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.79 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,80 and others had anything to say, they would have said it, no matter what the obstacles. The proof is Herzen.81 He went away abroad and despite his enormous talent, what did he say that was new, necessary? All those Granovskys, Bielinskys, Chernishevskys,82 Dobroliubovs, who were raised to great men, ought to be grateful to the government and the censorship without which they would have been the most unnoticed of sketch-writers.
Perhaps the Bielinskys, Granovskys, and the other unimportant ones might have had something real within them, but they stifled it, imagining they had to serve society with the forms of social life and not to serve God by professing the truth and by preaching it without any care about the forms of social life. Let there be contents and the forms will shape themselves.
People acting thus, i. e. adapting their striving for truth to the existing forms of society, are like a being to whom wings have been given to fly, without knowing obstacles, and who used these wings in order to help itself in walking. Such a being would not attain its ends – every obstacle would stop it and it would spoil its wings. And then this being would complain that it had been held back and would tell with sorrow (like Granovsky) that it would have gone far if obstacles had not held it back.
The quality of real spiritual activity is such, that it is impossible to hold it back. If it is held back, then it means only one thing: it is not real.
3) Man dying little by little (growing old) experiences that which a sprouting seed ought to experience which has not yet transferred its consciousness from the seed to the plant. He feels that he grows less, but he is not conscious of himself there where he increases; in another life.
I am beginning to experience this.
4) I wrote down: “Reason is a tool for the recognition of truth, verification, criticism.” I can’t remember very well. It seems to me, and I am even certain of it, that it is this:
Under reason is understood many different intellectual activities and very complex ones, and therefore the correctness of the solutions of reason is often doubted. As an answer to this doubt, I say, that there is an activity of the reason which is not to be doubted, namely, the critical activity, the activity of verifying what is told me. They tell me that God … etc. I submit this to the verification of reason and decide without doubt that that which is not reasonable does not exist for me. It is wrong to say that everything which exists is reasonable, or that everything which is reasonable exists, but it is wrong not to say that that which is unreasonable does not exist for me.
5) It seems to man that his animal life is his real essence and that the spiritual life is the product of his animal one, just as it seems to a man rowing in a boat that he is standing still and that the banks, and the whole earth, are running past him.
6) There is a goodness which wants to make use of the advantages of goodness and does not want to bear the disadvantages of it. That is animal goodness.
7) Christian truth, they say, can not be proved; it must be believed. As if it were easier to become convinced of the truth of the nonsensical than of the reasonable. Why deprive Christianity of the power of convincing? Why?
8) Nature, they say, is economical of its own forces; by the least effort, it attains the greatest results. So is God. To establish the Kingdom of God on earth, of union, of serving one another – and to destroy hostility, God does not have to do it himself. He has placed His reason in man, which frees love in man and everything which He desires will be done by man. God does His work through us. And there is no time for God – or there is infinite time. When he has placed reasoning love in man, he has already done everything.
Why has He done this in this way through man, and not by Himself? The question is stupid and one which never would have entered one’s head if we were all not spoilt by absurd superstition…
9) One of the most torturing spiritual sufferings is the not being understood by people when you feel yourself hopelessly alone in your thoughts. There is consolation in this, that you know that that very thing which people do not understand in you, God understands.
10) To carry over one’s “self” from the bodily to the spiritual, that means to consciously wish only the spiritual. My body can unconsciously strive for the fleshly, but I consciously desire nothing of the fleshly, as when I do not desire to fall, but can not but submit to the law of gravitation.
11) If you have transferred your “self” to your spiritual being, you will feel the same pain in violating love as you will feel physical pain when you violate the good of the body. The indicator is just as direct and true. And I already feel it.
12) Sin is the strengthening of the consciousness of life in one’s separate being, or the weakening of one’s reasoning consciousness, which shows the inconsistency of animal life. For the first end, the activity of reason is directed to the strengthening of the delusion of a separate life: 1, food; 2, lust; 3, vanity, strengthened by reason. For the second end, are used the means of weakening reason: tobacco, opium, wine.
13) Temptation is the assertion that it is permitted to violate love for the greater good: 1, to oneself; it is necessary to feed, cure, educate, calm oneself, in order to be in condition to serve men, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 2, one must secure, preserve, and educate the family, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 3, one has to organise, secure, protect the community, the state, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 4, one has to contribute to the salvation of the souls of people by violent suggestion, through education, and for this it is permitted to violate love.
14) The essay on art has to be begun with a discussion of the fact, that for the picture here, which it has cost the master 1000 working days, he is given 40 thousand working days: for an opera, a novel, still more. And then, some say of these works, that they are beautiful; others, that they are absolutely bad. And there is no incontestable criterion. There is no such argument about water, food, and good works. Why is that so?
15) What is the result of a man recognising as his “self” not his own separate being, but God living in him? In the first place, not consciously desiring the good for his own separate being, that man will not, or will less eagerly, take the good away from others; in the second place, having recognised as his “self” God, who desires the good for all that exists, man also will desire it.
16) Why do people hold on so passionately to the principle of family, the producing and bringing up of children? Because to a man who has not yet transferred his consciousness from his separate being to that of God, it is the only seemingly satisfactory explanation of the meaning of life.
17) The meaning of life becomes clear to man when he recognises as himself, his divine essence which is enclosed in his bodily envelope. The meaning of this lies in the fact that this being, striving for its emancipation, for the broadening of the realm of love, accomplishes through this broadening the work of God, which consists in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.
18) Violence can neither weaken nor strengthen a spiritual movement. To act on spiritual activity by force is just like catching the rays of the sun – no matter how you cover them, they will always be on top.
19) I have noted down: “Do you imagine your life in the wood which is being burned down or in the fire which burns?”
It is this way: you get the wood ready, and then you are sorry to use it; in the same way you get yourself ready and then you are sorry. But the comparison is not good, because fire comes to an end. A better comparison would be with food; do you imagine your life in food or in that which is being fed? Is not that the meaning of the words of St. John about “my body”, which ought to be food? Man is food for God if he gives himself to God.
(Unclear; nonsense.)
20) The principal aim of art, if there is art, and if it has an aim, is to manifest and to express the truth about man’s soul, to express those mysteries which it is impossible to express simply by speech. From this springs art. Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the mysteries of his soul and shows to people those mysteries which are common to all.
21) Love, enclosed in man and freed by reason, manifests itself in two ways: 1, by its expansion, and 2, by the establishment of the Kingdom of God. It is steam which, in spreading, works.
22) Lately, I have begun to feel such firmness and strength, not my own, but that of that God’s work which I wish to serve, that the irritation, the reproaches, the mocking people hostile to the work of God, is strange to me; they are pitiable, touching.
23) The world, living unconsciously, and man, in the period of his childhood, performed unconsciously the work of God. Having awakened to consciousness, he does it consciously. In the collision between the two methods of serving, man ought to know that the unconscious passes and will pass into the conscious and not the opposite and that therefore it is necessary to give oneself over to the future and not to the past. (Stupid.)
24) The delusion of man who has awakened to consciousness and who continues to consider his own separate being as himself, is that he considers a tool as himself. If you feel pain at the disturbing of the good of your separate being, it is as if you felt on your hand the blows on the tool with which you work. The tool has to be taken care of, ground, but not to be considered as oneself.
25) God Himself is economical. He has to penetrate all with love. He has fired man alone with love and has placed him in the necessity of firing all the rest.
26) Nothing affects the religious outlook so much as the way we look upon the world; whether with a beginning and an end, as it was looked upon in antiquity, or infinite as it is looked upon now. In a finite world, one can construct a reasonable rôle for separate mortal man, but in an infinite world the life of such a being has no meaning.
27) (For Konevsky) It happens to Katiusha after her resurrection, that she has certain periods in which she smiles slyly and lazily as if she had forgotten all which she considered true before; she is merely joyous and wants to live.
28) To him who lives a spiritual life entirely, life here becomes so uninteresting and burdensome that he can part with it easily.
29) Natasha Strakhov83 asks her father, when he speaks of something which happened when she was not yet born: “Where was I then?” I would have answered: “You were asleep and had not yet waked up here.” Conception, birth, childhood are only a preparation to an awakening, which we see, but not the sleeping ones.
30) The error in which we find ourselves when we consider our separate beings as ourselves is the same as when a traveller counts only one stage as the whole road, or a man, one day as his whole life.
31) Read about … and was horrified at the conscious deception of men …
32) “An eraser.” I have forgotten. I shall recall it.
Have written up to dinner. It is now 2 o’clock and I am going to dine.
May 28, Ysn. Pol. 12 o’c. noon.
It is already several days that I am struggling with my work84 and am making no progress. I sleep. I wanted to scribble it somehow to the very end, but I can’t possibly do it. Am in a wretched mood, aggravated by the emptiness, by the poor, self-satisfied, cold emptiness of my surrounding life.
In the meantime I have been to Pirogovo.85 I have a most joyous impression; my brother Sergei86 has undoubtedly had a spiritual transformation. He himself has formulated the essence of my faith (and he evidently recognises it as true for himself); to raise in oneself the spiritual essence and to subject to it the animal element. He has a miraculous ikon and he was tortured by his undefined attitude to it. The little girls87 are very good and live seriously. Masha has been infected by them. Later there were at our house: Salamon,88 Tanyee.89…
A terrible event in Moscow – the death of three thousand90– I somehow can not express myself as I ought to. I am indisposed all the time, getting weaker. In Pirogovo, there was the harnessmaker, an intelligent man. Yesterday a working-man came from Tula, intelligent. I think a revolutionist. To-day a seminary student, a touching case.
I am advancing very, very badly in my work. Rather boring letters because they demand polite answers. I have written to Bondarev,91 Posha, and to some one else. O yes; Officer N. was here too. I think I was useful to him. Splendid notes by Shkarvan.92
Yesterday there was a letter from poor N.93, whom they have driven off to the Persian frontier, hoping to kill him. God help him. And don’t forget me. Give me life, life, i. e. a conscious, joyful serving of Thee.
In the meantime, I thought,
1) It is remarkable how many people see some insoluble problem in evil. I have never seen any problem in it. For me it is now altogether clear that that which we call evil is that good, the action of which we don’t yet see.
2) The poetry of Mallarmé,94 and others. We who don’t understand it, say boldly that it is humbug, that it is poetry striking an impasse. Why is it that when we hear music which we don’t understand and which is just as nonsensical, we don’t say that boldly, but say timidly: yes, perhaps one ought to understand it or prepare oneself for it, etc. That is silly. Every work of art is only a work of art when it is understandable, I do not say for all, but for people standing on a certain level of education, on the same level as the man who reads poetry and who judges it.
This reasoning leads me to an absolutely certain conclusion that music before any other art (decadence in poetry and symbolism and other things in painting) has lost its way and struck an impasse. And he who has turned it from the road was that musical genius Beethoven. The principal factors are the authorities and people deprived of æsthetic feeling who judge art.
Goethe? Shakespeare?95 Everything that goes under their names is supposed to be good and on se bât les flancs in order to find something beautiful in the stupid and the unsuccessful, and taste is entirely perverted. And all these great talents – Goethe, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Michael-Angelo – side by side with exquisite things, produced not only mediocre ones, but disgusting ones. The mediocre artists produce a mediocrity as regards value and never anything very bad. But recognised geniuses create either really great works or absolute stuff and nonsense; Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, and others.
3) To place before myself the most complex and confused thing which demands my participation. On all sides it seems there exist insoluble dilemmas; it is bad one way and worse the other. And it is only necessary to carry over the problem from the outer realm into the inner, into one’s own life, to understand that this is only an arena for my inner perfection, that it is a test, a measure of my moral development, an experiment as to how much I can and want to do the work of God, the enlargement of love, and everything resolves itself so easily, simply, joyously.
4) A mistake (sin) is the use of reason, given me to recognise my essence in the love for everything which exists, in acquiring the good for my separate being. As long as man lived without a reasoning consciousness, he fulfilled the will of God in acquiring the good for himself and in struggling for it and there was no sin; but as soon as reason had awakened, then there was sin.
5) The harness-maker, Mikhailo, says to me that he does not believe in a future life, that he thinks that when a man dies, his spirit will leave him and will go away. But I say to him: “Well, go off then with this spirit; then you won’t die.”
May 29, Ysn. Pol. If I live.
It seems to me, June 6, Ysn. Pol.
The principal thing is that during this time I have advanced in my work,96 and am advancing. I write on sins and the whole work is clear to the end.
Finished Spier – splendid.
The economic movement of humanity by three means: the destruction of ownership of land according to Henry George97; the inheritance which would give over accumulated wealth to society, if not in the first generation, then in the second; and a similar tax on wealth on an excess of over 1000 rubles income for a family or 200 for each man.
To-day the Chertkovs arrived. Galia98 is very good.
The day before yesterday a gendarme came, a spy, who confessed that he was sent after me. It was both pleasant and nasty.99
During this time have thought principally the following:
1) When a man lives an animal life, he does not know that God lives through him. When reason awakens in him, then he knows it. And knowing it, he becomes united with God.
2) Man in his animal life has to be guided by instinct; reason directed to that which is not subject to it, will spoil everything.
3) Is not luxury a preparing for something better, when there is already a sufficiency?
Yesterday was not the 6th, but the 8th. To-day, June 9, Y. P.
I have written little and not very well. It seems to me that it is getting clearer. In the morning I had a conversation with the workingmen who came for books. I remembered the woman who asked to write to John of Kronstad.100
The religion of the people is this: there is a God and there are gods and saints. (Christ came on earth, as a peasant told me to-day, to teach people how and to whom to pray.) The gods and the saints perform miracles, have power over the flesh and perform heroic deeds and good works, and the people have only to pray, to know how and to whom to pray. But people can not perform good works, they can only pray. Here is their whole faith.
I bathed and don’t feel well.
June 19, Y. P.
Have been feeling weak all this time and sleep badly. Posha came yesterday. He spoke about the Khodinka accident well, but wrote it badly. Our very idle, luxurious life oppresses me. N. came. A stranger. He is young and he does not understand in the same way as I do, that which he understands, although he agrees with everything. Finished the first draft101 on the 13th of June. Now I am revising it, but am working very little.
… Struggled with myself twice and successfully. Oh, if it were always so!
Once I passed beyond Zakaz102 at night and wept for joy, being grateful for life. The pictures of life in Samara stand out very clearly before me; the steppes, the fight of the nomadic, patriarchic principle with the agricultural civilised one.103 It draws me very much. Konefsky was not born in me; that is why it moves so awkwardly.
Have been thinking:
1) Something very important about art: what is beauty? Beauty is that which we love. “He is not dear because he is good, but good because he is dear.” Here is the problem; why dear? Why do we love? And to say that we love, because a thing is beautiful, is just the same as saying that we breathe because the air is pleasant. We find the air pleasant, because we have to breathe; and in the same way we discover beauty, because we have to love. And he who hasn’t the power to see spiritual beauty, sees at least a bodily one and loves it.
June 26, Y. P. Morning.
All night I did not sleep. My heart aches without stopping. I continue to suffer and can not subject myself to God… I have not mastered pride and rebellion and the pain in my heart does not stop. One thing consoles me; I am not alone but with God, and therefore no matter how painful it is, yet I feel that something is taking place within me. Help me, Father.
Yesterday I walked to Baburino104 and unwillingly (I rather would have avoided than sought it), I met the 80-year-old Akime ploughing, the woman Yaremichov who hasn’t a coat to her household and only one jacket, then Maria whose husband was frozen and who has no one to gather her rye and who is starving her child, and Trophime and Khaliavka, and the husband and wife were dying as well as the children. And we study Beethoven. And I pray that He release me from this life. And again I pray and cry from pain. I am entrapped, sinking, I cannot alone, only I hate myself and my life.
June 30, Ysn. Pol.
Continued to suffer and struggle much, and have conquered neither one nor the other. But it is better. Mme. Annenkov105 was here and put it very well …106 They have spoiled for me even my diary which I write with the point of view of the possibility of its being read by the living107 …
Just now upstairs they began to speak about the New Testament and N. en ricanant proved that Christ advised castration. I became angry, – shameful.
Two days ago I went to those who had been burned out; had not dined, was tired and felt well… Yesterday I visited the lawyer who wanted to snatch a hundred rubles from a beggar-woman to decorate his own house with. It is the same everywhere.
During this time I have been in Pirogovo. My brother Serezha has entirely come over to us. The journey with Tania and Chertkov was joyous. To-day in Demenka108 I gave the last words for his journey to a dying peasant.
I am advancing much on the work.109 I will try to write out now what I have jotted down in the book.
To-day, July 19. 110
I am in Pirogovo. I arrived the day before yesterday with Tania and Chertkov. In Serezha111 there has certainly taken place a spiritual change; he admits it himself saying that he was born several months ago. I am very happy with him.
At home, during this time, I lived through much difficulty. Lord, Father, release me from my base body. Cleanse me and do not let your spirit perish in me and become overgrown. I prayed twice beseechingly; once that He let me be His tool; and second that He save me from my animal “self.”
During this time I progressed on the Declaration of Faith. It is far from what has to be said and from what I want to say. It is entirely inaccessible to the plain man and the child, but, nevertheless I have said all that I know coherently and logically.
In this time also I wrote the preface to the reading of the Gospels112 and annotated the Gospels. Had visitors. Englishmen, Americans – no one of importance.
I will write out all that I jotted down:
1) Yesterday I walked through a twice ploughed, black-earth fallow field. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black earth – not one green blade of grass, and there on the edge of the dusty grey road there grew a bush of burdock. There were three off-shoots. One was broken and its white soiled flower hung; the other also broken, was bespattered with black dirt, its stem bent and soiled; the third shoot stuck out to the side, also black from dust, but still alive and red in the centre. It reminded me of Hadji-Murad.113 It makes me want to write. It asserts life to the end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other has asserted it.
2) He has a capacity for languages, for mathematics, is quick to comprehend and to answer, can sing, draw correctly, beautifully, and can write in the same way; but he has no moral or artistic feeling and therefore nothing of his own.
3) Love towards enemies. It is difficult, seldom does it succeed – as with everything absolutely beautiful. But then what happiness when you attain it! There is an exquisite sweetness in this love, even in the foretaste of it. And this sweetness is just in the inverse ratio to the attractiveness of the object of love. Yes, the spiritual voluptuousness of love towards enemies.
4) Some one makes me suffer. As soon as I think about myself, about my own suffering, the suffering continues to grow and grow and terror overcomes me at the thought to where it might lead. It suffices to think of the man on account of whom you are suffering, to think about his suffering – and instantly you are healed. Sometimes it is easy when you already love your torturer; but even when it is difficult, it is always possible.
5) Yesterday in walking I thought what are those boundaries which separate us, one being from another? And it occurred to me. Are not space and time the conditions of these divisions, or rather, the consequences of these divisions? If I were not a separated part, there would be neither space nor time for me, as there is not for God. But since I am not the whole, I can understand myself and other beings through space and time only.
(I feel that there is something in this, but I can not yet express it clearly.)
6) There was an argument about whether being in love was good. For me the conclusion was clear; if a man already lives a human, spiritual life, then being in love – love, marriage – would be a downfall for him, he would have to give a part of his strength to his wife, to his family, or even at least to the object of his love. But if he is on the animal plane, if he eats, drinks, labours, holds a post, writes, plays – then to be in love would be an uplift for him as for animals, for insects, in the time of …114
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