Received 500 roubles, and 1000 roubles arc lying in Cherni. 320
I am not going to write any more, although I have many notes.
To-day May 27. Grinevka. In the morning. During this time I wrote The Appeal and 231
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finished the article on the condition of the peo-ple. 321
Just now I am writing to write out my notes there is much that has to be written out that everything which is said in Paul (Corinthians xiii) about love has to be said, and even more about the renunciation of oneself. It is impos-sible to lay up love within oneself but the re-nunciation of oneself is possible. It suffices to renounce oneself and love will arise.
I thought this, because just now in the morning, I began to remember all the difficulties which might arise from the distribution of the contribu-tions, about everything which had to be done for the Dukhobors, for my own writing, and of which I had done nothing, and about all my weaknesses, errors, about my joyless life with the children, and such as I had not wanted it to be, and my lack of consequence and it sufficed only to negate my-self, my own desires, and immediately all wrong passed away, both of the past and the future, and one thing remained, the need of service in the present. How time vanishes remarkably in the consciousness of one’s mission.
To-day, I think, June 12. Yasnaya Polyana.
I went with Sonya (my daughter-in-law) 322 to the Tsurikovs, Aphremovs, and the Levitskys. 323 I have a very pleasant impression and fell in love
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with many; but fell ill and did not do my work and made a lot of fuss both for Levitsky and the house-hold. 324 . . .
It is four days since I arrived in Yasnaya and I am recovering nicely. Wrote many letters.
I received almost 4,000 roubles, which I can-not use this year. 325
Masha is here with her husband and Iliusha. The Westerlunds were here. 326 . . .
To-day, entirely unexpectedly, I began to finish Sergius. 321 No news from England. 328
I have made many notes.
1) I cannot remember now what and how I thought it: this is the note: “ You are often too strict with people, and he, poor man, is good for nothing.”
2 ) Although I noted it before, I can’t help but repeat: . . .
3)
4) The life of the world is one, i.e., in the sense that it is impossible to apply the conception of number to it. Plurality comes only from the partitions of consciousness. For a universal con-sciousness there is no number, no plurality.
5 ) Non-resistance to evil is important not there-fore only, because a man has to act so for him-self, for attaining the perfection of love, but also because only non-resistance alone stops evil, local-ises it in itself, neutralises it, does not permit it
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to go farther, as it inevitably does, like the trans-mission of movement to elastic balls, if there be no force which would absorb it. Active Chris-tianity is not in doing, creating Christianity, but in absorbing evil.
I feel very much like writing out the story, The Coupon.
6) Death is the crossing-over from one con-sciousness to another, from one image of the world to another. It is as if you go over from one scene with its scenery to another. At the moment of crossing over, it is evident that that what we consider real, is only an image, because we are going over from one image into another. At the moment of this crossing-over, there be-comes evident, or at least one feels, the most actual reality. Because of this, the moment of death is important and dear.
7) For a universal consciousness, for God, matter does not exist. Matter is only for beings, separated one from another. The limits of sepa-rateness is that which we call matter, in all its in-finite forms.
8) It is impossible to remember sufficiently that the life of all beings is continuous movement. Al-most all our misery comes from the fact that we do not know this or forget this. And imagining that we do not go forward, but that we stand still, we grasp the beings moving alongside of us
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some going faster, some going slower than we we grasp them and hold on as long as the force of the movement does not tear us away. And we suffer.
9) We are all rolling down a slope, going down lower and lower to the plain. Every attempt to hold to one’s place, only makes the fall bigger, the more you hold on.
10) We are sent to cross this sloping path, carrying across it that light which is entrusted to us. And all that we can do is to help each other on the road to carry this light; but we hold back, pushing each other down, extinguishing our light and that of the others. (It isn’t good, not what I wanted to say.)
n) I know, that when people yawn in front of me, I can become infected, and therefore I say to myself : I don’t want to yawn and I won’t. I have learned to do this as to yawning, but I am only beginning to learn this as to anger.
12) The sight depresses me strangely … of those owning the land and compelling the people to work. How my conscience is struck. And this is not something reasoned, but a very strong feeling. Was I wrong in not giving my land to the peasants? I don’t know.
13) Lieskov made use of my theme and badly. 330 I had an exquisite thought three problems: What was the most important time?
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what man? and what act? The time is the im-mediate, this minute; the man he with whom you have immediate business; the act, to save your soul, i.e., to do the act of love. 331
14) It is impossible to save humanity from that deception in which it is caught. . . . Only a re-ligious feeling can give the counterstroke and con-quer. June 13. Y. P. If I live.
June 14. Y. P. Evening.
Both days I wrote Father Sergius. It is com-ing out well. Wrote letters. To-day there was a christening. 332
I still cannot be fully good. … It is dif-ficult, but I do not despair.
To-day June 22. Y. P.
On the 1 6th I fell very ill. 333 I never had felt so weak and so near death. I am ashamed to have made use of the care which they gave me. I could do nothing. I only read and made some notes. To-day I am a great deal better. Ukhtomsky 334 was pleased with my article, 335 but nevertheless he refused to print it. I telegraphed to Menshikov that he should try the Viestnik Evropa and the Russki 7>d. 336 I am afraid I am going to be-come tiresome.
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The youth have been driven away. For they have forbidden that the flour that was bought be sold. 337
. . . Received a letter from Chertkov, a good one. The Dieterichs arrived. 338 Dear Dunaev was here. They talked about the great riot of the factory workers. I shall finish later.
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
