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

17) The æsthetic pleasure is a pleasure of a lower order. And therefore the highest æsthetic pleasure leaves one unsatisfied. In fact, the higher the æsthetic 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 important nor as harmful as a lie to oneself. A lie to others is often an innocent play, a satisfying of vanity. A lie to oneself is always a perversion of the truth, a turning aside from the demands of life.

19) Although seldom, yet it has happened to me that I have done good from pity, a real good. In that case you never remember what you really have done and under what circumstances. You remember only that you were with God (this occurred to me in regard to my favourite boots which I remember I gave away out of pity and for a long time I could not remember where they had gone). It is the same way with all those moments when I was with God, whether in prayer or in the business of life. Memory is a fleshly affair, but here, the thing is spiritual.

20) Man can not live a fleshly life, if he does not consider himself in the right and he can not live a spiritual life if he does not consider himself sinful.

21) …

I am going to sleep. It is 12:30 in the morning, July 30th.

July 31, Y. P. If I live.

July 31, Y. P.

I am alive. It is evening now. It is past four. I am lying down and can not fall asleep. My heart aches. I am tired out. I hear through the window – they play tennis and are laughing. S. went away to the Shenshins.[119 - The Shenshins – Tula landlords who lived on their estate, Sudakovo, five versts from Yasnaya Polyana.] Every one is well, but I am sad and can not master myself. It is like the feeling I had when St. Thomas[120 - Prosper St. Thomas, tutor of Tolstoi and his brothers. The incident mentioned in the Journal produced a tremendous impression on Tolstoi. “It may have been that this incident was the cause of all the horror and aversion to all kinds of violence which I experienced throughout life,” Tolstoi wrote afterwards in his recollections. (See P. Biriukov: The Biography of L. N. Tolstoi, Moscow, issued by Posrednik, Volume I, pages 99–100.) In Tolstoi’s story Boyhood, St. Thomas is pictured under the name of Saint Jerome. The incident mentioned here is described in Chapters XIV, XV and XVI of that story.] locked me in and I heard through my prison how every one was gay and was laughing. But I don’t want to. One must suffer humiliation and be good. I can do it.

I continue to copy:

1) The disbelief in reason is the source of all evil. This disbelief is reached by the teaching of a distorted faith from childhood. Believe in one miracle and the trust in reason is destroyed.

2) …

3) Christianity does not give happiness but safety; it lets you down to the bottom from which there is no place to fall.

4) I rode horseback from Tula and thought about this; that I am a part of Him, separated in a certain way from other such parts, and He is everything, the Father, and I felt love, just love, for Him. Now, especially now, I not only can not reproduce this feeling, but not even recall it. But I was so joyful that I said to myself: Here I was thinking that I can not learn anything new and suddenly I acquired a wonderful blessed new feeling, a real feeling.

5) What humbug[121 - Written in English in the original.]– beauty, truth, goodness! Beauty is one of those attributes of outer objects, like health, an attribute of the living body. Truth is not the ideal of science. The ideal of science is knowledge, not truth. The good can not be placed on the plane with either of these, because it is the goal of life.

(It is unclear, but it was clear and will be.)

6) I do not remember good works, because they are outside of the material man – of memory.

August 1, Ysn. Pol. If I live.– which is doubtful. My heart aches very much…

It is dreadful to think how much time has elapsed; a month and a half. To-day, Sept. 14, Y. P.

During this time I took a trip to the monastery with Sonya.[122 - Tolstoi, together with Countess S. A. Tolstoi, visited his sister, Countess Maria Nicholaievna, living in the convent of Shamordino near the Optina Desert. In his letter to her of September 13, 1896, Tolstoi wrote, “With great pleasure and emotion I recall my stay with you.”]… I wrote on Hadji-Murad[123 - The story, Hadji Murad. See Note 112 (#cn_111).] very poorly, a first draft. I have continued my work on the Declaration of Faith. The Chertkovs have gone away… All three sons are here now with their wives.[124 - Count Sergei Lvovich, with his wife, Countess Maria Constantinovna (born Rachinsky, who died in 1899); Count Ilya Lvovich, with his wife, Countess Sophia Nicholaievna, and Count Leo Lvovich, with his wife, the Countess Dora Fedorovna.]

There was a letter from the Hollander who has refused to serve.[125 - The Dutchman, Van-der-Veer, refused military service, as he declared in his letter to the Commander of the National Guard, on the grounds that he hated every kind of murder of men as well as of animals, especially murder at the order of other people. The military authorities sentenced him to three months’ solitary confinement. Later Van-der-Veer for several years published a magazine with a Christian tendency called Vrede.] I wrote a preface to the letter.[126 - Van-der-Veer’s letter, with the appendix by Tolstoi under the title “The Beginning of the End” was printed in the edition of The Free Press, 1898, England, later in Russia in the Obnovlenia, Petrograd, 1906, which was soon confiscated.] I wrote a letter also to Mme. Kalmikov[127 - Alexandra Mikhailovna Kalmikov, a noted worker for popular education, who turned to Tolstoi with the request that he express himself in regard to the order then given by the Minister of the Interior to close the committees on illiteracy. In answer to her letter, Tolstoi expressed his opinion about the activity of the Russian Government in general and about the methods of resisting it used by the Liberals. His answer, under the title of “A Letter to the Liberals,” in revised form was printed in full in the publication of The Free Press: “Concerning the Attitude Towards the State” (England, 1898) and with omissions in the publication of Obnovlenia (Petrograd, 1906,) which was confiscated.] with very sharp statements about the Government. The whole month and a half has been condensed in this. Oh, yes; I have also been ill from my usual sickness and my stomach is still not strong.

One thing more. During this time there was a letter from the Hindu Tod and an exquisite book of Hindu wisdom, Ioga’s Philosophy.[128 - Ioga’s Philosophy. Lectures on Rajah Ioga or Conquering Internal Nature, by Swâmi Vivekânanda, New York, 1896.]

In the meantime I thought:

1) There are many people, especially Europeans and especially women, who not only talk but who write things that appear intelligent, in the same way as dumb people speak; as a matter of fact, it isn’t any more natural for them to think than for a dumb person to speak, but both one and the other, both the stupid and the dumb, have been taught.

2) To love an individual man, one has to be blinded. Without being blinded one can love only God, but people can be pitied, which means to love in a Godly way.

3) To get rid of an enemy, one must love him, as it is also said in the “Teaching of the twelve apostles.”[129 - “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” discovered in 1883. A document of the Christian literature of the First Centuries. Tolstoi translated it from the Greek and twice wrote a preface to it: in 1885 and twenty years later, in 1905. The passage mentioned in the Journal reads this way: “It is not good to love only those who love you. Heathens do the same. They love their own and hate their enemies and therefore they have enemies, but you should love those who hate you and then you will have no enemies.”] But to love one has to put to oneself the task for all one’s life of love towards an enemy, to do him good through love and to perfect oneself in love for him.

4) At first, one is surprised that stupid people should have within them such an assertive convincing intonation. But it is as it should be. Otherwise no one would listen to them.

5) I find this note: “A decoration for peasants, our happiness” – I can not remember what that means, but it is something that pleased me. I think it means that to a poor man looking on the life of the rich, it appears as happiness. But this happiness is as much happiness, as cardboard made into a tree or a castle – is a tree or a castle.

6) We are all attracted to the Whole and one to another, like particles of one body. Only our roughness, the lack of smoothness, our angles, interfere with our uniting. There is already an attraction, there is no need of making it, but one must plane oneself, wipe out one’s angles.

7) One of the strongest means of hypnotism, of exterior action on the spiritual state of man, is his dress. People know that very well; that is why there is a monastic garb in monasteries and a uniform in the army.

8) I was trying to recall two excellent subjects for novels, the suicide of old Persianninov and the substitution of a child in an orphan asylum.

9) When my weakness tortured me, I sought means of salvation, and I found one in the thought that there is nothing stationary, that everything flows, changes, that all this is for a while, and that it is only necessary to suffer the while while we live – I and the others. And some one of us will go away first. (The while does not mean to live in any way, but means, not to despair, to suffer it through to the end.)

10) I wanted to say that I was grateful, so as to make the other one well disposed, and later to tell the truth. No, I thought, that is not permitted. He will ascribe it to his virtues and the truth will be accepted even less. Man, not acknowledging his sins, is a vessel hermetically closed with a cover which lets nothing enter. To humble oneself, to repent, that means to take off the cover and to make oneself capable of perfection, of the good.

11) Barbarism interferes with the union of people, but the same thing is done by a too great refinement without a religious basis. In the other, the physical disunites, and in this, the spiritual.

12) Man is a tool of God. At first I thought that it was a tool with which man himself was called to work; now I have understood that it is not man who works, but God. The business of man is only to keep himself in order. Like an axe, which would have to keep itself always clean and sharp.

13) Why is it that scoundrels stand for despotism? Because under an ideal order which pays according to merit, they are badly off. Under despotism everything can happen.

14) I often meet people who recognise no God except one which we ourselves recognise in ourselves. And I am astonished; God in me. But God is an infinite principle; how then, why then, should He happen to be in me? It is impossible not to question oneself about this. And as soon as you question yourself, you have to acknowledge an exterior cause. Why do people not feel themselves in need of answering this question? Because for them, the answer to this question is in the reality of the existing world, whether according to Moses or to Darwin – it is all the same. And therefore, to have a conception of an exterior God, one has to understand that that which is actually real, is only the impression of our senses, i. e. it is we ourselves, our spiritual “self.”

15) In moments of passion, infatuation, in order to conquer, one thing is necessary, to destroy the illusion that it is the “self” who suffers, who desires, and to separate one’s true “self” from the troubled waters of passion.

Sept. 15. Y. P. If I live.

To-day October 10. Y. P.

It is almost a month that I have made no entries and it seemed to me it was only yesterday. During this time, though in very poor form, I finished the Declaration of Faith. During this time there were some Japanese with a letter from Konissi.[130 - Daniel Pavlovich Konissi, a Japanese, converted to the Greek Church, who studied in the Kiev Theological Academy, then came to Moscow and here made the acquaintance of Tolstoi. Later he became professor in the University in Kioto. Translated Lao-Tze from the Chinese into the Russian (this translation was printed at first in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology and later in separate pamphlet, Lao-Se, Tao-Te-King, Moscow, 1913.) For D. P. Konissi see article of I. Alexeev, “The Skies Are Different – the People Are the Same” (in the paper, Nov, 1914, No. 154.)About the Japanese who visited him, Tolstoi wrote to Countess S. A. Tolstoi, September 26th: “This morning the Japanese arrived. Very interesting, fully educated, original and intelligent and free-thinking. One an editor of a paper, evidently a very rich man and an aristocrat there, no longer young; the other one, a little man, young, his assistant, also a literary man” (Letters of Tolstoi to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 507).] They, the Japanese, are undoubtedly nearer Christianity than our church Christians. I have learned to love them very much…

I want to write out the whole Declaration of Faith from the beginning again. Yesterday there was a good letter from Verigin, Peter.[131 - Peter Vasilevich Verigin, the leader of the Dukhobors, when in exile in the town of Obdorsk, in the province of Tobolsk, wrote to Tolstoi about his life and expounded his views on the printing of books. Tolstoi’s reply, written on October 14, 1896, in which he answered the objections of Verigin against the printing of books, was printed in the book, The Letters of the Dukhobor Leader, P. V. Verigin, published by The Free Press, 1901, England. See also the letter of P. V. Verigin on his acquaintance with Tolstoi printed in the International Tolstoi Almanac compiled by P. A. Sergienko (issued by Kniga, 1909).]

All last night I thought about the meaning of life and though there are other things to note down, I want to note down this:

The whole world is nothing else than an infinite space filled with infinitely small, colourless, silently moving particles of matter. At bottom, even this is not so; I know that they are particles of matter only through their impenetrability, but the impenetrability I know only through my sense of touch and my muscle sense. If I did not have this sense, I would not know about impenetrability or about matter. As to motion, also, I, strictly speaking, have no right to speak, because if I did not have the sense of sight or again muscle sense, I would not know anything about motion either.

So that all that I have the right to assert about the outer world is that something exists, something entirely unknown to me, as it was said long ago both by the Brahmins and by Kant and by Berkeley. There is some kind of occasion, some kind of grain of sand which causes irritation in the shell of the snail and produces a pearl (sécrétion, secretion in the snail). This is our whole outside world.

What is there then? There is myself with my representations of myself, of the sun, trees, animals, stones. But what then is it that I call myself? Is it something arbitrary depending on myself? No, it is something independent of myself, predetermined. I can not not be myself, and not have that representation which I have, namely, that I include in myself a small part of these moving atoms and call them myself. And all the other remaining atoms I see in the form of beings more or less like myself. The world appears to me to consist entirely of beings which are like me or resemble me.[132 - Further in Tolstoi’s manuscript, one page has been crossed out. A note by M. L. Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.]

(I have become confused, yet have something to say. I am going to try when I have the strength.)

I am continuing to write out what I had to say and what I dreamt of all night, namely:

People think that their life is in the body, that from that which takes place in the body; from breathing, nutrition, circulation of the blood, etc., life flows. And this seems unquestionable; let nutrition, breathing, circulation of the blood cease and life will end. But what ends is the life of the body, life in this body…

And in fact if you consider that life comes from the process of the body and only in the body then as soon as the processes of the body are ended, then life ought to be ended. But certainly this is an arbitrary assertion. No one has proven and can prove that life is only in the body and can not be without the body. To assert this, is all the same as asserting that when the sun has set then the sun has come to an end. One must first decide what is life. Is it that which I see in the others as it begins and stops, or is it what I know in myself? If it is what I know in myself, then it is the only thing that is and therefore it can not be destroyed. And the fact that in bodies before me processes end which are connected with life in me and in other beings, shows me only this, that life goes away somewhere from my sensual eyes. To go away entirely, to be destroyed, it absolutely can not be, because outside of it there is nothing in the world. The problem, then, might be this: Will my life be destroyed, can it be destroyed? And the destruction of the body of a man, is that a sign of the destruction of his life? In order to answer this question one must first decide what is life?