V
Yes, yes, it ended with that. I corrupted them all! How could it have been achieved — I do not know, yet I remember clearly. The dream passed aeons away, and left in me only the sensation of the whole. I only know that the cause of the fall was I. Like a filthy germ, like an atom of pestilence, infeeting whole peoples, so did I infect with my soul that happy land, that knew not sin before me. They learned to lie, and loved lying, and knew the beauty of lies. Oh, this perhaps began innocently, from a jest, from playfulness, in a loving game, perhaps indeed from an atom, but the atom of lie entered their hearts and they loved it. Soon was begotten voluptuousness, of voluptuousness — jealousy, of jealousy — cruelty. . . .
Oh,
I do not know, I do not remember, but soon, very soon, the first blood was spilled. They were surprised and horrified and began to be disunited and to disperse. Unions appeared, but they were unions one against the other. Reproach and recrimination began. They came to know shame, and made of shame a virtue. The idea of honour was born and each union had its flag. They began to use the beasts ill, and the beasts withdrew into the woods and became their enemies.
A war of disunion began, in which they fought for separation, for personality, for mine and thine. They began to speak different tongues. They came to know and to love sadness; they longed for suffering and said that truth could be achieved by suffering alone. Then science appeared among them. When they were angered, they began to talk of brotherhood and humanity, and conceived those ideas. When they committed crime, they invented justice and prescribed for themselves whole codes of laws to maintain it, and to maintain the codes they set up a guillotine. Hardly, hardly did they remember what they had lost; they did not even want to believe that they had once been innocent and happy.
They laughed even at the possibility of that old happiness and called it a dream. They could not even present it to themselves in forms and. images, but it is strange and wonderful, that when they had lost all belief in their former happiness, calling it a legend, they conceived so great a desire to be innocent and happy again once more that they fell before the desire of their hearts like children, and worshipped this desire; they built many temples to it and began to pray to their ideal, to their own desire; though they fully believed it was impracticable and impossible, still they worshipped and adored it with tears.
And yet if it could only have happened that they might return to the innocent and happy state which they had lost, and if some one had suddenly showed it to them and asked them if they wished to return to it, they would surely have refused. They would answer me: ‘ Grant that we are liars, evil, and unjust, we know that and weep for it, we torture and torment ourselves, and punish ourselves more hardly perhaps than even that merciful Judge, who will judge us and whose name we do not know. But we have science, and by her aid we will find the truth again, and this time we will accept her consciously.
Knowledge is higher than feeling; the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom; wisdom will reveal to us laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.’ That is what they said, and after such words, each one loved himself above all others, neither could they do otherwise. Each one had become so jealous of his own individuality that he sought with all his might only to degrade and belittle it in others; therein he saw his life. Slavery appeared, even voluntary slavery; the weak readily submitted to the strong, with one aim alone, that the strong should help them to crush those yet weaker than themselves.
Godly men appeared who came to these people wi+h tears and spoke to them of their pride, of their lack of measure and harmony, of their loss of shame. They were laughed at and stoned with stones. Sacred blood flowed on the thresholds of the temples. Yet there began to appear men who pondered how they might be united in such a way that each, without ceasing to love himself most of all, might yet not stand in the way of others; they might live all together as it were in a united society. Whole wars were fought for this idea.
All those who fought believed firmly that science and wisdom and the instinct of self-preservation would at last unite men into a harmonious and reasonable society; in the meanwhile, to help the work along, ‘ the wise’ tried to exterminate with all speed ‘ the foolish’ and those who did not understand their idea in order that they should not prevent its triumph. But the instinct of self-preservation quickly began to weaken. Proud and voluptuous men appeared who straightway demanded everything or nothing.
To aequire all things they had recourse to murder, and if they failed, to suicide. Religions appeared devoted to the cult of not-being and of self-destruction for the sake of eternal rest in nothingness. Finally these men beeame tired of their foolish labour, and on their faces showed suffering; and they proclaimed that suffering was beauty, since thought was in suffering alone. They praised suffering in their songs.
I walked among them wringing my hands and wept over them; yet I loved them perhaps still more than when there was no suffering in their faees, and they were innoeent and beautiful. I loved the earth which they had polluted more than when it was a paradise, for this alone that sorrow had appeared upon it.
Alas, I have always loved sorrow and sadness, but for myself, myself alone, and I wept for them, pitying them. I stretched out my hands to them, accusing, cursing, and despising myself in my despair. I told them that this was all my work, mine alone; that it was I who had brought corruption, infection, and the lie among them!
I implored them to crucify me on the cross, I taught them how to make a cross. I could not kill myself, I had not the power, but I wanted to submit to tortures from them, I yearned for torments, I longed that in those torments my last drop of blood should be spilled. But they only laughed at me, and at last began to think me mad.
They defended me; they said they had only received that which themselves desired, and that everything that was, could not but have been. At last they deelared to me that I was becoming dangerous to them, and that they would put me in a mad-house if I did not hold my peace. Their sorrow so mightily entered my soul that my heart shrank and I felt that I would die. . . . Then I awoke.
It was already morning; that is to say, day had not yet dawned, but it was six o’clock. I awoke in the same easy-ehair, my eandle was burnt out. They were asleep at the captain’s, and all about was a stillness such as was seldom in our house. First, I jumped up in surprised astonishment. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before, it was strange even to the smallest details. For instanee, I had never fallen asleep in my easy-chair. Then suddenly, while I stood regaining my senses, my loaded revolver suddenly appeared before me.
But instantly I put it away from me. Oh, now — life, life! I lifted my hands and called upon the eternal truth, not called, but wept. Rapture, ineffable rapture exalted all my being. Yes, to live and — to preach! Oh, that very minute I decided to preach, yes, to preach all my life long. I would preach, I longed to preach — what? Truth, for I had seen her, seen her with my eyes, seen her in all her glory.
Since then I have preached. More than that, I love all men, above all those who laugh at mc. Why is it so? I do not know, I cannot explain, but so let it be. They say already that I’m wandering: if he wanders now what will the end be! It’s true. I wander, and perhaps it will be worse in the future. And of course I shall wander many times before I find out how to preach, with what words and deeds, for these are hard to find. Even now I see all this as clear as day; but listen. Who does not go astray? Yet all are tending to one and the same goal, at least all aspire to the same goal, from the wise man to the lowest murderer, but only by different ways. It is an old truth, but there is this new in it: I cannot go far astray.
I saw the truth. I saw and know that men could
