Two days have passed. Jan. 1st.

I meet the new year very sad, depressed, unwell. I cannot work and my stomach aches all the time.

Received a letter from Verkholensk from Phedoseev about the Dukhobors, a very touching one.[279]

Still another letter from the editor The Adult about free love.[280] If I had time, I would like to write about this subject. Probably I shall write. The most important is to show that the whole matter lies in appropriating to oneself possibilities of the greatest enjoyment without thinking of consequences. Besides, they preach something which already exists and is very bad. Why would the absence of outer restraint[281] improve the whole thing? I am, of course, against any regulation and for full freedom, but the ideal is chastity and not pleasure.

I have been thinking during this time only one thing and it seems an important thing, namely:

1) We all think that our duty, our vocation, is to do various things: bring up children, make a fortune, write a book, discover a law in science, etc. But for all the work is only one thing: to carry out one’s own life—to act so that life would be a harmonious, good, and rational matter. And the work ought to be not before people, to leave behind one a memory of a good life, but the work is before God: to present to Him oneself, one’s soul, better than it was, nearer to Him, more submissive to Him, more in harmony with Him.

To think so—and principally to feel so—is very difficult: One always wanders off for human praise. But it is possible and ought to be done.

Help me, Lord. I sometimes feel this and do at this moment.

Jan. 2. Moscow. If I live.

To-day, already the 4th.

I am a little better. I want to work. Yesterday Stasov and Repine,[282] coffee.... When will I remember that much talk is much bother?

I received a pamphlet uncensored.

Only one thing has to be noted down: that all life is senseless, except that which has for its end the service of God, the service of the fulfilment of the work of God, which is unattainable to us. I shall write that out later. Now I am in a hurry.

Dear Masha arrived, later Tania with Sasha.[283]

Jan. 5. Moscow. If I live.

To-day, Jan. 13.

It is more than a week that I haven’t written and I have done almost nothing. I have been ill all the time, and depressed. At times, I am good and calm, and at times uneasy and not good. The day before yesterday was difficult. Then the peasants arrived: Bulakhov, with St., Pet., and two from Tula. I felt so light-hearted and energetic. One need not yield to one’s own circle, one can always enter the circle of God and His people.

It is long since I have been so depressed. A letter from Posha. Wrote to Posha, Ivan Michailovich, Chertkov, Maude and Boulanger.

I am still endeavouring to find a satisfactory form for Hadji Murad and I still haven’t it, although it seems I am nearing it.

... To-day a telegram about the work, “What is Art?”

Have made some notes and I think important ones.

1) Something of enormous importance and ought to be expounded well. Organisation, every kind of organisation, which frees from any kind of human, personal, moral duties. All the evil in the world comes from this. They flog people to death, they debauch, they becloud their minds and no one is to blame. In the tale of the resurrection of hell, this is the most important and new means.[284]

2) Each one of us is that light, that divine essence, love, the Son of God, enclosed in a body, in limits, in the coloured lantern which we have painted with our passions and habits—so that everything we see, we see only through this lantern. To raise oneself so as to see above it, is impossible; on top there is the same kind of glass through which we see even God, through the glass which we ourselves have painted. The only thing which we can do is not to look through the glasses, but to concentrate in ourselves, recognise our light and kindle it. And this is the one salvation from the delusions of life, from its suffering, from its temptations. And this is joyful and always possible.

I do this, and it is good.

3) Dreams—they are nothing else than the looking on the world not through the glasses, but only on the glasses, and on the interweaving of various designs interwoven on the glasses. In sleep you only see the glasses; when awake, the world, through the glasses.

4) A woman can, when she loves a man, see merits in him which he has not, but when she is indifferent, she is unable to see a man’s merits other than through the opinion of others. (However, I think it is untrue.)

5) The following when I wrote it, seemed to me very important:

Christians strive to a union, and unite among themselves and with other people by the Christian tool—by unity, humility, love. But there are people who do not know this means of union, do not believe in it and who endeavour to unite (all people endeavour to unite) with other means, outer ones, with force, threats. It is impossible to demand of these people who do not know, who cannot understand the Christian means of union, that they do not make use of their means; but it is absolutely unjust and unreasonable when these un-Christian people impose their own lower means of union upon people knowing and using a higher means. They say, “You Christians, you profit by our means; if you have not been robbed and killed, it is thanks to us.” To this the Christians answer, that they don’t need anything which force gives them (as is really the fact for a Christian).

And that is why, though it is legitimate for people not knowing a higher means of union, to use a lower, it is illegitimate, that they look upon their own lower means as a general and unique one, and want to compel those for whom it cannot be necessary to use it. The principal step before humanity now consists in this, that people should not only recognise and admit the means of Christian union, but that they should recognise that it is the highest, the one to which all humanity is striving and to which it will inevitably reach.

6) When you are full of energy, then you live, and you ought to live for this world; when you are sick, then you are dying, i.e., you begin to live for that other after-death world. So that in either phase, there is work. When you are sick, dying, then concentrate in yourself and think about death and about life after death, and stop longing for this one. Both processes are normal and in both there exists work proper to each state.

I feel somewhat fresher spiritually.

Jan. 14, Moscow. If I live.

To-day, 18.

My health is a little better. It is now evening. Wrote letters, 1) Chertkov; 2) Dubrovin; 3) Dubrovsky; Tver; 4) Tula: N. l. Kh.; 5) Nakashidze; 6) Ivan Michailovich.

To-day the plot of Hadji Murad became clearer than ever before.

Jan. 19. Moscow.

Depressing and unproductive. I cannot work. Several times a week I remember that everything disagreeable is only an Ermahnung for an advance onward towards perfection.

Help, Father. Come and dwell within me. You already dwell within me. You are already “me.” My work is only to recognise Thee. I write this just now and am full of desire. But nevertheless I know who I am.

To-day, Feb. 2. Moscow.

Very weak and apathetic. All the time I either read or corrected proofs of Art. There is much to be noted. But I have neither strength nor desire. There have been no events, no letters.

Feb. 3, Moscow. If I live.

February 3, Moscow.

I am still as unproductive intellectually. In the morning it flashed across my mind that I left out the places in Art about the trinity, and doing no work, I went to Grot and from there to the publishing house. I returned past two, read, lay down, dined. Tarovat[285] arrived, then Menshikov, Popov, Gorbunov, and then—Gulenko,[286] Suller.[287]

Read Liapunov’s The Ploughman. I was very touched.[288]

Have noted down the following:

1) In moments of depression I want to ask help from God. And I may ask it. But only such help which might help me and not interfere with any one else. And such help is only one thing: love. Every other kind of help, material help, not only might, but must come in conflict with the material good of others. Only love alone—the enlargement of love in oneself—satisfies everything which one can want and does not come in conflict with the good of others. “Come and dwell within us.”

2) Women do not use words to express their thoughts, but to attain their ends, and it is this purpose they hunt in the words of others. That is why they so often understand people wrong side out. And this is very disagreeable.

3) The meaning of life is only one: self-perfection—the bettering of one’s soul. “Be perfect like our Father in Heaven.”

When things are difficult, when something tortures you, remember that in life, only you are the life—and immediately it will become easier. And joyful. As a rich man rejoices when he gathers his wealth, so will you rejoice if you place your life only in this. And for the attainment of this, there are no barriers. Everything which appears like sorrow, like a barrier in life—is a wide step which offers itself to your feet that you may ascend.

4) If you have the strength of activity then let it be a loving one; if you have no strength, if you are weak, then let your weakness be a loving one.

5) Inorganic matter is simply the life of that which we do not understand. For fleas the inorganic is my finger-nail. In the same way, evil is the non-understood good.[289]

6) To serve God and man, but how, with what? Perhaps the possibility doesn’t exist? It is not true: the possibility has always been given you—to become better.

7) Man is an ambassador, as Christ said, an ambassador indeed for whom the important thing is only to fulfil the errand given to him, and it doesn’t matter what is thought about him. Let them think badly—sometimes it is necessary. Only let the errand be fulfilled.

8) One of the most common errors consists in this, that people are considered good, malicious, stupid, intelligent. Man flows on and every possibility is in him: he was stupid, and has become intelligent; he was wicked and has become good, and the reverse. In this is the greatness of man. And therefore it is impossible to judge man as he is. You have judged and he is already another. It is impossible to say—I do not love him: you have said it and he is already another.

9) ...

10) The fact that the end of life is self-perfection, that the perfection of the immortal soul is the only end of the life of man, is already true because every other end in the view of death, is senseless.

11) If man deliberates upon the consequences of his act, then the motives of his act are not religious.

12) The paper-knife on my knees fell over on account of its weight, and it seemed to me that it was something alive, and I shuddered. Why? Because there is a duty to everything living and I grew frightened lest I hadn’t fulfilled it, and lest I had crushed, squeezed a living being.

13) ... In this lies the whole matter—to destroy this hypnosis.

14) It is impossible not to wish that our acts be known and approved. For him who has no God, it is necessary that his acts be known and approved. But for him who has God, it is sufficient that they be known. By this can it be verified if a man has God.

4th Feb. Moscow. If I live.

To-day, the 5th. Morning.

I do not feel like writing at all. All these last days, especially yesterday, I have been feeling and applying to life, the consciousness that the end of life is one: to be perfect like the Father, to do that which He does, that which He wants from us, i.e., to love; that love should guide us in the moments of our most energetic activity, and that we breathe with it alone in the moments of our greatest weakness. Whenever there is something difficult, painful, then it suffices to remember this, and all this difficulty, this pain, will vanish and only the joyous will remain.

To a man who seriously, truly uses his reason, it is obvious that all ends are closed to him. One alone is reasonable: to live for the satisfaction of the demands of God, of his conscience, of his higher nature. (It is all the same thing.) If this is to be expressed in time, then to live so as to prepare one’s soul to the passing-over into a better world: if this is to be expressed accurately in terms outside of time, then it is to fuse one’s life with its timeless principle, with the Good, with Love, with God. I am afraid only of one thing, that this strong consciousness acting beneficially on me, that the only thing reasonable and free and joyous is the life in God, be not calloused, that it do not lose its effect of lifting me out of the petty annoyances of life, and of freeing me. Oh, if that could be so to every one and if it could be so forever! In this light last night I considered the various manifestations of life and I felt so well and joyous. I will await the examination. I shall prepare for it.

When I wrote out the notes, I forgot:

1) How absurd is the argument of the enemies of moral perfection, that a man, sacrificing himself really, will sacrifice his perfection for the good of others, i.e., that a man is ready to become evil, in order to act well. If one understands by this that a man is ready to act badly before people, if only he could thereby fulfil the demands of his conscience and not serve a certain cause or even certain people, then this is true. The serving of a cause and of people can sometimes coincide, and can sometimes not coincide with the demands of conscience; and not serving a certain cause or people, can sometimes coincide and can sometimes not coincide with the demands of conscience. These are individual cases.

2) To doubt that the source of all evil is false religious teaching, can only be done by a man who hasn’t thought of the causes of the daily manifestations of social life. The causes of all these manifestations are thoughts—thoughts of people. How then could false thoughts not have an enormous influence on the social system? People, some of them, are well off in a false system based on false thoughts; it is natural that they support false thoughts, false-religious teaching.

3) I cannot write and I suffer, I force myself. How stupid! As if life lay in writing. It does not even lie in any outer activity. It is not as I will, but as Thou wilt. It is even fuller and more significant without writing. And here now I am learning to live without writing. And I am able to.

4) I see that I have made a note and have already said it here, namely, that to perfect oneself does not mean to prepare oneself for a future life[290] (that is said for convenience, for simplicity of speech); but to perfect oneself means to get nearer to that basis of life for which time does not exist and therefore no death, i.e., to carry one’s “self” more and more away from the bodily life into the spiritual.

5) Evgenie Ivanovich says about N: she is at peace only when one occupies oneself with her. Any occupation with anything not concerning her, does not interest her. Every such occupation with other people offends her. It seems to her that she bears the life of every one near her, that without her everybody would be lost. For the least reproach, she insults every one. And in 10 minutes she forgets it, and she hasn’t the least remorse.

This is the highest degree of egotism and madness, but there are many grades approaching this. At bottom, to think that I live for myself, for my own enjoyment, for fame, is absolute potential madness. In living—it is impossible not to live for oneself, impossible not to defend oneself when attacked,[291] not to fall on the food when hungry; but to think that in this is life, and to use that very thought given you to see the impossibility of such a life, to use it for the strengthening of such a separate individual life, is absolute madness.

6) A wife approaches her husband and caressingly speaks to him as she did not speak before. The husband is moved, but this is only because she has done something nasty.

7) Jean Grave,[292] “L’individu et la Société,” says that revolution will only then be fertile when l’individu will be strong-willed, disinterested, good, ready to help his neighbour, will not be vain, will not condemn others, will have the consciousness of his own dignity, i.e., will have all the merits of a Christian. But how will he acquire these virtues if he knows that he is only an accidental chain of atoms? All these virtues are possible, are natural, in fact, their absence is impossible when there is a Christian world-point-of-view—that is, that we are sons of God sent to do His Will; but in a materialistic world-point-of-view these virtues are inconsistent.

It is now past one. I am going downstairs. I am going to write to-morrow.

Feb. 6. Moscow. If I live.

To-day, Feb. 19. Moscow.

It is long since I have made any entries.[293] At first I was ill. For about 5 days I have been better. During this time I was correcting, putting in things and spoiling the last chapters of Art. I decided to send away Carpenter with the introduction to Sieverni Viestnik. Was correcting the preface also. The general impression of this article “On Science” as well as that of the 20th chapter—is remorse.[294] I feel that it is right, that it is necessary, but it is painful that I hurt and grieve many good people who err. It is obvious that .0999 will not understand why and in the name of what I condemn science, and will be indignant. I should have done that with greater kindness. And in this I am guilty, but it is now too late.

The last time I wrote, I expressed fear lest the carrying over of myself from this worldly life, the offending, the irritating one, into the life before God, the eternal life (now, here) which I experienced would become lost, would become calloused. But here 13 days have passed and I still feel this and felt it all the time and rejoiced and am rejoicing.

Sometimes I begin to lay out patience, or hear an irritating conversation, contradiction, or am dissatisfied with my writing, with the condemnation of people, or I regret something—and suddenly I remember that it only seems so to me, because I am bent over searching on the floor, and it suffices to straighten up to my full height and everything that was disagreeable, irritating, not only vanishes, but helps the joys of triumph over my human weakness.

I haven’t yet experienced this in strong physical suffering. Will it endure? It ought to endure. Help, Lord.

Otherwise I am very joyous.

I am joyous, that in old age there has been disclosed absolutely a new condition of the great indestructible good. And this is not imagination, but a change of soul as clearly perceived as warmth and cold, it is a going over from confusion, suffering, to a clearness and peace and a going over which depends upon myself. Here, in truth, is where wings have sprouted. As soon as it becomes difficult, painful, to walk on foot, you spread the wings. Why not always then on wings? Evidently, I am still too weak; still untrained; and perhaps a rest is necessary.

It is interesting to find out if this state is an attribute of old age, if young people can experience it also? I think that they can. One must accustom oneself to this. This indeed is prayer.

“You must hide something, be afraid of something, something tortures you, something is lacking,”—and suddenly: there is nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be tortured over, nothing to want. The main thing is to go away from the human court into God’s court.

Oh, if this would only hold out unto death! But even for that which I have experienced, I am grateful to Thee, Father.

I jotted down the following:

1) People can in no way agree to the unreality of all that is material. “But a table exists and always, even when I go out of the room it is there, and for all it is the same as it is for me,”—they generally say. Well, and when you twist two fingers and roll a little ball under them do you not unquestionably feel two? It is certainly so, every time I take up a little ball in that way there are two and for every one who takes up a ball in that way there are two, and nevertheless there are no two little balls. In the same way, the table is a table only for the twisted fingers of my senses, but it is perhaps half a table, a thousandth of a table—in fact, no part of a table at all, but something altogether different. So that what is real is only my ever recurring impression, confirmed by the impressions of other people.

2) ... I acted badly when I gave my estate to the children. It would have been better for them. Only it was necessary to have been able to do this without violating love, and I was unable.

3) You are often surprised how intelligent, good people can defend cruelty, violence, savage superstitions...? But it is sufficient to remember the exilings, the oppressions, the offences, which are beginning to penetrate the working-classes and you see that this is only a feeling of self-preservation. Only by this is explained the tenacity of life....

4) Pharesov told me about Malikov’s[295] teaching. All this was beautiful, all this was Christian: be perfect like your Father; but it was not good that all this teaching had for its end influence over people and not inner satisfaction, not an answer to the problem of life. Influence on others is the main Achilles’ heel.

So that my condition, which is false for people, is perhaps the very thing necessary.

5) ... In order to wipe out one’s sin, one ought to ... repent before all the people for the deception, to say: forgive me that I have deceived you ... What a strong scene! And a true one.

6) Our art with its supplying of amusement for the rich classes, is not only similar to prostitution, but it is nothing else than prostitution.

Feb. 20. Moscow.

To-day, Feb. 25. Moscow.

Have made no entries; corrected something. Wrote letters to-day, more than 7 letters. But I can’t write anything, although I haven’t stopped thinking about Hadji Murad and The Appeal.

Feb. 26. Moscow. If I live.

Have made no entries for more than three weeks. To-day March 19. Moscow.

Finished all my letters. During this time wrote serious letters:

1) To the American colony,[296] 2) Peterburgskia Viedomosti about the Dukhobors;[297] 3) to the English papers also about the Dukhobors, and 4) a preface to the English edition What is Art—about the censor distortions.[298]

My inner life is the same. As I foresaw, the new consciousness of life for God, for the perfection of love, has become dulled, weakened, and when I needed it, these days, it proved itself to be, if not exactly ineffectual, yet less effectual than I expected.

The principal event during this time was the permission to the Dukhobors to emigrate.

What is Art? seems to me to be entirely finished now.

...

I have worked very little during all this time. I made rather many notes; I shall try to write them out:

1) One of the greatest errors in summing up a man, is that we call, we define a man as intelligent, stupid, good, evil, strong, weak. But man is everything, all possibilities, is a flowing matter.[299] This is a good theme for an artistic work and a very important one and a good one, because it destroys malicious judging—“the cancer”—and assumes the possibility of everything good. The workers of the devil, convinced of the presence of bad in man, achieve great results: superstition, capital punishment, war. The workers of God would attain greater results, if they believed more in the possibility of good in people.

2) They want to become the masters of China—the Russians, Japan, England, the Germans: there are quarrels, diplomatic struggles, there will even be military ones. And all this is only for the mixing of the yellow race into one Christian batter, the propagating and the assimilating of ideas like the Crusades and the Napoleonic wars.

3) Lebon writes: “Not only are they going to make food in laboratories, but there will be no need for labour.” People have so badly distributed their two functions, food and labour, that instead of joy, these functions are a torture to them and therefore they want to be freed from them. It is just the same as if people would so pervert their functions of perspiration and breathing, that they would seek a way of changing them by an artificial method.

4) The longer you live, the less time there remains for life. For an endless duration of life, there would then be absolutely no life.

5) Only when you live without consideration of time, past or future, do you live a real, free life for which there are no obstacles. You are only then dissatisfied, in straits, when you remember the past (the offences, the contradictions, even your own weaknesses) and when you think of the future: will something be or will it not be? Only at one point, do you fuse with God and live your divine essence: in the present (even when you live your animal life). Whenever you use your reason to consider what will be, then you are weak, insignificant; but whenever you use it to do the will of Him who sent you, then you are omnipotent, free. You can even see this in the way you immediately weaken, become deprived of strength, when you consider the consequences of your act.

To-day, March 21. Moscow.

I continue copying. I am very indisposed, weak, but thank God, in peace, I live in the present. Just now I put in order the papers on Art.

6) Socialists will never destroy poverty and the injustice of the inequality of capacities. The stronger, the more intelligent, will always make use of the weaker, the more stupid. Justice and equality of goods will never be attained by anything less than Christianity, i.e., by negating oneself and by recognising the meaning of one’s life in the service to others.

7) I have written down the same as in the 5th, but differently. In order to live with God, by God and in God, it is necessary not to be guided by anything from without. Neither by that which was nor by that which can be; to live only in the present, only in this, to fuse with God.

8) Intelligent Socialists understand that for the attainment of their ends the principal thing is to lift the working men intellectually and physically. This is possible to be done only by religious education, but they do not understand this and therefore all their work is in vain.

9) “Seek the Kingdom of God and His Right, the rest will follow you”—this is the only means of attaining the ends of Socialism.

10) For The Appeal:

All are agreed that we live not as we ought to or as we could. The remedy of some is this: a religious fatalism and, still worse, a scientific, evolutionary one. Others comfort themselves by the gradual bettering and bettering of things by themselves: the step by step people. The third assert that everything will establish itself when things will reach their very worst (Socialism), when the Government and the rich classes will control everybody fully, i.e., the working-men, and then the power will somehow or other make a somersault not only to working-men, but to unerring disinterested self-sacrificing working-men, who will then direct all affairs without error and without sin. The fourth say that to improve the whole matter, it is possible only by the destruction of evil people, the bad ones. But there is no indication where the bad people end and where the harmless ones, if not the good ones, begin. Either they will destroy every one as bad or as in the big revolution they will catch the good ones with the bad. As soon as you begin to judge strictly, no one will remain in the right. What is to be done? But there is only one instrument: a religious change in the soul of people. And it is this change which is interfered with, by all imaginary remedies.

11) My body is nothing else than that piece of everything existing which I am able to govern.

12) The whole world is that which I sense. But what am I? It is that which acts.

13) How good it would be to write a work of art, in which there would be clearly expressed the flowing nature of man: that he, one and the same man, is now a villain, now an angel, now a wise man, now an idiot, now a strong man, now the most impotent being.

14) Every man, as all people, being imperfect in everything, is nevertheless more perfect in some one thing than in another. And these perfections, he puts over another human being as a demand, and condemns him.

15) It is impossible to serve, not “God and mammon,” but “mammon and God.” The service of mammon—every kind of vanity—is a hindrance to the service of God. Peace, solitude, even boredom, is a necessary condition to the service of God. In Moscow religiously they are the most savage of people. In Paris—they are still more savage.

16) There is a kind of English toy called peepshow: behind a little glass, now one thing is shown, now another. This is the way one ought to show man—Hadji Murad: a husband, a fanatic, etc.

17) Not long ago I experienced a feeling, not exactly a reasoning, but a feeling—that everything that is material, and I myself with my own body, is only my own imagination, is the creation of my spirit and that only my soul exists. It was a very joyous feeling.

18) ... does on the other hand the same thing that a false religious education does; it accustoms people to deny their reason.

19) There are two points of view of the world: 1) the world is something definitely existing, that is, existing in definite forms, and 2) the world is something continually flowing, being formed, going towards something. In the first point of view, the life of humanity also appears as something definite, consisting in the peaceful use of the goods of the world. In this point of view—there is a continuous dissatisfaction, and discontent with the construction of the world. It does not fulfil the demands which are presented. In the second point of view, the life of humanity is conceived as something which in itself changes and helps to the change and the attainment of the ends of the world. And in this point of view there is no dissatisfaction or discontentment with the construction of the world. And if there is discontent, it is only with one’s self, for one’s insufficient harmony to the movement of the world and in not helping this movement. (Unclear.)

20) Administrative ambition and greed of misers are therefore alluring, because they are very simple. For every other end of life one has to reflect much, to think, and often you do not see the results clearly. And here it is so simple: where there was one decoration there will be two: where there was one million there will be two, etc.

21) I spoke to Evgenie Ivanovich and said to him that I envy his freedom; but he said to me that things are very difficult for him just on account of this freedom and even on account of the authority and the responsibility which is connected with it. So that it only seems to me, that some one is better off and that another is worse, as the strong man to the weak, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor. And it became suddenly clear to me that all the differences in our conditions in the world are as nothing compared with our inner conditions. It is just the same, as it would be a matter of indifference if a man fell from a boat into the Azov Sea, the Black, the Mediterranean or into the ocean, in comparison with whether he was able to swim or not.

22) I spoke with P about the woman question. There is no woman question. There is the question of freedom of equality for all human beings. The woman question is only quarrel hunting.

23) The more one is guilty before his own conscience, though hidden, the more willingly and involuntarily he seeks the guilt of others and especially those before whom he had been guilty.

24) As soon as you go away into the past or the future, you go away from God and then you immediately become lonely, deserted, unfree.

25) I began to think about myself, about my own hurts and my own future life—and I came to my senses. And it was so natural to say to myself: and you, what business is Leo Nicholaievich (Tolstoi) of yours? And I felt better. Thus there is the one who is hindered by the base, stupid, vain, sensual, Leo Nicholaievich.

26) As soon as you begin to think of the future, you begin to guess. If the patience comes out, then this will happen. But this is madness! And it is bound to come, because to think of the future is the beginning of madness.

I have finished everything. It is now past one, the 21st.

March 22. Moscow. If I live.

April 12. Moscow.

Among the events during this time was the arrival of the Dukhobors,[300] the cares for their emigration, the death of Brashnin.[301] Occupations: Carthago delenda est[302] and Hadji Murad. Worked rather little. The spiritual state rather good. Visitors—most of them peasants, young, good ones.

Since yesterday have been in a very depressed mood. I am not surrendering, I do not disclose myself to any one, but to God. I think that is very important. It is important to keep silent and to suffer a thing through. Otherwise the suffering will go over to others and will make them suffer, but here it will burn itself down in yourself. That is the most precious of all.

This thought helps very much, that in this lies my task, in this is my opportunity to elevate myself, to approach perfection somewhat. Come and dwell within me so that my baseness will be stifled. Awake in me.

I want to cry all the time.

Thought and noted:

1) I found jotted down: “Every victory over the enemy is an enlargement of one’s own strength.” I ought to remember that now especially. There is a struggle going on between my spiritual and animal self, and all that I gain for the former, by all this will I weaken the latter. I carry over from one scale of the weights to another. If I fall into temptation, it means a rolling down the road to evil; if I resist, it is the beginning of a rolling on a new road towards the good.

2) It is astonishing how we get accustomed to the illusion of one’s own individuality, separateness from the world. We see, we feel—that life compels us every minute to feel our union and dependence on the world, makes us feel our incompleteness; and we nevertheless believe that we ourselves, our very selves, is something in the name of which we can live. However, when you understand this illusion clearly, then you are surprised, how you could not have seen that you are not a piece of a whole, but a manifestation in time and space, of something timeless and infinite.

Women have always recognised the power of men over them. And it could not have been otherwise in an unchristian world. Men are the stronger and men have ruled. It was the same in all the worlds (with the exception of the doubtful Amazons and the law of maternity), and it is the same now among .0999 of mankind. But Christianity has appeared and has recognised perfection not in strength but in love, and by this all the subjected, the captive, the slaves and the women have been freed. But that the freedom of slaves and women be not a calamity, it is necessary that the freed be Christians, i.e., that they affirm their life in the service of God and people, and not in the service of themselves. Slaves and women are not Christians, and nevertheless they are freed. And they are terrible. They act as the main-spring of all the calamities of the world.

What must be done? Bring slaves and women back again into slavery? That is impossible to do, because there is no one who will do it: Christians cannot subject. And non-Christians will no longer surrender themselves into slavery, but will fight. They will fight among themselves and one or the other will subject and hold the Christians in slavery. What must be done? One thing must be done: attract people to Christianity, turn them into Christians. It is possible to do this only by fulfilling in life the law of Christ.

Help me, Lord. Help me. Come into me, awake in me.

Apr. 13. Moscow. If I live.

To-day April 27. Grinevka.[303]

The 3rd day here. I am all right. A little indisposed....

The latter days in Moscow I spent finishing Carthago delenda est. I am afraid I have not finished it, and that it is still before me. Still I did quite a lot. Here I have not worked at all.

The misery of the famine is by far not as great as it was in 1891. There are so many lies in all the affairs among the upper classes, everything is so tangled up with lies that it is never possible to answer any question, simply—for instance, is there a famine? I am going to try to distribute as well as I can the money which has been contributed.

Yesterday there was a conversation about the same thing: Is exclusive love good? The résumé is this: a moral man will look on exclusive love,—it is all the same whether he be married or single—as on evil and will fight it; the man, who is little moral, will consider it good and will encourage it. An entirely unmoral man does not even understand it and makes fun of it.

The Russkia Viedomosti was suspended because of the Dukhobors and of me; that is too bad and I am grieved.[304]

1) The proverb: for a good son you do not have to make a fortune, for a bad one, do not leave one.

2) I have made the following note: “God doesn’t know when the awakening of people will take place.” This is what it means: I think that the life of humanity consists in a greater and greater awakening, in an enlightening. And this awakening, this enlightening, will be done by people themselves (by God in people). And in this is life, in this is the good, and therefore this life and this good cannot be taken away from people.

3) My awakening consisted in this, that I doubted the reality of the material world. It lost all meaning to me.

To-morrow Apr. 28. Grinevka. If I live, I’ll finish.

To-day Apr. 29. Morning. Grinevka.

Felt great weakness. Am better since yesterday. But unable to write anything. Went to Lopashino,[305] took notes.[306]

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

No letters. Serezha was here.[307]

I continue. Thought:

1) You look deeply into the life of man, especially of women,—and you see from what world point of view their acts flow, and you see, principally, how inevitably all argument against this world point of view recoils and you cannot imagine how this world point of view will be changed—in the same way as how a piece of a date-stone has grown through a date. But there are conditions when a change is produced and accomplished from within. Live man can always be born, from seeds there are sprouts.

2) I look into the future, and ask: were I to act as I ought to, would everything then be all right, would all obstacles then be destroyed? This question is pleonism. The question is this, whether, were I to act in a realm where there were no obstacles, would there then be any obstacles?

3) It is remarkable how we are without understanding and without gratitude. God arranged our life so, that he forbade us all false paths, that everything drives us from these false, harmful paths, impoverishing us to ruination, and making us suffer, onto the only free, always joyous path of love—but we nevertheless do not go on this path and we complain that we suffer from the attempts of going on the false, ruinous paths.

4) One of the most urgent needs of man, equal with and even more urgent than eating, drinking, sex desire, and the existence of which we often forget, is the need to manifest oneself, to know that it is I who have done a thing. Very many acts which are otherwise inexplicable, are explained by this need. One ought to remember this both in their bringing up, and in dealing with men. The main thing is that one has to try to make this an activity and not a boast.

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.