I remain here till August 7 (Old Style). I am drinking the waters, and indeed would never be able to make up my mind to endure this place were I not convinced that the cure is really good for me. It’s certainly not worth while to describe Ems! I have promised the public to bring out a double number of the Diary in August; as yet I haven’t written a single line; from sheer boredom I’ve got so apathetic that I regard the work before me with reluctance, as if it were an imminent misfortune. I already feel that the number will be very bad. At any rate, write to me again while I’m here, my dearest fellow….
LXVIII. To Mlle. Gerassimov
PETERSBURG,
March 7, 1877.
MUCH-HONOURED MLLE. GERASSIMOV!
Your letter has tormented me terribly, because I could not answer it for so long. What can you have thought of me? In your dejected state, you will perhaps have taken my silence as an affront.
You must know that I am almost overwhelmed with work. Besides the work for the periodically appearing Diary, I have to get through a quantity of letters. I receive daily several letters of the same kind as yours, which cannot possibly be disposed of in a few lines. Moreover, I have lately suffered from three attacks of epilepsy, and those of such violence and quick recurrence as I have not had for years.
After each attack, I was bodily and mentally so shattered that for two and three days I could not work or write, or even read. Now you know that, you will forgive my long silence.
I did not think your letter by any means childish or stupid, as you assume. For that mood is now general, and there are many young girls suffering like you.
But I don’t mean to write much on that theme; I shall only lay before you my fundamental ideas upon the subject, both in general; and as it concerns you personally. If I advise you to settle down, to stay in your parents’ house, and take up some intelligent occupation (corresponding to the course of your education), you won’t be much inclined to listen to me. But why are you in such a hurry, why should you so dread any delay?
You want to do something useful as soon as possible. And yet, with your ardour (I am taking it for granted that it is genuine), you could — if you don’t act precipitately, but pursue your education a little longer — prepare yourself for activities which would be a hundred times more useful than the obscure and insignificant rôle of a sick-nurse, midwife, or woman-doctor. You urgently desire to enter the Medical High School for Women here. I should like to advise you decidedly not to do so. You will get no education there, but quite the contrary.
And what do you gain, if you actually do become a midwife or woman-doctor? Such a calling — if you really do expect so much from it — you could quite well take up later on; but would it not be better now if you pursued other ends, and took pains with your general education?
Do but look at all our specialists (even the University professors); why are they all losing ground, and whence comes the harm that they do (instead of doing good) to their own profession? It is simply because the majority of our specialists are shockingly ill-educated people. In other lands it is quite different: there we find a Humboldt or a Claude Bernard, persons with large ideas, great culture and knowledge outside of their special job.
But with us, even highly-gifted people are incredibly uneducated; for example, Syetchenov, who at bottom is uneducated and knows nothing beyond his narrow special subject; of his scientific adversaries (the philosophers) he has no notion whatever; therefore his scientific efforts are more harmful than useful. And the majority of our students — men and women — have no true education. How then can they be useful to humanity! They study only just enough to get paid appointments as soon as may be….
LXIX. To A. P. N. —
May 19, 1877.
MUCH-HONOURED ALEXANDER PAVLOVITCH,
Will you be so very good as to excuse my not having answered you for so long? Not until to-day have I been able to leave Petersburg for a while; I have been terribly busy, and my illness added to my troubles. But what am i to write to you now? You are intelligent enough to perceive that the questions you put to me are abstract and nebulous; besides, I have no personal knowledge whatever of you.
I too strove for sixteen years with doubts similar to yours; but somehow or other I was certain that sooner or later I should succeed in finding my true path, and therefore did not torment myself overmuch. It was more or less unimportant to me what position I might come to occupy in literature; in my soul was a certain flame, and in that I believed, troubling myself not at all as to what should come of it. There are my experiences, since you ask me for them.
How should I know your heart? If you will hear my counsel, I advise you to trust without hesitation to your own inward impulse; perhaps destiny may point you to a literary career. Your claims are indeed most modest, for you ask no more than to be a worker of the second rank.
I should like to add this: my own youthful impulse hindered me in no wise from taking a practical grasp of life; it is true I was a writer, not an engineer; nevertheless, during my whole course at the College of Engineering, from the lowest to the highest class, I was one of the best students; later I took a post for a while, although I knew that sooner or later I should abandon that career.
But I saw nothing in the career itself which could thwart that to which I aspired; I was even more convinced than before that the future belonged to me, and that I alone should control it. In the same way, if an official position does not hinder you in the pursuit of your literary vocation, why should you not temporarily undertake such an one?
Naturally I write all this at random, since I do not know you personally; but I want to be of service to you, and so answer your letter as frankly as possible. As to all the rest, it is, in great part, exaggeration.
Permit me to press your hand.
Your
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.
LXX. To N. L. Osmidov
PETERSBURG,
February, 1878.
My DEAR AND KIND NIKOLAY LUKITCH,
Let me beg you, first, to forgive my having, by reason of illness and various bothers, taken so long to answer you. In the second place, what can I say in reply to your momentous question, which belongs to the eternal problem of humanity? Can one treat such matters in the narrow compass of a letter? If I could talk with you for some hours, it would be a different thing; and even then I might well fail to achieve anything. Least of all by words and arguments does one convert an unbeliever.
Would it not be better if you would read, with your best possible attention, all the epistles of St. Paul? Therein much is said of faith, and the question could not be better handled. I recommend you to read the whole Bible through in the Russian translation. The book makes a remarkable impression when one thus reads it. One gains, for one thing, the conviction that humanity possesses, and can possess, no other book of equal significance.
Quite apart from the question of whether you believe or don’t believe. I can’t give you any sort of idea. But I’ll say just this: Every single organism exists on earth but to live — not to annihilate itself. Science has made this clear, and has laid down very precise laws upon which to ground the axiom. Humanity as a whole is, of course, no less than an organism. And that organism has, naturally, its own conditions of existence, its own laws. Human reason comprehends those laws. Now suppose that there is no God, and no personal immortality (personal immortality and God are one and the same — an identical idea).
Tell me then: Why am I to live decently and do good, if I die irrevocably here below? If there is no immortality, I need but live out my appointed day, and let the rest go hang. And if that’s really so (and if I am clever enough not to let myself be caught by the standing laws), why should I not kill, rob, steal, or at any rate live at the expense of others? For I shall die, and all the rest will die and utterly vanish! By this road, one would reach the conclusion that the human organism alone is not subject to the universal law, that it lives but to destroy itself — not to keep itself alive. For what sort of society is one whose members are mutually hostile? Only utter confusion can come of such a thing as that.
And then reflect on the “I “which can grasp all this. If the “I” can grasp the idea of the universe and its laws, then that “I” stands above all other things, stands aside from all other things, judges them, fathoms them. In that case, the “I” is not only liberated from the
