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

Archer was here yesterday, arriving from Chertkov – I liked him.366 There is much to do, but I am all absorbed in Resurrection, being sparing with the water and using it only for Resurrection. 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 important – 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:

1) Under my feet there is the frozen, hard earth; around, enormous trees; overhead a cloudy sky; I fed 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 an innumerable quantity of divisions of the world. (This is not entirely clear for others, but for me – very.)367

Nov. 3. If I live.

Nov. 14. Y. P.

Again I have not noticed how 11 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.368 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.369

1) How difficult it is to please people! In order 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., 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 live for others.

5) Woman, just like man, is endowed with feeling and brain, but the difference is in this, that men mostly consider themselves and their feelings bound by the commands of reason, while women consider their feelings binding for themselves and for their reason. The same thing, but only in different places.

6) You get angry at the philosopher who reasons, who considers that the main basis of the life of man is his material nature; but this man does not know the spiritual, but knows only material effect and therefore he cannot think otherwise.

7) You think that you are alone and you suffer from loneliness; yet you are not only in harmony, but you are one with every one; only artificial and removable barriers separate you. Remove them – and you are one with every one. The removing of these barriers according to your strength is the business of life.

8) If a man considers his animal being as himself, then he will represent God also as a material being, a ruler who rules materially over material things. But God is not such, God is spirit and does not rule over anything, but lives in everything.

9) … If people could have been so deceived, then there is no deception into which they would not fall.

10) I have noted down that it is depressing because there is no life, but only an egoistic existence. I cannot remember what else I could have meant by this.

11) God manifests himself in our consciousness. When there is no consciousness – there is no God. Only consciousness gives the possibility for the good, for continence, service, self-sacrifice. Everything depends to what consciousness is directed. Consciousness directed to the animal “self” kills, paralyzes life. Consciousness directed to the spiritual “self” rouses, lifts, frees life. Consciousness directed to the animal “self” strengthens, ignites passion, creates fear, struggle, the horror of death. Consciousness directed towards the spiritual “self” frees love. This is very important and if I live, I will write it out.

12) Death is a change of consciousness, a change of that which I can recognise as myself. And therefore fear of death is a horrible superstition. Death is a joyous event standing at the end of each life. Suffering is sent to people to hold them back from death. Otherwise every one understanding life and death, would struggle towards death. But now it is impossible to go towards death unless through suffering.

13) The greatest act in life is the consciousness of one’s self, and its consequences are benevolent or most terrible, according to whether you direct your consciousness towards the spirit or towards the body.

14) In order to get rid of moral suffering (and even physical) there are two means: to destroy the cause of suffering or the feeling in one’s self which produces suffering. The first is not in man’s power, the second is. (I am repeating Epictetus).

15) The moral progress of humanity advances only because there are old people. The old people become kinder, wiser, and give over that which they have lived through to the following generations. If this were not so, humanity had not advanced; and what a simple method!

16) If man looks on life materially, then old people do not become better, but worse, and there is no progress.

17) Technical progress is greeted by every one, is pushed on by every one; the moral, the religious progress, is held back by the priests. From this come the main calamities in life.

November 15. Y. P. If I live.

It seemed to me that I made no entries for about three days and now it is ten days. To-day, Nov. 25. Y. P.

… I promised to arrive December 6th.370… I feel also like going to Pirogovo. We are alone: Tania, Masha, Kolia. Only Liza Obolensky.371 I am still diligently occupying myself with Resurrection.

Last night I thought out an article on why the people are corrupted. They have no faith of any kind. They christen naïve infants and then they consider every reasoning about faith (perversion) and every lapse, as a capital crime. Only the sectarians have faith. Perhaps I am going to bring that into the Appeal. What a pity. I thought it out well at night.

Resurrection is growing. It can hardly be compressed into 100 chapters.372

I have noted down the following and I think it is very important (which might be good for the Declaration of Faith):

1) We are very much accustomed to the reasoning as to how the life of other people, people in general, should be arranged. And such kind of reasoning does not seem strange to us. And yet such kind of reasoning could in no ways exist among religious and therefore free people; such reasoning is the consequence of despotism, … In this way reason … They say: “If I had the power I would do so and so with the others.” That is a dangerous error, not only because it tortures, deforms people who have to undergo violence … but it weakens in all people the consciousness of the necessity of improving themselves, which is the only effective means of influencing other people.

2) To-day I thought about this from another angle. I recalled the words of the Gospel: “And the pupil is not higher than the teacher; if he learns then he will be like the pupil.” We, the rich master-classes, teach the people. What would happen if we succeeded in teaching them so that they become as we are?

3) They talk, they write, they preach about the knowing of God. What a horrible blasphemy, and horrible admission of the non-understanding of what God is and what we are. We, a particle of the infinite whole, wish to understand not only this whole, but its causes, the origin of the whole. What absurdity and what a recognition of godlessness, or a recognition of God of that which is not God. We can only know that He is, Τὸ ὄν, He exists, and we can only conclude by ourselves, what He is not.

4) Love is God. Love is only the recognition that God is not flesh, not passion, not egoism, not malice. (Doubtful.)

5) Violence rules our world, i.e., malice, and therefore there is always found in society a majority of dependent, unstable members: women, children, stupid ones – brought up on malice, and who side with malice. But the world ought to be ruled by reason, by goodness; then all this majority would be brought up on goodness and would side with it. In order that this should take place it is necessary that reason and goodness manifest themselves, and undismayed, assert their existence; that is very important.

6) The complexity of knowledge is a sign of its falseness. That which is true is simple.

7) How bad it is that people seeking perfection are pained at calumny, at a deserved bad name (or better still, at an undeserved). Calumny, a bad name, gives an opportunity, drives toward an activity, the value of which is only in our conscience. This is so rare, so difficult, and so useful. Involuntary simpleness is the best school for goodness.373

8) I have noted down: “Justice is insufficient. It is …374 necessary to oppose.” I cannot remember what this means.

9) Physical labour is important, because it prevents the mind from working idly and aimlessly.

10) Perhaps it is more important to know what one ought not to think about, than to know what one ought to think about.

11) Women are weak and they not only do not want to know their own weakness, but want to boast of their strength. What can be more disgusting?

12) A good man if he does not acknowledge his mistakes and tries to justify himself can become a monster.

13) …

Now Nov. 26. Morning. Y. P.

Did not sleep and thought:

1) Evil is the material for love. Without evil there is none and can be no manifestation of love. God is love, i.e., God manifests Himself to us in victory over evil, i.e., in love. The question of the origin of evil is just as absurd as the question of the origin of the world. It is not “whence comes evil?” that one must know, but “how to conquer it? How to apply love?”

1899

Jan. 2. Yasnaya Polyana.

The last time I wrote it was November 25, which means a month and a week. I made entries in Yasnaya Polyana, then I was in Moscow, where I did not make one entry. At the end of November I went to Pirogovo. I returned on the first and since that time have not been quite well – the small of my back ached and still aches, and lately I have had something like bilious fever. It is the second day that I am better.

All this time I have been occupied exclusively with Resurrection.375 I have had some communications about the Dukhobors,376 an innumerable pile of letters. Kolechka Gay is with me, with whom it is a rest to be… I am calm in the fashion of an old man. And that is all.

There is quite a lot to write out. I am going to write it out on the pages I skipped. Lately I feel as if my interest in Resurrection has weakened, and I joyously feel other, more important, interests, in the understanding of life and death. Much seems clear.

Made an entry, the 2nd of January. To-day, Feb. 21. Moscow.

More than six weeks that I have made no entries. Am all the time in Moscow. At first Resurrection went well, then I cooled off entirely.377 I wrote a letter to the non-commissioned officer378 and to the Swedish papers.379 For about three days I have again taken up Resurrection. Am advancing.

Students’ strike. They are trying to drag me in all the time.380 I am counselling them to hold themselves passively, but I do not feel like writing letters to them.

… As to me – my back is better. There is living with us, an interesting and live Frenchman, Sinet, – the first religious Frenchman.381 There is very much that I ought to write out. Have been in a very bad mood; now all right.

Feb. 22. Moscow.

June 26. Yasnaya Polyana.

Four months that I have made no entries. I will not say I have lived badly all this time. I have worked and am working diligently on Resurrection. There is much that is good, there is that, in the name of which I write. During these days I have been gravely ill; now well…

Difficult relations because of the printing and translating of Resurrection,382 but most of the time am calm.

Neglected correspondence. They continue sending money for the famine-stricken, but I can do nothing else but send it to them through the post.383 Kolichka is with me helping me in the work.

…

I continue to write out from my note-book:

14) Nearing the place of destination, one thinks more and more often of that place to which one is nearing. Thus also while nearing death, the change of destination.

15) Only always to remember that there is no other meaning in life, no other way of finding the joy of life, but through fulfilling His will. And how peacefully and joyously one could live!

16) In time of illness, to fulfil His will by preparing oneself for the going over into another form.

17) It seems to us that the real labour is the labour on something external: to make, to collect something; property, houses, cattle, fruit; but to labour on one’s own soul – that is just phantasy. And yet every other labour except on one’s own soul, the enlarging of the habits of good, every other labour is a bagatelle.

18) They do not obey God, but adore Him. It is better not to adore, but to obey.

19) No matter what the work you are doing, be always ready to drop it. And plan it, so as to be able to leave it.

20) The machine … is a terrible machine. If we would have clearly understood its danger, we would never have permitted it to be formed.

21) It seems strange and immoral that a writer, an artist, seeing the suffering of people, sympathises less than he observes, in order to reproduce this suffering. But that is not immoral. The suffering of one personality is an insignificant thing in comparison with that spiritual effect, if it is a good one, which a work of art will produce.

22) Humanity, it is an enormous animal who seeks and cannot find what it needs. Very slowly, sensations call forth emotions, and emotions are transmitted to the brain and the brain calls forth acts. The activity of the liberals, Socialists, revolutionaries, are attempts to galvanise, to compel the animal to act by arousing its motor nerves and muscles. But there is one organ which does everything when it is not impaired; in the animal it is the brain, in the people, religion.

23) I am depressed and I ask God to help me. But my work is to serve God and not that He should serve me.

24) An individual, personal life is an illusion. There is no such life; there is only function, a tool, for something.

25) … is vestigial, having no application, like the appendix.

26) We complain at our depressed spirits, but they are necessary. Man cannot stay on that height to which he sometimes rises; but man rises and then hypnotises himself for the time of his depression and in the time of his depression he already acts from the view-point that was disclosed to him in the moment of rising. If only to know how to make use of those moments of rising and to know how to hypnotise oneself!

27) The evil of the world, its cause is very simple. Every one seeks midi à quatorze heures– now in the economic system, now in the political. I just now read the discussions in the German parliament, on how to keep the peasants from running to the cities. But the solution of all problems is one and no one recognises it and it does not even seem to be of interest to them. But the solution is one, clear and undoubted: … The salvation is one: the destruction of false teaching.

28) The difference between people: N thinks about death, and that does not lead him farther than the question of how and to whom he should leave his money, where and how be buried. And Pascal also thinks about death.

29) …

30) There is no future. It is made by us.

31) The infinity of time and space is not a sign of the greatness of the human mind, but on the contrary, it is a sign of its incompleteness, of its inevitable falsity.

32) We think of the future, we build it; but nothing future is important, because the important thing is to do the creative work of love, which can be done under every possible condition; and therefore it is altogether indifferent, what the future will be.

33) We get angry at circumstances, are pained, wish to change them, but all possible circumstances are nothing else than indications as to how to act in different spheres. If you are in need, you must work, if in prison – think, and if in wealth, free yourself … etc.

It is just like a horse getting angry with the road on which he is being led.

34) The press – that is a lie: with a vengeance.384

35) Everything is divided. Only God unites us, living in everything. That is why He is love.

36) The conception of God to a religious man, is continuously destroyed and being replaced by a new, higher conception.

37) … – is not only the loss of labour, of lives, but the loss of the good.

38) With many people it is possible to live only when you treat them as you would a horse: not to take them into consideration, not reproaching them, not suggesting, but only finding a modus vivendi. It is about them: “Not to cast pearls” … It is terrible, but without this rule, it would be worse.

39) Is it possible to imagine to oneself a Socialist working-man with faith in the Iversk Ikon? Then, first of all, there must be a religious emancipation.

40) We are all agreed that only he is free who has overcome passion, and yet knowing this, we seriously trouble ourselves with the freeing of people who are full of passions.

41) A rational conviction can never be complete. A full conviction can only be irrational, especially with women.

42) Answer good for evil and you destroy in an evil man all pleasure which he receives from evil.

43) God is love. We know God only in love, which unites everything. You know God in yourself through the striving towards this union.

44) One continually thinks that the good will be good for him. But the good is, or it is not – it is not something that will be.

45) The important thing lies in thoughts. Thoughts are the beginning of everything. And thoughts can be directed. And therefore the principal task of perfection is – to work on thoughts.

June 27. If I live. Y. P.

To-day July 4th. Y. P.

All this time I have been ill with my usual stomach sickness. The work which absorbed me very much, has stopped.

Christ as a myth;385 and Kenworthy’s book, a rational exposition of the life of Christ. The first is better. There is need of a philosophy of moral economy, i.e., of religious truth. There is such a thing.

I have had many good thoughts, being ill and nearing death. I think often with pain of brother S.

I have noted down the 4th:

1) The government destroys faith, but faith is necessary. Some violating themselves believe in the miraculous, in the absurd; others in science. But in which? In the contemporary. But in the contemporary, there is 99/100 of lie and error. In every contemporary science there are lies. Truth revealed by God is of course the right, it is religion; and truth obtained by the reason of man, by science, is also of course, the right. But the matter lies in recognising what is discovered by God and what has been gained by human reason.

2) Death is the destruction of those organs by means of which I perceive the world as it appears in this life; it is the destruction of that glass through which I looked and a change to another.

3) Educated people using their education not for the enlightenment and freeing of the working-classes, but for befogging them, are like workers using their strength not for sustaining life but for destroying it. These are the intellectual Pugachevs, Stenka Razins, only a thousand times more dangerous.

July 5. Y. P. If I live.

To-day September 28. Y. P.

Have worked all the time on Resurrection; now I have stumbled on the third part. It is long since I have made no progress.

… I have wrought for myself a calm which is not to be disturbed: not to speak and to know that this is necessary; that it is under these conditions one ought to live.

There are here Ilya, Sonya386 with the children, Andrusha with his wife, Masha with her husband.

I am thinking more and more often about the philosophic definition of space and time. To-day, if I have time, I am going to write it out.

I read an interesting book about Christ never having been, that it was a myth.387 The probabilities that it is right – there are as many for it, as there are against.

Yesterday with the help of Masha I answered all the letters; many remained unanswered. I am still ill; rarely a day without pain. I am dissatisfied with myself, also morally. I have let myself go very much – I do not work physically and I am occupied with myself, with my health. How difficult it is to bear sickness resignedly, to go unto death without resistance – and one must.

I have been thinking during this time:

1) Women demanding for themselves the work of man and the same freedom, mostly demand for themselves unconsciously the freedom for licence, and as a result go down much lower than the family, though aiming to stand higher than it.

2) What is this memory which makes from me one being, from childhood unto death? What is this faculty connecting separate beings in time, into one? One ought to ask not what is it that unites, but what divides, these beings. The faculty of time divides, beyond which I cannot see myself. I am one indivisible being from birth until death; but to manifest and to know myself, I must do so in time. I am now such as I was and will be; but one who had to and even will manifest myself and know myself in time. I have to manifest myself and know myself in time – for communion with other beings and for influencing them.

3) I plucked a flower and threw it away. There were so many of them, it was no pity. We do not value these inimitable beauties of living beings and destroy them, having no pity not only for plants, but for animals, human people. There are so many of them. Culture, civilisation, is nothing else than the ruin of these beauties and the replacing them … with what? The saloon, the theatre …

4) They reproach you with malice, debauchery, lies, thefts, bring proof, etc. What is to be done? Answer the question with What time is it? Are you going to take a swim? Have you seen N N, etc. That is the best and only means of bearing these accusations and even clearing them up.

5) The dearest thing on earth is the good relation between people; but the establishment of these relations is not the result of conversation – on the contrary, they become spoiled by conversation. Speak as little as possible, and especially with those people with whom you want to be in good relation.

6) In eating, I destroy the limits between myself and other beings; creating children, I do almost the same thing. The results of the destruction of material limits are visible; the results of the destruction of the spiritual limits and the union resulting from this are invisible, only because they are broader.

7) “People are divided (divided from other beings), and this appears to them as space. The fact that they are inseparable in essence appears to them as time.” That is the way I have noted it. Space divides, time unites. But this is untrue. Both time and space are dividers and they form the impossibility of realising unity. (Unclear, but I understand. I will make it clear later.)