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A letter from Vanderveer. It is now morn-ing, will go to the post.
To-day Nov. 10. Y. P.
I have lived through much these two weeks. The work is still the same; I think I have finished it. To-day I have written letters and among them one to Grot to be set up in type. S was here, she left for Moscow from Pirogovo, where we went together. It was good there. Since I have come home, my back has ached and in the evening I have fever. Alexander Petrovich 239 is writing in the house. . . .
To-day I wrote 9 letters. One letter to Khil-kov, 240 remained. How terrible, his affair and condition. Mikhail Novikov was here and also a peasant-poet from Kazan.
Have been thinking:
1) The condition of people who are befogged by a false religion is just the same as in blind-man’s-buff : they tie their eyes, then they take them by their arms, and then they turn them around and finally let them go. The same with every-body. Without this they do not let them go. (For The Appeal.)
2) The most usual judgment about Christian-ity, especially among the new Nietzschean reason-ers, is that Christianity is a renunciation of dignity,
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a weakness, a submissiveness. It is just the con-trary. True Christianity demands above every-thing else the highest consciousness of dignity, a terrible strength and steadfastness. It is just the contrary: The admirers of strength ought to debase themselves before strength.
3 ) I walked in the village, and looked into the windows. Everywhere there was poverty and ignorance. And I thought of the former slav-ery. Formerly, the cause was to be seen, the chain which held them was to be seen; but now it is not a chain in Europe they are hairs, but they are just as many as those which held Gul-liver. With us the ropes are still to be seen, well let us say the twine; and there there are hairs, but they hold so tightly that the giant-people can-not move.
.There is one salvation : not to lie down, not to fall asleep. The deception is so strong and so adroit that you often see that those very people which it sucks and ruins, defend the vampires with passion and attack those who are against them. . . . November n, Y. P. If I live.
November n, Y. P.
Since morning I have been writing Hadji Murad and nothing has come of it. But it is becoming clear in my head and I feel like writing
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very much. I wrote a letter to Khilkov and to others, but I shall hardly send the one to Khilkov. Maria Alexandrovna was here. My health is entirely good. November 12, Y. P. If I live.
November 12, Y. P.
To-day Peter Ossipov came : 241 “ In our place they have begun to sell indulgences.” The Vladimir-ikon was there and it was ordered through the village elder, that the people be driven to the Church. 242
N. found ore and considers it very natural that people shall live under the ground, in danger of their lives, and he will receive the income.
. . . The most important thing is that I have decided to write The Appeal; there is no time to postpone it. To-day I corrected On Science. It is evening now, have taken up two versions of The Appeal, and am going to work on it.
Nov. 14, Y. P.
. . . One thing I want: To do what is better before God. I don’t know how yet. I slept badly at night; bad thoughts, wicked ones. And I am apathetic, no desire to work. Corrected the preface On Science.
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1) I read of the behavior of the English in Africa. It is all terrible. But the thought came to my head: Perhaps it was unavoidably neces-sary in order that enlightenment should penetrate these peoples. At first I was absorbed in the thought and it occurred to me that thus it had to be done. What nonsense! Why should not people, living a Christian life, go in simply like Miklukha-Maklai, 243 live with them, but is it nec-essary to trade, make drunkards of them, kill? They say: “ If people were to live as Christians, they would have no work.” Here is the work and it is an enormous work: while the Gospels are being preached to all creation.
2) Science, losing its religious basis, has begun to study trifles in the main, it has ceased to study important things. From that time on was formed the theory of experimental science, Bacon.
3) I was thinking, pendant to Hadji Murad, of writing about another Russian brigand, Greg-ori Nicholaev. He should see the whole lawless-ness of the life of the rich, he should live as a watchman of an apple-orchard on a rich estate with a lawn-tennis?**
4) To-day I am in a very bad mood, and it is very difficult for me to remember, to imagine to myself what I am when I am in a good mood. But it is absolutely necessary, so as not to despair and not do something bad when in a bad mood,
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to abstain from every activity. Is it not the same in life? One ought not to believe that I am this good-for-nothing which I feel myself to be, but to make an effort, remember what I am there, what I am in spirit, and live according to that remem-bered “ self,” or do not live at all abstain.
5) “ Toute reunion d’hommes est toujours in-ferieure aux elements qui la composent.”*** This is so because they are united by rules. In their own natural union, as God has united them, they are not only not lower, but many times higher.
I read Menshikov’s article. There is much that is good in it : about one-God and many Gods, and much that is very weak; the examples. 248 Nov. 75, Y. P. If I live.
Nov. 75, Y. P.
I worked badly on the preface to Carpenter. After dinner, in the blizzard, I went to Yasenki. Took Tania’s letter. Returned and here for the first time I knew prostration. Then drank tea recovered. Read but did nothing. Wrote a letter only to Maude in answer to his re-marks. 247
I thought this trifle : that love is only good then when you are not conscious of it. It suffices to be conscious of the love, and moreover to rejoice in it and there is an end to it.
The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1897 Nov. 16, Y. P. If I live.
To-day, Nov. 17. Y. P.
For the second day, I have been thinking with special clearness about this:
i) My life, my consciousness of my personal-ity, gets weaker and weaker all the time, will be-come still weaker and will end in coma, and in an absolute end of the consciousness of my personal-ity. At the same time, absolutely simultaneously and in the same tempo with the destruction of my personality, that thing will begin to live, and will live ever stronger and stronger, that which my life made, the results of my thought, feelings; it is living in other people, even in animals, in dead matter. And so I feel like saying that this is what will live after me.
But all this lacks consciousness, and therefore I cannot say that it lives. But who said that it lacked consciousness? Why can I not suppose that all this will be united in a new consciousness which I can justly call my consciousness, because it is all made from my consciousness? Why can-not this other new being live among these things which live now? Why not suppose that all of us are particles of consciousness of other higher be-ings, such as we are going to be?
“ My Father has many dwellings.” 248 Not in the sense that there are various places, but that
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the various consciousnesses, personality, are inter-enclosed and interwoven one into the other. In fact, the whole world as I know it, with its space and time, is a product of my personality, my con-sciousness. As soon as there is another person-ality, another consciousness, then there is an en-tirely different world, the elements of which are formed by our personalities. Just as when I was a child, my consciousness awoke little by little (which made it so that even when a child, an em-bryo, I saw myself as a separate being), so it will awake and is awakening now in the conse-quences of my life, in my future “ self “ after my death.
“ The Church is the body of Christ.” 249 Yes, Christ, in his new consciousness, lives now through the life of all the living and dead and all the fu-ture members of the Church. And in the same way each one of us will live through his own church. And even the most valueless man will have his own valueless and perhaps bad church, but a church which will create his new body. But how? This is what we cannot imagine, because we cannot imagine anything which is beyond our consciousness. And there are not many dwell-ings, but many consciousnesses.
But here is the last, most terrible, insoluble problem: What is it for? For what is this movement, this passing over from some lower,
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