It is long since I have been so depressed. A letter from Posha. Wrote to Posha, Ivan Mic-hailovich, Chertkov, Maude and Boulanger.
I am still endeavouring to find a satisfactory form for Hadji Murad and I still haven’t it, al-though it seems I am nearing it.
. . . To-day a telegram about the work, “ What is Art? “
Have made some notes and I think important ones.
i) Something of enormous importance and ought to be expounded well. Organisation, every kind of organisation, which frees from any kind of human, personal, moral duties. All the evil in the world comes from this. They flog people to death, they debauch, they becloud their minds and no one is to blame. In the tale of the resur-rection of hell, this is the most important and new means. 284
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2) Each one of us is that light, that divine essence, love, the Son of God, enclosed in a body, in limits, in the coloured lantern which’ we have painted with our passions and habits so that everything we see, we see only through this lan-tern. To raise oneself so as to see above it, is impossible; on top there is the same kind of glass through which we see even God, through the glass which we ourselves have painted. The only thing which we can do is not to look through the glasses, but to concentrate in ourselves, recognise our light and kindle it. And this is the one sal-vation from the delusions of life, from its suffer-ing, from its temptations. And this is joyful and always possible.
I do this, and it is good.
3) Dreams they are nothing else than the looking on the world not through the glasses, but only on the glasses, and on the interweaving of various designs interwoven on the glasses. In sleep you only see the glasses; when awake, the world, through the glasses.
4) A woman can, when she loves a man, see merits in him which he has not, but when she is indifferent, she is unable to see a man’s merits other than through the opinion of others. (How-ever, I think it is untrue.)
5) The following when I wrote it, seemed to me very important:
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JANUARY] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
Christians strive to a union, and unite among themselves and with other people by the Chris-tian tool by unity, humility, love. But there are people who do not know this means of union, do not believe in it and who endeavour to unite (all people endeavour to unite) with other means, outer ones, with force, threats. It is impossible to demand of these people who do not know, who cannot understand the Christian means of union, that they do not make use of their means; but it is absolutely unjust and unreasonable when these un-Christian people impose their own lower means of union upon people knowing and using a higher means. They say, “ You Christians, you profit by our means; if you have not been robbed and killed, it is thanks to us.” To this the Christians answer, that they don’t need anything which force gives them (as is really the fact for a Christian).
And that is why, though it is legitimate for people not knowing a higher means of union, to use a lower, it is illegitimate, that they look upon their own lower means as a general and unique one, and want to compel those for whom it cannot be necessary to use it. The principal step before humanity now consists in this, that people should not only recognise and admit the means of Chris-tian union, but that they should recognise that it is the highest, the one to which all humanity is striv-ing and to which it will inevitably reach.
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6) When you are full of energy, then you live, and you ought to live for this world; when you are sick, then you are dying, i.e., you begin to live for that other after-death world. So that in either phase, there is work. When you are sick, dying, then concentrate in yourself and think about death and about life after death, and stop longing for this one. Both processes are normal and in both there exists work proper to each state.
I feel somewhat fresher spiritually. Jan. 14, Moscow. If I live.
To-day, 18.
My health is a little better. It is now evening. Wrote letters, i) Chertkov; 2) Dubrovin; 3) Dubrovsky; Tver; 4) Tula: N. 1. Kh.; 5) Naka-shidze; 6) Ivan Michailovich.
To-day the plot of Hadji Murad became clearer than ever before.
Jan. 19. Moscow.
Depressing and unproductive. I cannot work. Several times a week I remember that everything disagreeable is only an Ermahnung for an advance onward towards perfection.
Help, Father. Come and dwell within me. You already dwell within me. You are already “ me.” My work is only to recognise Thee. I
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FEBRUARY] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
write this just now and am full of desire. But nevertheless I know who I am.
To-day, Feb. 2. Moscow.
Very weak and apathetic. All the time I either read or corrected proofs of Art. There is much to be noted. But I have neither strength nor desire. There have been no events, no letters. Feb. 3, Moscow. If I live.
February 3, Moscow.
I am still as unproductive intellectually. In the morning it flashed across my mind that I left out the places in Art about the trinity, and doing no work, I went to Grot and from there to the pub-lishing house. I returned past two, read, lay down, dined. Tarovat 285 arrived, then Menshi-kov, Popov, Gorbunov, and then Gulenko, 286 Suller. 287
Read Liapunov’s The Ploughman. I was very touched. 288
Have noted down the following :
i) In moments of depression I want to ask heJp from God. And I may ask it. But only such help which might help me and not interfere with any one else. And such help is only one thing: love. Every other kind of help, material help, not only might, but must come in conflict
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with the material good of others. Only love alone the enlargement of love in oneself satisfies everything which one can want and does not come in conflict with the good of others. “ Come and dwell within us.”
2) Women do not use words to express their thoughts, but to attain their ends, and it is this purpose they hunt in the words of others. That is why they so often understand people wrong side out. And this is very disagreeable.
3) The meaning of life is only one: self-per-fection the bettering of one’s soul. “ Be per-fect like our Father in Heaven.”
When things are difficult, when something tor-tures you, remember that in life, only you are the life and immediately it will become easier. And joyful. As a rich man rejoices when he gathers his wealth, so will you rejoice if you place your life only in this. And for the attainment of this, there are no barriers. Everything which appears like sorrow, like a barrier in life is a wide step which offers itself to your feet that you may ascend.
4) If you have the strength of activity then let it be a loving one; if you have no strength, if you are weak, then let your weakness be a loving one.
5) Inorganic matter is simply the life of that which we do not understand. For fleas the inor-
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ganic is my finger-nail. In the same way, evil is the non-understood good. 289
6 ) To serve God and man, but how, with what ? Perhaps the possibility doesn’t exist? It is not true : the possibility has always been given you to become better.
7) Man is an ambassador, as Christ said, an ambassador indeed for whom the important thing is only to fulfil the errand given to him, and it doesn’t matter what is thought about him. Let them think badly sometimes it is necessary. Only let the errand be fulfilled.
8) One of the most common errors consists in this, that people are considered good, malicious, stupid, intelligent. Man flows on and every pos-sibility is in him: he was stupid, and has become intelligent; he was wicked and has become good, and the reverse. In this is the greatness of man. And therefore it is impossible to judge man as he is. You have judged and he is already another. It is impossible to say I do not love him : you have said it and he is already another.
9) …
10) The fact that the end of life is self-perfec-tion, that the perfection of the immortal soul is the only end of the life of man, is already true because every other end in the view of death, is senseless.
n) If man deliberates upon the consequences 20 1
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of his act, then the motives of his act are not re-ligious.
12) The paper-knife on my knees fell over on account of its weight, and it seemed to me that it was something alive, and I shuddered. Why? Because there is a duty to everything living and I grew frightened lest I hadn’t fulfilled it, and lest I had crushed, squeezed
