To-day June 28. Y. P. Evening.
I am only now recovered, and am experiencing the joy of convalescence. I feel nature very vividly, keenly, and have a great clarity of thought.
I wrote a little on The Appeal. To-day I wrote Father Sergius and both are good. Wrote many letters yesterday. All that I received yesterday were unpleasant: from N, but principally from Gali, with the news that they have all quarrelled. Posha is going to Switzerland and Boulanger to Bulgaria. 339
Tania went to Masha’s. . . .
There is only one thing; one real thing that has been given us : to live lovingly with one’s brothers, with every one. One must renounce oneself. I wrote that to my friends and I am going to be strict with myself.
Here is what I have written down. . . .
I have just read up to this point, where every-thing that is difficult can be made to vanish when you throw off the illusion of a personal life, when
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you recognise your mission in the service to God, and that it would be good to experience this in physicial suffering, whether it will stand physical suffering. And here was a chance to experience it and I forgot and did not experience it. It is too bad. But the next time. Have written down:
1 ) Paul Adam 34 gives the peasants a cruel characteristic, especially the working men : they are vulgar, selfish, slaves, fanatics perhaps all this is just, but the one thing, that they can live with-out us and we cannot live without them, wipes out everything. And therefore it is not for us to judge. (Something is wrong here.)
2) It is especially disagreeable for me when people who have lived little and thought little, do not believe me, and not understanding me, argue with me about moral problems. It would be the same for which a veterinary surgeon would be hurt, if people who were not familiar with his art were to argue with him. The difference is only in this, that the art of the veterinary, the cook, the samovar-maker or any kind of art or science, is rec-ognised as an art or a science where only those peo-ple are competent who have studied that realm; in the matter of morality every one considers himself competent, because every one has to justify his life. But life is justified only by theories of moral-ity. And every one makes them for himself.
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3)! have often thought about falling in love, about the good, ideal falling in love, which is exclusive of every sensuality, and I cannot find either place or meaning for it. But its place and meaning is very clear and definite: it is to lighten the struggle between sex desire and chas-tity. Falling in love ought to be for a young man who cannot keep to full chastity before marriage, and to release the young men in the most critical years, from 1 6 to 20 or more, from the torturing struggle. Here is the place for falling in love. But when it breaks out in the life of people after marriage, it is out of place and disgusting.
4) I am often asked for advice as to the prob-lem of owning land. It is my old custom to an-swer: that it is unsuitable for me to answer such problems, just as it would be unsuitable for me to answer the problem how to make use of the owner-ship or the labour or the rent of a bonded serf.
5) People who stand on a lower moral plane or religious world point of view cannot understand people standing on a higher plane. But that there should be a possibility of union between them, there has been given to people standing on a lower plane the instinct for the good and a respect for this good. If there is not this instinct and re-spect, then it is very bad. But in our society, among so-called educated people, this is getting to be less and less.
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To-day June 30. Y. P.
I am still ill, and very weak. But I think I am improving, and my spiritual state is good. The day before yesterday I received a letter about the quarrel in England. 341 I wrote to them. It is very sad and very instructive. Yesterday I re-ceived a letter from Khilkov with a letter from Miss Pickard about the Dukhobors. 342 I wrote letters to Crosby, and Willard 343 and Khilkov. The affair of the Dukhobors is important and big and evidently something will come out of it which is entirely different from what we are preparing, but it is God’s affair. To-day Mme. Annenkov arrived. Menshikov telegraphed that Gaidebu-rov 344 will print with omissions. During these days I wrote Sergius it isn’t good.
I am going to continue to write out the former :
6) …
7) A man is a being separated from all others, who feels his limits. Among the number of gen-eral limits by which he separates himself from other beings, are his limits which are in common with that being incomprehensible to him the earth. Death is the destruction of all the various common limits with other beings and always of the common limit of the being of the earth a fusion with earth. Every sickness, wound, old age, is a destruction of these limits.
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8) The work of life is to love. It is impossi-ble to love expressly those people unworthy of love; but it is possible not to love to behave well, in a good way, toward such people in every given moment.
9) I remembered keenly what a matter of enor-mous importance was complete truthfulness in every detail, in everything, the avoidance of all outer false forms. And I decided to keep to this. It is never too late to mend. 346
10) The minister said to the murderer: “ Oh brother, don’t worry. God has pardoned even greater sinners. But who are you? Don’t lose heart. Pray.” The murderer burst into tears.
n) How great and stable seemed the happi-ness of the American people, and how unstable it proved to be, like all happiness not founded on life, according to the law of Christ. The Span-ish-American War, Jingoism.
12) I have often prayed (almost without be-lieving, to try out) that God arrange my life as I wish. To-day I simply prayed my customary morning prayer and rather attentively. And after this prayer, I recalled my wish and wanted to add a prayer about the fulfilment of this wish, and tried to address God about it. And immediately I realised my mistake that it would be very much better if everything was not according to
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my will, but according to His. And without the least effort and with joy I said: “ Yes, let there not be my will, but Thine.”
13) A spiritual life means that you should see the connection between cause and effect in the spir-itual world and that you be guided in life by this connection. Materialists do not see this connec-tion and therefore do not take it as a guide for their acts, but they take as a guide for their acts the physical, causal connection, the one which is so complicated that we never fully know it, because every effect is an effect of an effect; but the funda-mental cause of everything is always spiritual. (Not clearly expressed, but important).
14) Epictetus says this very thing when he re-proaches people for being very attentive to the phenomenon of the outer world to that which is not in our power and being inattentive to the phenomenon of the inner, to that which is in our power.
15) To many it seems that if you exclude per-sonality from life and a love for it, then nothing will remain. It seems to them that without per-sonality there is no life. But this only appears so to people who have not experienced self-renuncia-tion. Throw off personality from life, renounce it, and then there will remain that which makes the essence of life love.
16) (For The Appeal} . . .
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July 6. Y. P.
Am entirely well. Yesterday I took leave of Dunaev and Mme. Annenkov, who were here. I live very badly. I cannot reconcile myself to the will of God.
To-day I thought :
The life of Christ is very important as an in-stance of that impossibility of man to see the fruits of his labours. And the less so, the more import-ant the work. Moses could enter into the prom-ised land with his people, but Christ could in no way see the fruit of his teaching even if he had lived up to now. This is what one has to learn. But we want to do the work of God and to receive human reward.
July 17. Y. P. ‘g8. Morning.
There was nothing very special during these 1 1 days. I have decided to give my novels away, Resurrection and Father Sergius, to be printed for the Dukhobors. 348
S. went to Kiev.
An inner struggle. I believe little in God. I do not rejoice at the examination, but am burdened by it, admitting in advance that I won’t pass. All last night I didn’t sleep. I rose early and prayed much.
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To-day the Dieterichs and the Gorbunovs ar-rived. It was pleasant with them. Took hold of Resurrection, and in the beginning it went well,
