Is that no indication of personal immortality? If there were no personal immortality, would you, Nikolay Lukitch, be worrying yourself about it, be searching for an answer, be writing letters like this? So you can’t get rid of your “I,” you see; your “I “will not subject itself to earthly conditions, but seeks for something which transcends earth, and to which it feels itself akin. But whatever I write falls short altogether — as it must. I cordially press your hand, and take my leave. Remain in your unrest — seek farther — it may be that you shall find.
Your servant and true friend,
F. DOSTOEVSKY.
LXXI. To a Mother
PETERSBURG,
March 27, 1878.
MUCH-HONOURED LADY!
Your letter of February 2nd I am answering only to-day, after a month’s delay. I was ill and very much occupied, and so beg you not to take amiss this dilatoriness.
You set me problems which one could treat only in long essays, and assuredly not in a letter. Moreover, life itself can alone give any answer to such questions. If I were to write you ten sheets, some misunderstanding, which would easily be cleared up in a verbal interview, might cause you to take me up quite wrongly, and therefore to abjure my whole ten sheets. Can one, in general, when wholly unacquainted, and especially in a letter, treat of such matters at all? I consider it quite impossible, and believe that it may do more harm than good.
From your letter I gather that you are a good mother, and are very anxious about your growing child. I cannot, though, at all imagine of what service to you would prove the solution of the questions with which you have turned to me: you set yourself too hard a task, and your perplexities are exaggerated and morbid. You should take things much more simply. You ask me, for instance, “What is good, and what is not good?” To what do such questions lead?
They concern you alone, and have nothing whatever to do with the bringing-up of your child. Every human being, who can grasp the truth at all, feels in his conscience what is good and what is evil. Be good, and let your child realize that you are good; in that way you will wholly fulfil your duty towards your child, for you will thus give him the immediate conviction that people ought to be good.
Believe me, it is so. Your child will then cherish your memory all his life with great reverence, it may be often with deep emotion as well. And even if you do something wrong — that is, something frivolous, morbid, or even absurd — your child will sooner or later forget all about it, and remember only the good things. Mark me: in general, you can do no more than this for your child.
And it is really more than enough. The memory of our parents’ good qualities — of their love of truth, their rectitude, their goodness of heart, of their freedom from false shame and their constant reluctance to deceive — all this will sooner or later make a new creature of your child: believe me. And do not think that this is a small thing. When we graft a tiny twig on a great tree, we alter all the fruits of the tree thereby.
Your child is now eight years old; make him acquainted with the Gospel, teach him to believe in God, and that in the most orthodox fashion. This is a sine qua non; otherwise you can’t make a fine human being out of your child, but at best a sufferer, and at worst — a careless lethargic “success,” which is a still more deplorable fate. You will never find anything better than the Saviour anywhere, believe me.
Suppose now that your child at sixteen or seventeen (after some intercourse with corrupted school-friends) comes to you or to its father, and puts this question:
“Why am I to love you, and why do you represent it as my duty?” Believe me: no sort of “questions” or knowledge will help you then; you won’t be able to give any answer. Therefore it is that you must try to act so that it will never once occur to your child to come to you with that question.
But that will be possible only if your child is attached to you by such love as would prevent such a question from ever coming into its head; true, that at school such views may be for a while your child’s, but you will find it easy to separate the false from the true; and even if you should really have to listen to that question, you will be able to answer with just a smile, and quietly go on doing well.
If you grow superfluously and exaggeratedly anxious about your children, you may easily affect their nerves and become a nuisance to them; and that might happen even though your mutual love were great; therefore you must be careful and cultivate moderation in all things. It seems to me that in this respect you have no sense at all of moderation. In your letter, for example, occurs the following sentence: “If I live for them (that is, my husband and children), it is an egotistic life; dare I live thus egotistically, when all round me are so many people who need my help?”
What an idle and unprofitable thought! What hinders you from living for others, and yet remaining a good wife and mother? On the contrary: if you live for others also and share with them your earthly goods and the emotions of your heart, you set your children a radiant example, and your husband will necessarily love you still better than before. But since such questions come into your head at all, I must assume that you consider it to be your duty so to cleave to your husband and your children that thereby you forget all the rest of the world — that is to say, without any moderation. In that way you could but become a burden to your child, even if it loved you. It may easily befall that your sphere of activity will suddenly seem to you too narrow, and that you will aspire to a wider one, perhaps a world-wide one. But has anyone at all any right to aspire to that?
Believe me: it is uncommonly important and useful to set a good example even in a narrow sphere of activity, for in that way one influences dozens and hundreds of people. Your purpose, never to lie but to live in truth, will make those who surround you think, thus influencing them.
That in itself is a great deed. In such ways you can do an enormous amount. It were truly senseless to throw all aside, and rush with such questions to Petersburg, meaning thereafter to enter the Academy of Medicine or the High School for Women.
I meet here daily such women and girls; what frightful narrowness I see in them! And all who once were good for something are ruined here. Seeing no serious activity in their environment, they begin to love humanity theoretically, by the book as it were; they love humanity, and scorn the individual unfortunate, are bored in his company, and therefore avoid him.
I really don’t know how I am to answer your questions, for I don’t understand these matters at all. When a child betrays an evil character, it is of course attributable to the evil tendencies which are inborn in him (it is beyond doubt that every human being is born with evil tendencies), as well as to those who have his bringing-up in hand, and are either incapable or lazy, so that they neither suppress those tendencies nor (by their own example) lead them into other directions. Of the usefulness of that work I really need not speak. If you inculcate good propensities in your child, the work will bring its own delight. Now enough: I have written you a lot, and have tired myself, yet have really said little; but you will no doubt understand me.
With all respect, your most obedient servant,
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.
P.S. — Peter the Great, with his revenue of one and a half millions, might well have led an easy lethargic existence at the Tsar’s Palace in Moscow; and yet he worked hard all his life. He always wondered at those who do not work.
LXXII. To a Group of Moscow Students
PETERSBURG,
April 18, 1878.
MUCH-HONOURED GENTLEMEN, Forgive my not having answered you for so long; I was definitely ill, and other circumstances besides delayed my answer. I wished, originally, to reply to you through the newspapers; but it appeared that, for reasons against which I am powerless, this was not feasible; and, anyhow, I could not have treated your questions with the necessary circumstantiality in the press. But indeed, what can I say to you in any land of a letter? Your questions touch upon the whole interior life of Russia: do you want me to write you a book? Am I to make you my full confession of faith?
Well, finally I have decided to write you this short letter, wherein I risk being completely misunderstood by you — a result which would be most painful to me.
You write: “It is of paramount importance that we should solve the problem of how far we are to blame in the affair, and what conclusions society, no less
