“ Yes, one thing is true, that the world is not such as we see it and we don’t know anything as it is.” I said:
‘ Yes, we know something exactly as it is.” “What is it?”
1 That which knows. It is exactly such as we know it.”
14) One is often surprised that people are un-grateful. One ought to be surprised at how they could be grateful for good done them. How-
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ever little good people do, they know with certainty that the doing of good is the greatest happi-ness. How then can people be grateful to others that these others have drunk themselves full, when that is the greatest enjoyment?
15) Only he is free whom nothing and no-body can hinder from doing what he wants. There is only one such work to do to love.
1 6) Prayer is directed to a personal God, not because God is personal (I even know as a matter of fact that He is not personal, because the per-sonal is finite and God is infinite), but because I am a personal being. I have a little green glass in my eye and I see everything green. I can not help but see the world green, although I know that it is not like that.
17) The aesthetic pleasure is a pleasure of a lower order. And therefore the highest aes-thetic pleasure leaves one unsatisfied. In fact, the higher the aesthetic pleasure, the more unsatisfied it leaves one. It always makes one want something more and more. And so without end. Only moral good gives full satisfaction. Here there is full satisfaction. Nothing further is wished for or needed.
18) A lie to others is by far neither as im-portant nor as harmful as a lie to oneself. A lie to others is often an innocent play, a satisfying of
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vanity. A lie to oneself is always a perversion of the truth, a turning aside from the demands of life.
19) Although seldom, yet it has happened to me that I have done good from pity, a real good. In that case you never remember what you really have done and under what circumstances. You remember only that you were with God (this oc-curred to me in regard to my favourite boots which I remember I gave away out of pity and for a long time I could not remember where they had gone). It is the same way with all those mo-ments when I was with God, whether in prayer or in the business of life. Memory is a fleshly affair, but .here, the thing is spiritual.
20) Man can not live a fleshly life, if he does not consider himself in the right and he can not live a spiritual life if he does not consider him-self sinful.
21) . . .
I am going to sleep. It is 12:30 in the morn-ing, July 30th. July 3 r, Y. P. If Hive.
Random break
July 31, Y. P.
I am alive. It is evening now. It is past four. I am lying down and can not fall asleep. My heart aches. I am tired out. I hear through the window they play tennis and are laughing. S.
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went away to the Shenshins. 118 Every one is well, but I am sad and can not master myself. It is like the feeling I had when St. Thomas 119 locked me in and I heard through my prison how every one was gay and was laughing. But I don’t want to. One must suffer humiliation and be good. I can do it.
I continue to copy :
1) The disbelief in reason is the source of all evil. This disbelief is reached by the teaching of a distorted faith from childhood. Believe in one miracle and the trust in reason is destroyed.
2) …
3) Christianity does not give happiness but safety; it lets you down to the bottom from which there is no place to fall.
4) I rode horseback from Tula and thought about this; that I am a part of Him, separated in a certain way from other such parts, and He is everything, the Father, and I felt love, just love, for Him. Now, especially now, I not only can not reproduce this feeling, but not even recall it. But I was so joyful that I said to myself: Here I was thinking that I can not learn anything new and suddenly I acquired a wonderful blessed new feeling, a real feeling.
5 ) What humbug 12 beauty, truth, good-ness! Beauty is one of those attributes of outer objects, like health, an attribute of the living body.
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Truth is not the ideal of science. The ideal of science is knowledge, not truth. The good can not be placed on the plane with either of these, because it is the goal of life.
(It is unclear, but it was clear and will be.) 6) I do not remember good works, because they are outside of the material man of mem-ory. August i f Ysn Pol If I live. which is doubtful. My heart aches very much. . . .
It is dreadful to think how much time has elapsed; a month and a half. To-day, Sept. 14, Y.P.
During this time I took a trip to the monastery with Sonya. 121 . . . I wrote on Hadji-Murad 122 very poorly, a first draft. I have continued my work on the Declaration of Faith. The Chert-kovs have gone away. . . . All three sons are here now with their wives. 123
There was a letter from the Hollander who has refused to serve. 124 I wrote a preface to the letter. 125 I wrote a letter also to Mme. Kalmi-kov 126 with very sharp statements about the Gov-ernment. The whole month and a half has been condensed in this. Oh, yes; I have also been ill from my usual sickness and my stomach is still not strong.
One thing more. During this time there was a 70
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letter from the Hindu Tod and an exquisite book of Hindu wisdom, loga’s Philosophy. 12 ‘ 1 In the meantime I thought :
1 ) There are many people, especially Euro-peans and especially women, who not only talk but who write things that appear intelligent, in the same way as dumb people speak; as a matter of fact, it isn’t any more natural for them to think than for a dumb person to speak, but both one and the other, both the stupid and the dumb, have been taught.
2) To love an individual man, one has to be blinded. Without being blinded one can love only God, but people can be pitied, which means to love in a Godly way.
3) To get rid of an enemy, one must love him, as it is also said in the “ Teaching of the twelve apostles.” 128 But to love one has to put to one-self the task for all one’s life of love towards an enemy, to do him good through love and to per-fect oneself in love for him.
4) At first, one is surprised that stupid peo-ple should have within them such an assertive convincing intonation. But it is as it should be. Otherwise no one would listen to them.
5) I find this note: “A decoration for peas-ants, our happiness “ I can not remember what that means, but it is something that pleased me.
The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1896
I think it means that to a poor man looking on the life of the rich, it appears as happiness. But this happiness is as much happiness, as card-board made into a tree or a castle is a tree or a castle.
6) We are all attracted to the Whole and one to another, like particles of one body. Only our roughness, the lack of smoothness, our angles, in-terfere with our uniting. There is already an attraction, there is no need of making it, but one must plane oneself, wipe out one’s angles.
7) One of the strongest means of hypnotism, of exterior action on the spiritual state of man, is his dress. People know that very well; that is why there is a monastic garb in monasteries and a uniform in the army.
8) I was trying to recall two excellent sub-jects for novels, the suicide of old Persianninov and the substitution of a child in an orphan asy-lum.
9) When my weakness tortured me, I sought means of salvation, and I found one in the thought that there is nothing stationary, that everything flows, changes, that all this is for a while, and that it is only necessary to suffer the while while we live I and the others. And some one of us will go away first. (The while does not mean to live in any way, but means, not to despair, to suffer it through to the end.)
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10) I wanted to say that I was grateful, so as to make the other one well disposed, and later to tell the truth. No, I thought, that is not per-mitted. He will ascribe it to his virtues and the truth will be accepted even less. Man, not ac-knowledging his sins, is a vessel hermetically closed with a cover which
