13) … In this lies the whole matter to destroy this hypnosis.
14) It is impossible not to wish that our acts be known and approved. For him who has no God, it is necessary that his acts be known and approved. But for him who has God, it is suf-ficient that they be known. By this can it be veri-fied if a man has God.
4th Feb. Moscow. If I live.
To-day, the >>th. Morning.
I do not feel like writing at all. All these last days, especially yesterday, I have been feeling and applying to life, the consciousness that the end of life is one: to be perfect like the Father, to do that which He does, that which He wants from us, i.e., to love; that love should guide us in the moments of our most energetic activity, and that we breathe with it alone in the moments of our greatest weakness. Whenever there is something
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difficult, painful, then it suffices to remember this, and all this difficulty, this pain, will vanish and only the joyous will remain.
To a man who seriously, truly uses his reason, it is obvious that all ends are closed to him. One alone is reasonable: to live for the satisfaction of the demands of God, of his conscience, of his higher nature. (It is all the same thing.) If this is to be expressed in time, then to live so as to prepare one’s soul to the passing-over into a better world: if this is to be expressed accurately in terms outside of time, then it is to fuse one’s life with its timeless principle, with the Good, with Love, with God. I am afraid only of one thing, that this strong consciousness acting beneficially on me, that the only thing reasonable and free and joyous is the life in God, be not calloused, that it do not lose its effect of lifting me out of the petty annoyances of life, and of freeing me. Oh, if that could be so to every one and if it could be so for-ever! In this light last night I considered the various manifestations of life and I felt so well and joyous. I will await the examination. I shall prepare for it.
When I wrote out the notes, I forgot : i ) How absurd is the argument of the enemies of moral perfection, that a man, sacrificing him-self really, will sacrifice his perfection for the good of others, i.e., that a man is ready to become evil,
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in order to act well. If one understands by this that a man is ready to act badly before people, if only he could thereby fulfil the demands of his conscience and not serve a certain cause or even certain people, then this is true. The serving of a cause and of people can sometimes coincide, and can sometime not coincide with the demands of conscience; and not serving a certain cause or peo-ple, can sometimes coincide and can sometimes not coincide with the demands of conscience. These are individual cases.
2) To doubt that the source of all evil is false religious teaching, can only be done by a man who hasn’t thought of the causes of the daily manifesta-tions of social life. The causes of all these mani-festations are thoughts thoughts of people. How then could false thoughts not have an enor-mous influence on the social system? People, some of them, are well off in a false system based on false thoughts; it is natural that they support false thoughts, false-religious teaching.
3) I cannot write and I suffer, I force myself. How stupid! As if life lay in writing. It does not even lie in any outer activity. It is not as I will, but as Thou wilt. It is even fuller and more significant without writing. And here now I am learning to live without writing. And I am able to.
4) I see that I have made a note and have al-
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ready said it here, namely, that to perfect oneself does not mean to prepare oneself for a future life 29 (that is said for convenience, for simplicity of speech); but to perfect oneself means to get nearer to that basis of life for which time does not exist and therefore no death, i.e., to carry one’s “ self “ more and more away from the bodily life into the spiritual.
5) Evgenie Ivanovich says about N: she is at peace only when one occupies oneself with her. Any occupation with anything not concerning her, does not interest her. Every such occupation with other people offends her. It seems to her that she bears the life of every one near her, that with-out her everybody would be lost. For the least reproach, she insults every one. And in 10 min-utes she forgets it, and she hasn’t the least re-morse.
This is the highest degree of egotism and mad-ness, but there are many grades approaching this. At bottom, to think that I live for myself, for my own enjoyment, for fame, is absolute potential madness. In living it is impossible not to live for oneself, impossible not to defend oneself when attacked, 291 not to fall on the food when hungry; but to think that in this is life, and to use that very thought given you to see the impossibility of such a life, to use it for the strengthening of such a separate individual life, is absolute madness.
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6) A wife approaches her husband and caress-ingly speaks to him as she did not speak before. The husband is moved, but this is only because she has done something nasty.
7 ) Jean Grave, 292 “ L’individu et la Socle te” says that revolution will only then be fertile when I’individu will be strong-willed, disinterested, good, ready to help his neighbour, will not be vain, will not condemn others, will have the conscious-ness of his own dignity, i.e., will have all the merits of a Christian. But how will he acquire these virtues if he knows that he is only an acci-dental chain of atoms ? All these virtues are pos-sible, are natural, in fact, their absence is impossi-ble when there is a Christian world-point-of-view that is, that we are sons of God sent to do His Will; but in a materialistic world-point-of-view these virtues are inconsistent.
It is now past one. I am going downstairs. I am going to write to-morrow. Feb. 6. Moscow. If I live.
To-day, Feb. IQ. Moscow.
It is long since I have made any entries. 293 At first I was ill. For about 5 days I have been bet-ter. During this time I was correcting, putting in things and spoiling the last chapters of Art. I decided to send away Carpenter with the intro-duction to Sieverni Viestnik. Was correcting the
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preface also. The general impression of this arti-cle “ On Science “ as well as that of the 2Oth chap-ter is remorse. 294 I feel that it is right, that it is necessary, but it is painful that I hurt and grieve many good people who err. It is obvious that .0999 will not understand why and in the name of what I condemn science, and will be in-dignant. I should have done that with greater kindness. And in this I am guilty, but it is now too late.
The last time I wrote, I expressed fear lest the carrying over of myself from this worldly life, the offending, the irritating one, into the life be-fore God, the eternal life (now, here) which I experienced would become lost, would become cal-loused. But here 13 days have passed and I still feel this and felt it all the time and rejoiced and am rejoicing.
Sometimes I begin to lay out patience, or hear an irritating conversation, contradiction, or am dissatisfied with my writing, with the condemna-tion of people, or I regret something and sud-denly I remember that it only seems so to me, because I am bent over searching on the floor, and it suffices to straighten up to my full height and everything that was disagreeable, irritating, not only vanishes, but helps the joys of triumph over my human weakness.
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suffering. Will it endure? It ought to endure. Help, Lord.
Otherwise I am very joyous.
I am joyous, that in old age there has been dis-closed absolutely a new condition of the great in-destructible good. And this is not imagination, but a change of soul as clearly perceived as warmth and cold, it is a going over from confu-sion, suffering, to a clearness and peace and a going over which depends upon myself. Here, in truth, is where wings have sprouted. As soon as it becomes difficult, painful, to walk on foot, you spread the wings. Why not always then on wings? Evidently, I am still too weak; still un-trained; and perhaps a rest is necessary.
It is interesting to find out if this state is an attribute of old age, if young people can experi-ence it also? I think that they can. One must accustom oneself to this. This indeed is prayer.
‘ You must hide something, be afraid of some-thing, something tortures you, something is lack-ing,” and suddenly: there is nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be tortured over, nothing to want. The main thing is to go away from the human court into God’s court.
Oh, if this would only hold out unto death!
