There is only one good; good and bad; but truth and beauty are good qualities of certain ob-jects.
The other very important thing, is that reason is the only means of manifesting, and freeing love. It seems to me that this is an important thought, omitted in my Declaration of Faith.
86
NOVEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
To-day November I. Y. P.
All this time I have felt neither well nor like working. I have written letters only, among the number was one to the Caucasian disciplinary battalion. 137 Yesterday, walking at night on the snow, in the blizzard, I tired my heart and it aches. I think I am going to die very soon. That is why I am writing out the notes. I think I am going to die without fear and without re-sistance.
Just now I sat alone and thought how strange it was that people live alone. People; I thought of Stasov; 138 how is he living now, what is he thinking, feeling. Of Kolichka, 139 too. And so strange and new became the knowledge that they, all of them, people are living, and I do not live in them; that they are closed to me. November 2. Y. P. If I live.
November 2nd. Y. P.
Am alive. Am a little better. Have written on the Declaration of Faith. I think it is true that it is cold because it endeavours to be infallible. 140 A blizzard. Sent off the letters to Schmidt and Chertkov. Did not send the letter to Mme. Kalmikov.
To-day I thought about art. It is play. And when it is the play of working, normal people it is good, but when it is the play of corrupted para-
87
The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1896
sites, then it is bad and here now it has reached
to decadence.
November 3. Y. P. If I live.
To-day November 5. Y. P. Morning.
Yesterday was a terrible day.
… At night I hardly slept and was depressed. I just now found the prescriptions 141 in my diary, looked them over and began to feel better; to separate one’s true “ self “ from that which is of-fended and vexed, to remember that this is no hindrance, no accidental unpleasantness, but the very work predestined me, and above all to know that if I have a dislike for any one, then as long as there is that dislike in me then I am the guilty one. And as soon as you know you are guilty, you feel better.
To-day, lying on the bed, I thought about love towards God … I wish I could say, the love of God, i.e., divine love that the first and prin-cipal commandment is divine love, but that the other resembling it and flowing from it, especially flowing from it, is the love for neighbour.
Yesterday I wrote 18 pages of introduction to Art. 142
It is wrong to say of a work of art, “ You don’t yet understand it.” If I don’t understand it, that means that the work of art is poor, because its
NOVEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
task is in making understandable that which is not
understandable.
November 6. Y. P. If I live.
November 6. Y. P.
Am alive. It is the third day that I continue to write on art. It seems to me it is good. At least I am writing willingly and easily.
. . . Have received a good letter from Vander-veer. Wrote another letter to the commander of the battalion in the Caucasus. Chertkov sent me his copy of a similar letter.
To-day I rode horseback to Tula. A marvel-lous day and night. I am just now going to take a walk to meet the girls.
Have been thinking.
1) Natural sciences, when they wish to deter-mine the very essence of things, fall into a crude materialism, i.e., ignorance. Such, besides Des-cartes’ whirlwinds, are atoms and ether and the origin of species. All that I can say, is that it appears to me so, just as the heavenly vault ap-pears round to me, while I know that it is not round and that it appears to me so, only because my sight for all directions extends on only one radius.
2) The highest perfection of art is its cosmo-politanism. But on the contrary, with us at pres-
89
The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1896
ent it is becoming more and more specialised, if not according to nations, then according to classes.
3) The refinement of art and its strength are always in inverse proportion.
4) “ Conservatism lies in this “… That is the way I have it noted, but further I can’t remem-ber now.
5) Why is it pleasant to ride? Because it is the very emblem of life. Life you ride.
I wanted to take a walk. . . . November 7. Y. P. If I live.
To-day November 12. Y. P.
I haven’t noted down anything during this time. I was writing the essay on Art. To-day a little on the Declaration of Faith. A weakness of thought and I am sad. One must learn to be satisfied with stupidity. If I do not love, at least not not to love. That, thank the Lord, I have attained.
November 16. Y. P. Morning.
I still work just as badly and am therefore de-pressed. The day after to-morrow I am going to Moscow, if God commands. 143
… In the meantime I received a strange let-ter from the Spaniard Zanini, with an offer of 22,000 francs for good works. I answered that
90
NOVEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
I would like to use them for the Dukhobors. What is going to happen? 144 I wrote to Kuzmin-sky on Witte and Dragomirov 145 and the day be-fore yesterday I wrote diligently all morning on War. 146 Something will come of it.
I am thinking continually about art and about the temptations or seductions which becloud the mind, and I see that art belongs to this class, but I do not know how to make it clear. This occu-pies me very, very much. I fall asleep and wake up with this thought, but up to now I have come to no conclusion.
The notes during this time about God and the future life are:
i) They say that God must be understood as a personality. In this lies great misunderstand-ing; personality is limitation. Man feels himself a personality, only because he comes in contact with other personalities. If man were only one, he would not be a personality. These two con-ceptions are mutually determined; the outer world, other beings, and the personality. If there were not a world of other beings, man would not feel himself, would not recognise himself as a person-ality; if man were not a personality he would not recognise the existence of other beings. And therefore man within this Universe is inconceiv-able otherwise than as a personality. But how
9i
. The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1896
can it be said of God, that He is a personality, that God is personal? In this lies the root of anthropomorphism.
Of God it only can be said what Moses and Mohammed said, that he is one, and one, not in that sense that there is no other or other gods (in relation to God there can be no notion of num-ber and therefore it is even impossible to say of God that he is one (i in the sense of a number), but in that sense that he is monocentric, that he is not a conception, but a being, that which the Greek Orthodox call a living God in opposition to a pantheistic God, i.e., a superior spiritual being living in everything. He is one in that sense that He is, like a being to whom one can address one-self, i.e., not exactly to pray, but that there is a relationship between me, something which is limited, a personality, and God something in-conceivable but existing.
The most inconceivable thing about God for us consists exactly in this, that we know Him as a one being, can know him in no other way, and at the same time it is impossible for us to understand a one being who fills up everything with himself. If God is not one, then He is scattered and He does not exist. If He is one, then we involuntar-ily represent him to ourselves in the shape of a personality and then He is no longer a higher be-
92
NOVEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
ing, no longer everything. But, however, in or-der to know God and to lean on Him one must un-derstand Him as filling everything and at the same time as one.
2) I have been thinking how obviously mis-taken is our conception of the future life in bodies either more or less similar to ours. Our bodies as we know them are nothing but the products of our outer six senses. How then can there be life for that spiritual being who is separated from his body how can it be in that form which is deter-mined and produced by that body through its senses? November //. Y. P. If I live.
November 77. Y. P.
Yesterday I hardly wrote anything.
. . . There is a fight in the papers over Repine’s m definition of art as amusement. How it fits into my work. The full significance of Art has still not been made clear. It is clear to me, and I can write and prove it, but not briefly and simply. I cannot bring it up
