The Journal of Leo Tolstoi First. Volume—1895-1899

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.340 Posha is going to Switzerland and Boulanger to Bulgaria.

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 everything that is difficult can be made to vanish when you throw off the illusion of a personal life, when you recognise your mission in the service to God, and that it would be good to experience this in physical 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 Adam341 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 without 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 recognised as an art or a science where only those people 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 morality. And every one makes them for himself.

3) I 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 chastity. 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 16 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 problem of owning land. It is my old custom to answer: 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 ownership 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 respect, then it is very bad. But in our society, among so-called educated people, this is getting to be less and less.

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.342 I wrote to them. It is very sad and very instructive. Yesterday I received a letter from Khilkov with a letter from Miss Pickard about the Dukhobors.343 I wrote letters to Crosby, and Willard344 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 Gaideburov345 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 general 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.

8) The work of life is to love. It is impossible 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 enormous 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.

11) How great and stable seemed the happiness 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 Spanish-American War, Jingoism.

12) I have often prayed (almost without believing, 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 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 spiritual world and that you be guided in life by this connection. Materialists do not see this connection 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 fundamental cause of everything – is always spiritual. (Not clearly expressed, but important).

14) Epictetus says this very thing when he reproaches 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 personality from life and a love for it, then nothing will remain. It seems to them that without personality there is no life. But this only appears so to people who have not experienced self-renunciation. Throw off personality from life, renounce it, and then there will remain that which makes the essence of life – love.

16) (For The Appeal) …

To-morrow, July 1st. If I live.

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 instance of that impossibility of man to see the fruits of his labours. And the less so, the more important the work. Moses could enter into the promised 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. ’98. Morning.

There was nothing very special during these 11 days. I have decided to give my novels away, Resurrection and Father Sergius, to be printed for the Dukhobors.347

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.

To-day the Dieterichs and the Gorbunovs arrived. It was pleasant with them. Took hold of Resurrection, and in the beginning it went well, but from the moment when I became alarmed, these two days, I have been unable to do anything. I took a very nice walk.

I wrote a letter to Järnefelt348 and prepared a postscript. This is the only important thing. But I haven’t the strength to withstand the customary temptation.349 Come and dwell within us. Awake the resurrection in me!

I have made many notes. I will hardly have time to write them out now.

1) Brooding leads to dreams, dreams to passions, passion to devils. (From Love for the Good.)350

2) The æsthetic pleasure which you receive from Nature is attainable to all. Every one is affected by it differently, but it affects every one. Art should have the same effect.

3) How difficult it is to really live for God alone. You think you are living for God, but as soon as life jolts you, as soon as that support in life to which you are holding on, fails you, then you feel that there is no holding power in God and you fall.

4) For Father Sergius: Alone he is good, with people he falls.

5) What an obvious error: to live for worldly ends. Whenever the purpose is not narrowly egotistic then this purpose is not quickly attained in life. Moses did not enter the promised land and Christ despaired of His labour: “Why hast Thou abandoned me?”…

6) There is no peace, either for him who lives for worldly ends among people, or for him who lives for spiritual ends alone. There is peace only then when a man lives for the service of God among people.

To-day, July 20. Y. P.

A letter from S and from Masha. I still do not sleep, but things are settling themselves in my soul, and as always, suffering is of benefit. Yesterday I went to Ovsiannikovo, spoke with Ivan Ivanovich.351 Yesterday I worked well on Resurrection.

It is morning now. I am not continuing to write out from the notebooks, but I am going to write out what I – not being asleep – have just now been thinking; it is an old but easily forgotten thing, and an important one which should be also told to N with whom they talked last night. Namely:

1) Life for oneself is a torture, because you want to live for an illusion, for that which does not exist, and it not only cannot be happy, but it cannot be at all. It is the same as dressing and feeding a shadow. Life exists only outside of oneself, in the service of others, and not in the service of one’s near ones, beloved ones – that is again for oneself – but in the service of those whom we do not love, and better still, in the service of enemies. Help, Father. The terrible error is that one confuses sex-love, love for children, for friends, with love of people through God, of people to whom you are indifferent, and still more of enemies, that is, of erring people.

Aug. 3. Pirogovo.

Again everything is in the old way, again my life is horrid. I have lived through very much; I haven’t passed the examination. But I do not despair and I want a re-examination. I passed the examination exceptionally badly, because I had the intention of going over to another institution. It is just these thoughts one must throw away, then one will learn better.

During this time Sonya returned and dear Tania Kuzminsky was here. The work on Resurrection goes very badly, although it seems to me I have thought it out much better. The 3rd day in Pirogovo. Uncle Serezha352 is not as good as he was before: he is not in the mood. Maria Nicholaievna.353 For two days nothing has come into my head.

During this time there was alarming news about the condition of the Dukhobors354 and that Mme. M. N. Rostovtzev was put in prison.355 For a long time there has been no letter from Chertkov. Perhaps they intercept them.356

Am going to continue to write out that which I had not written out:

1) …

2) There are two methods of human activity – and according to which one of these two kinds of activity people mainly follow, are there two kinds of people: one use their reason to learn what is good and what is bad and they act according to this knowledge; the other act as they want to and then they use their reason to prove that that which they did was good and that which they didn’t do was bad.

3) It is absolutely clear that it is much more profitable to do everything in common, but the reasoning about this is insufficient. If the reasoning were sufficient then it would have happened long ago. The fact that it is seen among Capitalists is unable to convince people to live in common. Besides the reasoning that this is profitable, it is necessary that the heart be ready to live like that (that the world point of view should be such that it would harmonise with the indications of the reason), but this is not so and will not be so until the desires of the heart are changed, i.e., the world point of view of people.

4) Even if that which Marx predicted should happen, then the only thing that will happen, is that despotism will be passed on. Now the capitalists rule, but then the directors of the working people will rule.

5) The mistake of the Marxists (and not only they, but the whole materialistic school) lies in the fact that they do not see that the life of humanity is moved by the growth of consciousness, by the movement of religion, by an understanding of life becoming more and more clear, general, meeting all problems and not by an economic cause.

6) The most unthought thing, the error, of the theory of Marx is in the supposition that capital will pass from the hands of private people into the hands of the government, and from the government, representing the people, into the hands of the workers…

7) There is nothing that softens the heart so much as the consciousness of one’s guilt, and nothing hardens it so much as the consciousness of one’s right.

8) Working people are so … that it seems to them they have no outlet. Salvation lies in truth, in preaching and professing it.

9) They prove the law of the conservation of energy; but energy is nothing else than an abstract notion, just the same as matter. But an abstract notion is always equal to itself. In fact, this is nothing else than as if we were to begin to prove that the law of gravitation, notwithstanding seeming departures, exists unchangingly in everything. (Unclear and perhaps untrue.)

10) The belief in miracles has for its basis the consciousness that our world just as it is, is the product of our senses. But the error lies only in supposing that the miraculous, that is, that something which is against the laws of reason, when applied to our senses, can happen for us with our tool of consciousness, i.e., with our senses. That which is against our laws of reason, when applied to our senses, can happen for other beings, for beings with other senses, just as our tool of consciousness, our sense, is only one particular instance from the innumerable quantity of other possibilities.

11) It is a great error to think that the reason of man is perfect and can disclose everything to him. The limitation of reason is best seen and most obvious from the fact that a man cannot solve (he clearly sees that he cannot) the problems of infinity: for each time there is still more time, for each space there is still more space, for each number there is still a number, so that all time and space is unknowable.

12) The reason of man is just as weak and insignificant in comparison (and in an infinite number of times more so) with that which is, as is the reason (the means of perception) of a beetle and an amæba in comparison with the reason of man. The reason of man in comparison, not only with the highest reason, but with the reason which is higher than his – is just the same as the understanding of a complicated problem of higher mathematics or even of algebra for a man not knowing mathematics, to whom it seems insoluble, as are the problems of the infinity of space and time to us. While the problem is simple and clear for one knowing mathematics. The difference is only in this, that one can learn mathematics, but no study will help to solve the problem of space and time. This is the limit of the possibility of our knowledge under our reason.

13) I pray God that He release me from my suffering which tortures me. But this suffering is sent to me by God in order to release me from evil. The master whips his cattle with the whip in order to drive them from the burning yard and save them, and the cattle pray that he do not whip them.

14) There are common, sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional, misunderstandings of my opinions which I confess irritate me:

a) I say that God … is not God and that God is that which alone is – the unattainable good, the beginning of everything: against me they say, that I deny God;

b) I say that one ought not to resist violence by violence: against me they say, that I say it is not necessary to fight evil;

c) I say that one ought to strive towards chastity and that on this road the highest grade will be virginity, and second a clean marriage, the third not a clean, that is, not a monogamous marriage: against me they say, that I deny marriage and I preach the destruction of the human race.

d) I say that art is an infectious activity and that the more infectious art is, the better it is. But that this activity be good or bad, does not depend on how much it satisfies the demands of art, i.e., its infectiousness, but on how much it satisfies the demands of the religious consciousness, i.e., morality, conscience; against me they say that I preach a tendence art, etc.

15) Woman – and the legends say it also – is the tool of the devil. She is generally stupid, but the devil lends her his brain when she works for him. Here you see, she has done miracles of thinking, far-sightedness, constancy, in order to do something nasty; but as soon as something not nasty is needed, she cannot understand the simplest thing; she cannot see farther than the present moment and there is no self-control and no patience (except child-birth and the care of children).

16) All this concerns women, un-Christians, unchaste women, as are all the women of our Christian world. Oh, how I would like to show to women all the significance of a chaste woman. A chaste woman (not in vain is the legend of Mary) will save the world.

17) People are occupied with three things: 1) to feed themselves, i.e., to continue their existence, 2) to multiply – to continue the existence of the specie, and 3) to fulfil that for which they had been sent in the world: to establish the kingdom of God. For this there is one means – to perfect oneself. Almost all people are occupied with the first two matters, forgetting the last, which at bottom is the only real work.

18) The decline of the moral consciousness of humanity lies in the greatest part of the people being 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, caring 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.

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 mind 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.357 I think that during this time the Dukhobors were here. Letters from Khilkov, from Ivan Michailovich. I answered them all. To-day Sullerzhitsky arrived.358 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,359 Stakhovich, Vera Kuzminsky,360 Vera Tolstoi.361

I am copying:

1) People were sent into the world to do the work of God, but they quarrelled, fought and established things in such a way that for some, there is no time to do the work, because they have to 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 workers were only busied with how to lodge themselves, feed themselves and amuse themselves.

3) One of the most important tasks of humanity 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 important thing for me is not what will be done, but what I 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.

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 oneself.

8) Man gives himself to the illusion of egoism, 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 desire to do anything, then do nothing – only don’t do anything for yourself.

10) The Bavarian told about their life. He 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 everything was good. The Jubilee was not as repulsive and as depressing as I expected.362 The sale of the novel and the receipt of the 12,000 roubles which I gave to the Dukhobors was well arranged.363 I was displeased with Chertkov364 and I saw that I was at fault. A Dukhobor arrived from the province of Yakutsk. I liked him very much365 …

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 rejoice, or to love and to pity. And what happiness!