I wish. To-day I simply prayed my customary morning prayer and rather attentively. And after this prayer, I recalled my wish and wanted to add a prayer about the fulfilment of this wish, and tried to address God about it. And immediately I realised my mistake – that it would be very much better if everything was not according to my will, but according to His. And without the least effort and with joy I said: “Yes, let there not be my will, but Thine.”