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

8) Brotherhood is natural, proper to people. Non-brotherhood, divisions, are carefully nurtured.

9) Sometimes one feels like complaining childishly to some one (to God), to beg for help. Is this feeling good? It is not good: it is a weakness, a lack of faith. That which more than anything resembles faith – the beseeching prayer, is in truth a lack of faith – a lack of faith that there is no evil, that there is nothing to ask for, that if things are going badly with you, then it only demonstrates that you ought to improve yourself, and that there is going on, that very thing which ought to be, and under which you ought to do that which has to be done.

10) Just now I wrote this coldly, understanding with difficulty that state in which you wish to live for God alone, and I see through this how there are people who absolutely never understand this, not knowing any other kind of life besides the worldly, for people. I know this state, but cannot just now call it up in myself, but only remember it.

11) Everything which lives without consciousness, as I live when I sleep, as I lived in the womb of my mother, lives not materially, i.e., not knowing matter, but lives. But life is something spiritual. Endeavouring to remember my state before consciousness, on the threshold of consciousness, I know only the feeling of depression, satisfaction, pleasure, suffering, but there is no conception of my body or of another’s. The conception of body (matter) manifests itself only when consciousness is manifested. The conception of body manifests itself only, because consciousness gives understanding of the presence in one’s self of the basis of everything (spiritual). And at the same time, as I know that I am the basis of everything, I know also that I am not the whole basis, but a part of it. And it is this being a part of a whole, these limits separating me from the whole, I know through my body: through my own body and the bodies surrounding me.

12) If you desire something, if you are afraid of something, that means that you do not believe in that God of love which is in you. If you had believed in Him, then you could not have wanted anything or have been afraid, because all desires of that God which lives in you are being always fulfilled, because God is all-powerful; and you would never have been afraid, because for God there is nothing terrible.

13) Not to think that you know in what the will of God really lies, but to be humble; and then you will be loving. And the will of God in relation to you, lies only in this.

14) People convincing others that reason cannot be the guide of life are those in whom reason is so perverted, that they clearly see that they have been led into a swamp.

15) The only instance where a man can and ought to occupy himself with himself, is when he feels unhappy. Unhappiness is the best condition for perfection, the ascent to the higher steps. Unhappiness is a sign of one’s own imperfection. One ought to rejoice at these instances: it is the preparation of one’s self for work, a spiritual food.

16) Now I am an ordinary man, L. N. (Tolstoi), and animal, and now I am the messenger of God. I am all the time the same man, but now I am the public and now I am the judge himself with the chain, fulfilling the highest responsibilities. One must put on the chain more often.

Latterly I have got out of the habit, have weakened. I have only just now remembered.

17) Man is a being beyond time and beyond space who is conscious of himself in the conditions of space and time.

18) Games, cards, women, races, are alluring because they have been thought out for the blasés. It is not for nothing that the wise teachers have forbidden them. Artificial play is corrupting. They are needed for the blasé, but the simple working people need the very simplest plays without preparation.

19) Only then will you produce true love, when you will resist offence, overcome offence with love, will love your enemy.

20) They desire, they are excited, they suffer only for trifles or for bad things. The good things are accomplished without excitement. It is from this that the word heart means malice. (Serdit, to get angry, to put into a passion, comes from sertse, the heart. —Translator’s note.)

To-day Oct. 2. Y. P.

I am still ill, – I am not suffering, but I feel threatened constantly. Morally I am better – I remember God in myself more often, and death. It seems to me I have come out of the difficult place in Resurrection… Kolichka went away. Sonya arrived – she is ill.

I am continuing to write out from the notebooks:

1) I have made this note: Space comes from the consciousness of limits, from the consciousness of one’s own separateness; I am one, and the world is another. And in the world are similar beings with limits: 2, 3, 4, … to infinity.

These beings can find place only in space. From the consciousness of limits comes also time. I have thought this out again and can express it in this way: Separateness, the non-all-comprehensiveness of our selves, is expressed in recognising a part of moving matter as ourselves. The part of matter which we recognise as ourselves gives us an understanding of space; that part of motion which we recognise as ourselves gives us a conception of time.

Or, in other words: We cannot imagine a part of matter in any other way than in space. To imagine a part of motion, we cannot in any other way than in time. Space comes from the impossibility of imagining two or many objects beyond time. Time comes from the impossibility of imagining two, many objects beyond space. Space is the possibility of representing to one’s self two, many objects at one and the same time. Time is the possibility of representing to one’s self two, many objects, in one and the same space (one goes out, the other enters).

Divisions cannot be in one space, without time. If there were no time (motion) all objects in space would be unmoving and they would form not many objects, but one space, undivided and filled with matter. If there were no space, there could be no motion and our “self” would not be separated by anything from all the rest. My body understood by me as my “self,” and understanding all the rest, is that part of matter which moves for a definite time and occupies a definite space.

(Not good, unclear, perhaps even untrue.)

2) Anarchy does not mean the absence of institutions, but only the absence of those institutions to which people are compelled to submit by force, but those institutions to which people submit themselves voluntarily, rationally. It seems to me that otherwise there cannot be established and ought not to be, a society of beings endowed with reason.

3) “Why is it that after sin, suffering does not follow that person who committed the sin? Then he would see what ought not to be done” – because people live not separately but in society and if every one suffered from the sin of each one, then every one would have to resist it.

4) Conscience is the memory of society assimilated by separate individuals.

5) In old age you experience the same thing as on a journey. At first your thoughts are on that place from which you are going, then on the journey itself, and then on the place to which you are going.

I experience this more and more often, thinking of death.

6) It is true that a great sin might be beneficial, by calling forth repentance before God, independently from human judgment. Such a sin leads one away from the realm of human judgment, from vanity, which masters man and hides from him his relation to God.388

7) The physical growth is only a preparation of material for spiritual work, the service to God and man which begins with the withering of the body.

To-day Oct. 13. Y. P.

I am still not fully well. It is as it ought to be. But that does not hinder from living, thinking and moving towards a fixed goal. Resurrection advances poorly. Have sent away four chapters, I think not passable by the censor, but at least I think I have settled on one point, and that I won’t make any more great important changes. I do not cease thinking of brother Sergei, but because of the weather and ill health I cannot make up my mind to go… Sonya was in Moscow and is going again to-day. To-day I had a kind of intellectual idleness, not only to-day, but all these latter days. For Resurrection I have thought out good scenes. Concerning separateness which appears to us as matter in space and movement in time, I am thinking more and more often and more and more clearly.

I have also received Westrup’s pamphlets from America about the money,389 which struck me by explaining everything that was unclear in financial questions and reducing everything as it ought to be, to violence… If I get time I will write it out. I have another important, joyous thought, although an old one, but which came to me as a new one and which makes me very happy, namely:

1) The principal cause of family unhappiness – is because people are brought up to think that marriage gives happiness. Sex attraction induces to marriage and it takes the form of a promise, a hope, for happiness, which is supported by public opinion and literature; but marriage is not happiness, but always suffering, which man pays for the satisfaction of his sex desire. Suffering in the form of lack of freedom, slavery, over-satiety, disgust of all kinds of spiritual and physical defects of the mate which one has to bear; maliciousness, stupidity, falsity, vanity, drunkenness, laziness, miserliness, greed and corruption – all defects which are especially difficult to bear when not in oneself but in another person, and from which one suffers as if they were one’s own; and the same with physical defects: ugliness, uncleanliness, stench, sores, insanity, etc., which are even more difficult to bear when not in oneself. All this, or at least something of this, will always be and to bear them will be difficult for every one. But that which ought to compensate: the care, satisfaction, aid, all these things are taken as a matter of course; while all defects as if they were not a matter of course, and the more one expected happiness from marriage the more one suffers.

The principal cause of this suffering, is that one expects that which does not happen, and does not expect that which always happens. And therefore escape from this suffering is only by not expecting joys, but by expecting the bad, being prepared to bear them. If you expect all that which is described in the beginning of “The Thousand and One Nights,” if you expect drunkenness, stench, disgusting diseases – then obstinacy, untruthfulness, even drunkenness, can, if not exactly be forgiven, at least be a matter of no suffering and one can rejoice that there is absent that which might have been, that which is described in “The Thousand and One Nights”: that there is no insanity, cancer, etc. And then everything that is good will be appreciated.

But is it not in this, that the principal means of happiness in general lie? And is it not therefore that people are so often unhappy, especially the rich ones? Instead of recognising oneself in the condition of a slave who has to labour for himself and for others, and to labour in the way that the master wishes, people imagine that every kind of pleasure awaits them, that their whole work lies in enjoying them. How not be unhappy under this circumstance? Then everything: work and obstacles and illnesses – the necessary conditions of life – appear as unexpected, terrible calamities. The poor, therefore, are less often unhappy: they know beforehand that before them lie labour, struggle, obstacles, and therefore they appreciate everything which gives them joy. But the rich, expecting only joys, see a calamity in every obstacle, and do not notice and do not appreciate those goods which they are enjoying. “Blessed be the poor, for they shall be comforted; the hungry, for they shall be fed; and woe unto ye, the rich.”

Oct. 14. Y. P. If I live.

Oct. 27. Y. P.

We are living alone: … Olga,390 Andrusha, Julie391 and Andrei Dmitrievich.392 Everything is all right, but I am often indisposed: there are more ill days than healthy ones and therefore I write little. Sent off 19 chapters,393 very much unfinished. I am working on the end.

I have thought much, and perhaps well:

1) About the freedom of the will, simply: Man is free in everything spiritual, in love: he can love or not love, more and less. In everything remaining he is not free, consequently in everything material. Man can direct and not direct his strength towards the service of God. In this one thing (but it is an enormous thing), he is free: he can pull or be driven.

2) … of the workers, prostitution and many other things, all this is a necessary, inevitable consequence and condition of the pagan order of life in which we live, and to change either one or many of these, is impossible. What is to be done? Change the very order of this life, that on which it stands. How? By this, in the first place, by not taking part in this order, in that which supports it … etc. And, second, to do that in which man alone is absolutely free: to change selfishness in his soul and everything which flows from it: malice, greed, violence, and everything else by love and by all that which flows from it: reasonableness, humility, kindness and the rest. It is impossible to turn back the wheel of a machine by force, – they are all bound together with cogs and other wheels – but to let the steam go which will move them or not let it go is easy; thus it is terribly difficult to change the very outer conditions of life, but to be good or bad is easy. But this being good or evil changes all the outer conditions of life.

3) Our life is the freeing of the enclosed – the expansion of the limits in which the illimitable principle acts. This expansion of the limits appears to us as matter in motion. The limit of expansion in space appears to us as matter. That part of matter which we recognise as ourselves we call our body; the other part we call the world. The limit of expansion in time we call motion. That part of motion which we recognise as ourselves we call our life; the other part we call the life of the world. All of life is the expansion of these limits, the being freed from them.

(All unclear, inexact.)

Nov. 20. Moscow.

Much I have not written out. I am in Moscow… For 70 years I have been lowering and lowering my opinion of women and still it has to be lowered more and more. The woman question! How can there not be a woman question? Only not in this, how women should begin to direct life, but in this, how they should stop ruining it.

All morning I have not been writing and have been thinking two things:

1) We speak of the end of life – although it is true, not the one which we understand, but the one which would be understood by the highest reason. The purpose is just the same as the cause. The cause is looking backward, the purpose is looking forward, but the cause, the conception of the cause (and therefore of an end) appears only then when there is time, i.e., a being is limited in his conceptions by time. And therefore for God, and for man living a Godly life, there is no purpose. There is life in which consciousness grows (?394) and that is all.

2) A drop fusing with a great drop, a pool, ceases to be and begins to be.

To-day December 18. Moscow.

Almost a month I have not written. Have been severely ill.395 Had acute pain for one day, then a respite, and weakness. And death became more than natural, almost desirable. And so it has remained now, when I am getting well – that is a new, joyous step.

Finished Resurrection. Not good, uncorrected, hurried; but it has fallen from me and I am no longer interested. Serezha is here, Masha and her husband, Maria Alexandrovna.

I am all right. Have not yet begun to write anything. More than anything I am occupied with ,396 but I have no desire for anything very much, am resting. Wrote letters.

I am attempting to write out my notes:

1) (Trifles) about many-voiced music. It is necessary that the voice say something, but here there are many voices and each one says nothing.

2) One of the principal causes of evil in our life is the faith cultivated in our Christian world, the faith in the crude Hebrew personal God, when the principal sign (if one can express it so) of God is that he is not limited, by anything, consequently not personal.

3) One should conquer death – not death, but the fear of death coming from a lack of understanding of life. If only you understand life and its necessarily good purpose – death – then you cease to fear it, to resist it. And when you cease to fear it, you cease to serve yourself, a mortal, and you will serve an immortal: God, from whom you came and to whom you are going.

4) Matter is everything which is accessible to our senses. Science forces us to suppose matter inaccessible to our senses. In this realm, there can be beings composed of that matter and perceiving it, matter inaccessible to our senses. I do not think that there are such beings; I only think that our matter and our senses perceiving it, are only one of innumerable397 possibilities of life.

5) “I am a slave, I am a worm, I am a Czar, I am a God.”398 Slave and worm true, but Czar and God untrue. It is in vain that people attribute a special significance and greatness to his reason. The limits of human reason are very narrow and are seen at once. These limits are the infinity of space and time. Man sees the final answers to the questions he asks himself, recede and recede in time and also in space, and in both these realms.

6) I read about Englehardt’s book: Evolution, the Progress of Cruelty.399 I think that here there is a great deal of truth. Cruelty has increased mainly because division of labour has been brought to pass, which assists the increase of the material wealth of man. Every one speaks of the benefits of the division of labour, not seeing that the inevitable condition of the division of labour, besides the mechanising of man, is also the removing of those conditions which call forth a human, moral communion between people. If we are doing the same work, as agricultural labourers, then naturally there would be established between us an exchange of service, a mutual aid, but between the shepherd and the factory-weaver, there can be no communion.

(This seems untrue; I shall think it over.)

7) What would God’s attitude be towards prayer, if there were such a God to whom one could pray? Just the same as would be the attitude of the owner of a house where water had been introduced and to whom the inhabitants would come to ask for water. The water has been introduced. You have only to turn the tap. In the same way everything has been prepared for men which is necessary to them, and God is not at fault that instead of making use of the clean water which was there, some of the tenants carry water from a stagnant pond, others fall into despair from lack of water and beg for that which had been given them in such abundance.

8) …

9) One can by personal experience verify the truth, that God, a part of Whom is my own self, is love, and by the experimental way convince one’s self of this truth. As soon as love is violated, life ends. There is no desire to do anything, everything is depressing, and on the contrary, as soon as love is restored, as soon as you have made peace with those whom you quarrelled, forgiven, received forgiveness – then you wish to live, to act, everything seems easy and possible.

10) It would be good to express even in approximate numbers and then graphically, that quantity of labour, of working days, which rich people use up in their lives. Approximately more or less, this could be expressed by money. If I spend 10 roubles a day, that means that 20 men are working constantly for me. (Unclear, not what I want to say.)

11) They generally say: “That is very deep, and therefore not to be fully understood.” This is untrue. On the contrary. Everything that is deep is clear to transparency. Just as water is murky on top, but the deeper it is, the more transparent.

12) One small part of people, about 20 per cent., is insane by itself, possessed by a mania of egoism, which reaches to the point of concentration of all spiritual strengths on oneself; another, the greater part, almost 80 per cent., is hypnotised by the scientific, by the artistic … and principally … hypnotism, and also does not make use of its reason. Therefore progress in the world is always attained by the insane possessed by the same kind of insanity by which the majority is possessed.

13) I experience the feeling of peace, of satisfaction, when I am ill, when there takes place in me the destruction of the limits of my personality. As soon as I get well I experience the opposite: restlessness, dissatisfaction. Are these not obvious signs that the destruction of the limits of personality in this world, is the entrance of life into new limits?

I have finished.

December 19. Moscow. If I live.

To-day December 20. Moscow.

My health is not good. My spiritual condition is good, ready for death. In the evenings there are many people. I tire. In number 51,400 Resurrection did not appear and I was sorry. This is bad.

I thought out a philosophic definition of life. To-day I thought well about The Coupon.401 Perhaps I shall write it out.

APPENDIX

A SHORT SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF TOLSTOI AT THE END OF THE NINETIESBy Constantine Shokor-Trotsky

The present volume of Tolstoi’s Journal covers a period from October 28, 1895, to December, 1899. During this time Tolstoi made in all 170 entries402 in the Journal, the greatest number of them falling in the year 1897, and the smallest in 1899. During certain months, Tolstoi made no entries whatever. There were nine such months in the four years; April and August, 1896; June, 1897; September, October and December, 1898; March, May and August, 1899. The greatest number of interruptions in the entries was caused by ill health, sometimes also by intensive work and sometimes on account of spiritual depression.

IIMPORTANT EVENTS

Of important outer events which had more or less significance for Tolstoi, and to which he responded during this time, the following are to be mentioned:403

In the first two months of 1896, Tolstoi notes in his Journal and in private letters the death of several people more or less near to him: his relative, N. M. Nagornov; the well-known philosopher, N. N. Strakhov, to whom he was bound by an old friendship; an old woman, Agatha Michailovna, a former maid of his grandmother, who lived all her life in Yasnaya Polyana; the Yasnaya Polyana peasant, Phillip Egorov, who had been a coachman for many years at the Tolstois’, and the steward, at one time; the wife of a professor, Olga Storozhenko.

In March and April of the same year, according to his own words, the important events of his life were: making the acquaintance of the peasant, M. P. Novikov; the arrest of his friend, a woman doctor, M. M. Kholevinsky, because she gave his forbidden works to the working people; hearing Wagner’s Opera, “Siegfried,” which aided him in clarifying his conception of true art; becoming acquainted with the works of the noted philosopher, A. A. Spier, which were sent to him by the latter’s daughter.

In May, in Moscow at the time of the Coronation, the unfortunate catastrophe which took place on the Khodinka field, the reports of which produced a strong impression on Tolstoi.

In October of this same year, two Japanese came to Tolstoi, whose visit was both interesting and pleasant for him.

In February, 1897, several friends of Tolstoi were subjected to governmental prosecution for their intercession in behalf of the persecuted Dukhobors: P. I. Biriukov was exiled to the city of Bausk in Courland, V. G. Chertkov was exiled abroad and I. M. Tregubov some time later was exiled to Goldingen in Courland.

In February of that year there was the tragedy of an acquaintance of Tolstoi; Miss M. F. Vietrov burning herself, who had been imprisoned in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

In July of that year Tolstoi’s daughter, Maria Lvovna, who stood especially near to him, was married to Prince N. L. Obolensky.

In September, P. A. Boulanger, a friend, was exiled abroad for his activity in behalf of the Dukhobors.