18) The decline of the moral consciousness of humanity lies in the greatest part of the people be-ing placed in such a situation that all interest in life for them is only to feed and to multiply. It is just the same as if the master kept his cattle, car-ing only that they be fed, or better, that they do not die from hunger and that they multiply, and never received any income from them : no wool, or milk, or work from them from these cattle. The Master who sent us in this world requires from us, besides existence and its continuation, also the labour He needs.
19) For Resurrection. It was impossible to think and remember one’s sin and be self-satisfied. But he had to be self-satisfied in order to live, and therefore he did not think and forgot.
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20) It is impossible to demand from woman that she valuate the feeling of her exclusive love, on the basis of moral feeling. She cannot do it, because she hasn’t got a real moral feeling, i.e., one that stands higher than everything.
To-day I plan to go home.
Aug. 4. Y. P. If I live.
Why does the 4th of August come to my mine as if it were important? Nothing important has happened.
To-day, August 24. Y. P.
During this time I received no letters from Chertkov and am very perplexed. 356 I think that during this time the Dukhobors were here. Let-ters from Khilkov, from Ivan Michailovich. I an-swered them all. To-day Sullerzhitsky arrived. 357 I am working all the time on Resurrection and am pleased, even very much so. I am afraid of shocks.
. . . And I feel well. A full house of people : Mashenka, 358 Stakhovich, Vera Kuzminsky, 359 Vera Tolstoi. 880
I am copying:
i) People were sent into the world to do the work of God, but they quarrelled, fought and es-tablished things in such a way that for some, there is no time to do the work, because they have to
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feed themselves, and for others there is no time, because they have to guard that which they took away. What a waste of strength! It is just as if workers had been sent to work and given food; some have taken the food away and they have to guard it and the others have to get food, and the work stands still.
2) People live in the world not fulfilling their mission it is the same way as if factory work-ers were only busied with how to lodge them-selves, feed themselves and amuse themselves.
3) One of the most important tasks of hu-manity consists in the bringing up of a chaste woman.
4) I often think that the world is such as it is, only because I am so separated from all the rest. As soon as my separateness from Everything will end, then the limits will be torn away and other limits will be established and then the world will become altogether different for me.
5) You wish to serve humanity? Very well. That which you wish to do, another will do. Are you satisfied? No, dissatisfied, because the im-portant thing for me is not what will be done, but what / will do; that I do my work. This is the best proof that the matter is not in the doing, but in the advancement towards the good.
Is it possible that I am advancing? Help, Lord.
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6) How difficult it is to please people: some need one thing, others another. They need both my past and my future. God is one, and His Will in respect to me is one, and He wants only my present, what I am doing this minute is what He wants. And what was, has been, and what will be, isn’t my business.
7) Egoism, the whole egoistic life, is legitimate only as long as reason has not awakened. As soon as it has awakened, then egoism is lawful, only to that degree in which one has to sustain oneself as a tool necessary for the service of people. The purpose of reason is the service to people. All the horror lies in its being used for service to one-self.
8) Man gives himself to the illusion of e.goism, lives for himself and he suffers. It suffices that he begin to live for others, and the suffering becomes lighter and there is obtained the highest good in the world : love of people.
9) As one disaccustoms oneself from smoking or other habits, so one can and must disaccustom oneself from egoism. When you wish to enlarge your pleasure, when you wish to exhibit yourself, when you call forth love in others, stop. If you have nothing to do for others, or you have no de-sire to do anything, then do nothing only don’t do anything for yourself.
10) The Bavarian told about their life. He
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boasts about the high degree of freedom, but at the same time they have compulsory religious teaching, a crude Catholic one. That is the most horrible despotism. Worse than ours. Aug. 25. Y. P. If I live.
Nov. 2. Y. P.
It is horrible to see for what a long time I have made no entries : more than two months. And not only has there been nothing bad, but rather every-thing was good. The Jubilee was not as repuls-ive and as depressing as I expected. 361 The sale of the novel and the receipt of the 12,000 roubles which I gave to the Dukhobors was well ar-ranged. 362 I was displeased with Chertkov 363 and I saw that I was at fault. A Dukhobor ar-rived from the province of Yakutsk. I liked him very much 364 . . .
Masha is pitiable in her weakness, but she is just as near in spirit. . . .
But glory to God and thanks be to Him that he has awakened it in me and has kept it burning so that it is natural for me either to love and re-joice, or to love and to pity. And what happi-ness!
Archer was here yesterday, arriving from Chertkov I liked him. 365 There is much to do, but I am all absorbed in Resurrection, being spar-ing with the water and using it only for Resurrec-
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tion. It seems to me it won’t be bad. People praise it, but I don’t believe.
Everything that I noted it was all very im-portant I will write out later, but now I want to write that which I just now, walking on the path, in the evening, not only thought but felt clearly:
i) Under my feet there is the frozen, hard earth; around, enormous trees; overhead a cloudy sky; I feel my body, I feel pain in the head; I am occupied with thoughts on Resurrection; and yet I know, I feel in all my being, that both the firm and frozen earth and the trees and the sky and my body and my thoughts all this is only a product of my five senses, my image, the world, made by me because such is my partition from the world. And that it will be sufficient for me to die and all this will not disappear but will become transformed, as they make transformations in the theatres: from bushes and stones, they make castles, towers, etc. Death is nothing else than such a transformation, dependent from another partition from the world, another personality: Here I consider as myself, my body with my senses, and then something else will detach itself to be myself. And then the whole world will become something else. But the world is such and not something else, only because I consider myself as this and not as something else. But there can be
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an innumerable quantity of divisions of the world. (This is not entirely clear for others, but for me very. ) 366 Nov. j. // I live.
Nov. 14. Y. P.
Again I have not noticed how 1 1 days have passed. Have been very intensely occupied with Resurrection and am making good progress. Am absolutely near the end. Serezha and Suller were here and both went away to the Caucasus with my letter to Golitsin. 367 S. arrived yesterday. Very well. It is a long time since I have felt so well and keen, intellectually and physically.
I cannot make out what I have written out and what I haven’t. 368
1 ) How difficult it is to please people ! In or-der to please them it is necessary that the past and the future meet their demands. But in order to please God, one has only to satisfy His demands in the present.
2) To live for others seems difficult just as to work seems difficult. But just as in work, in the care for others there may be the best reward : love of others may and may not be; while in labour there is an inner reward, you work to the end, get tired, and you feel good.
3) The poetry of the past occupied itself only with the strong of the world : with the Czars, etc.,
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because the strong of the world appeared as the highest and the most complete representatives of the people. But if you take the plain people, then it is necessary that they express general phenomena . . . (Unclear.)
4) If you do not permit yourself to live for yourself, then involuntarily, from boredom, you begin to
