At home, during this time, I lived through much difficulty. Lord, Father, release me from my base body. Cleanse me and do not let your spirit perish in me and become overgrown. I prayed twice beseechingly; once that He let me be His tool; and second that He save me from my ani-mal “ self.”
During this time I progressed on the Declara-tion of Faith. It is far from what has to be said and from what I want to say. It is entirely in-accessible to the plain man and the child, but, nevertheless I have said all that I know coherently and logically.
In this time also I wrote the preface to the reading of the Gospels m and annotated the Gos-pels. Had visitors. Englishmen, Americans no one of importance.
I will write out all that I jotted down:
i) Yesterday I walked through a twice 61
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ploughed, black-earth fallow field. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black earth not one green blade of grass, and there on the edge of the dusty grey road there grew a bush of burdock. There were three off-shoots. One was broken and its white soiled flower hung; the other also broken, was bespattered with black dirt, its stem bent and soiled; the third shoot stuck out to the side, also black from dust, but still alive and red in the centre. It reminded me of Hadji-Murad. 112 It makes me want to write. It as-serts life to the end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other has asserted it.
2) He has a capacity for languages, for math-ematics, is quick to comprehend and to answer, can sing, draw correctly, beautifully, and can write in the same way; but he has no moral or artistic feeling and therefore nothing of his own.
3) Love towards enemies. It is difficult, seldom does it succeed as with everything ab-solutely beautiful. But then what happiness when you attain it ! There is an exquisite sweet-ness in this love, even in the foretaste of it. And this sweetness is just in the inverse ratio to the attractiveness of the object of love. Yes, the spiritual voluptuousness of love towards enemies.
4) Some one makes me suffer. As soon as I think about myself, about my own suffering, the suffering continues to grow and grow and terror
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overcomes me at the thought to where it might lead. It suffices to think of the man on account of whom you are suffering, to think about his suffer-ing and instantly you are healed. Sometimes it is easy when you already love your torturer; but even when it is difficult, it is always possible.
5) Yesterday in walking I thought what are those boundaries which separate us, one being from another ? And it occurred to me. Are not space and time the conditions of these divisions, or rather, the consequences of these divisions? If I were not a separated part, there would be neither space nor time for me, as there is not for God. But since I am not the whole, I can understand myself and other beings through space and time only.
(I feel that there is something in this, but I can not yet express it clearly.)
6) There was an argument about whether be-ing in love was good. For me the conclusion was clear; if a man already lives a human, spiritual life, then being in love love, marriage would be a downfall for him, he would have to give a part of his strength to his wife, to his fam-ily, or even at least to the object of his love. But if he is on the animal plane, if he eats, drinks, labours, holds a post, writes, plays then to be in love would be an uplift for him as for animals, for insects, in the time of . . , 113
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7) To pray? They say that prayer is neces-sary, that it is necessary to have the sweet feeling of prayer which is called forth by service, singing, reading, exclamations, ikons. But what is prayer ? A communion with God, a recognition of one’s relation to God, the highest state of the soul. Is it possible that this state of the soul can be at-tained by an action upon the outer senses. … Is it not more probable that the prayerful state might be reached only in rare exceptional moments and necessarily in isolation, as even Christ said and as Elijah saw God, not in a storm but in a tender breeze?
8) Yesterday I looked through the romances, novels, and poems of Fet. 114 I recalled our in-cessant music on 4 grand-pianos in Yasnaya Poly-ana and it became clear to me that all this the romances, the poems, the music was not art, something important and necessary to people in general, but a self-indulgence of robbers, para-sites, who have nothing in common with life; ro-mances, novels about how one falls in love dis-gustingly, poetry about this or about how one lan-guishes from boredom. And music about the same theme. But life, all life, seethes with its own problems of food, distribution, labour, about faith, about the relations of men … It is shameful, nasty. Help me, Father, to serve Thee by showing up this lie.
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9) I was going from the Chertkovs on the 5th of July. It was evening, and beauty, happiness, blessedness, lay on everything. But in the world of men? There was greed, malice, envy, cruelty, lust, debauchery. When will it be among men as it is in Nature ? Here there is a struggle, but it is honest, simple, beautiful. But there it is base. I know it and I hate it, because I myself am a man.
(I have not succeeded.)
10) When I suffered in my soul, I tried to calm myself with the consciousness of serving. And that used to calm me, but only then when there happened to be an obvious instance of serv-ing, i. e. when it was unquestionably required and I was drawn to it. But what is to be done when it happens neither one way nor the other? Give myself to God, negate myself. Do as Thou wilt, I consent.
(Again, not what I want to say.) I am going to dinner.
1 1 ) Kant, 115 they tell us, made a revolution in the thought of men. He was the first to show that a thing in itself is inaccessible to knowledge, that the source of knowledge and life is spiritual. But is not that the same which Christ said two thousand years ago, only in a way understand-able to men? Bow in spirit and in truth; the
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spirit is life creating, the letter, the flesh, is bene-ficial in no way.
12) Balls, feasts, spectacles, parades, pleas-ure-gardens, etc., are a dreadful tool in the hands of the organisers. They can have a terrible in-fluence. And if anything has to be subjected to control, it is this.
13) I walked along the road and thought, looking at the forests, the earth, the grass, what a funny mistake it is to think that the world is such as it appears to me. To think that the world is such as it appears to me, means to think that there can be no other being capable of knowledge ex-cept myself with my six senses. 116 I stopped and was writing that down. Sergei Ivanovich 117 ap-proached me. I told him what I was thinking. He said:
“ Yes, one thing is true, that the world is not such as we see it and we don’t know anything as it is.” I said:
‘ Yes, we know something exactly as it is.” “What is it?”
1 That which knows. It is exactly such as we know it.”
14) One is often surprised that people are un-grateful. One ought to be surprised at how they could be grateful for good done them. How-
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ever little good people do, they know with certainty that the doing of good is the greatest happi-ness. How then can people be grateful to others that these others have drunk themselves full, when that is the greatest enjoyment?
15) Only he is free whom nothing and no-body can hinder from doing what he wants. There is only one such work to do to love.
1 6) Prayer is directed to a personal God, not because God is personal (I even know as a matter of fact that He is not personal, because the per-sonal is finite and God is infinite), but because I am a personal being. I have a little green glass in my eye and I see everything green. I can not help but see the world green, although I know that it is not like that.
17) The aesthetic pleasure is a pleasure of a lower order. And therefore the highest aes-thetic pleasure leaves one unsatisfied. In fact, the higher the aesthetic pleasure, the more unsatisfied it leaves one. It always makes one want something more and more. And so without end. Only moral good gives full satisfaction. Here there is full satisfaction. Nothing further is wished for or needed.
18) A lie to others is by far neither as im-portant nor as harmful as a lie to oneself. A lie to others is often an innocent play, a satisfying of
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vanity. A lie to oneself is
