The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (First Volume — 1895–1899) · 33

To-day Peter Ossipov came:[241] “In our place they have begun to sell indulgences.” The Vladimir-ikon was there and it was ordered through the village elder, that the people be driven to the Church.[242]

N. found ore and considers it very natural that people shall live under the ground, in danger of their lives, and he will receive the income.

... The most important thing is that I have decided to write The Appeal; there is no time to postpone it. To-day I corrected On Science. It is evening now, have taken up two versions of The Appeal, and am going to work on it.

Nov. 14, Y. P.

... One thing I want: To do what is better before God. I don’t know how yet. I slept badly at night; bad thoughts, wicked ones. And I am apathetic, no desire to work. Corrected the preface On Science.

I made the following notes:

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1) I read of the behavior of the English in Africa. It is all terrible. But the thought came to my head: Perhaps it was unavoidably necessary in order that enlightenment should penetrate these peoples. At first I was absorbed in the thought and it occurred to me that thus it had to be done. What nonsense! Why should not people, living a Christian life, go in simply like Miklukha-Maklai,[243] live with them, but is it necessary to trade, make drunkards of them, kill? They say: “If people were to live as Christians, they would have no work.” Here is the work and it is an enormous work: while the Gospels are being preached to all creation.

2) Science, losing its religious basis, has begun to study trifles—in the main, it has ceased to study important things. From that time on was formed the theory of experimental science, Bacon.

3) I was thinking, pendant to Hadji Murad, of writing about another Russian brigand, Gregori Nicholaev. He should see the whole lawlessness of the life of the rich, he should live as a watchman of an apple-orchard on a rich estate with a lawn-tennis.[244]

4) To-day I am in a very bad mood, and it is very difficult for me to remember, to imagine to myself what I am when I am in a good mood. But it is absolutely necessary, so as not to despair and not do something bad when in a bad mood,[167] to abstain from every activity. Is it not the same in life? One ought not to believe that I am this good-for-nothing which I feel myself to be, but to make an effort, remember what I am there, what I am in spirit, and live according to that remembered “self,” or do not live at all—abstain.

5) “Toute réunion d’hommes est toujours inférieure aux éléments qui la composent.”[245] This is so because they are united by rules. In their own natural union, as God has united them, they are not only not lower, but many times higher.

I read Menshikov’s article. There is much that is good in it: about one-God and many Gods, and much that is very weak; the examples.[246]

Nov. 15, Y. P. If I live.

Nov. 15, Y. P.

I worked badly on the preface to Carpenter. After dinner, in the blizzard, I went to Yasenki. Took Tania’s letter. Returned—and here for the first time I knew prostration. Then drank tea—recovered. Read but did nothing. Wrote a letter only to Maude in answer to his remarks.[247]

I thought this trifle: that love is only good then when you are not conscious of it. It suffices to be conscious of the love, and moreover to rejoice in it—and there is an end to it.

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Nov. 16, Y. P. If I live.

To-day, Nov. 17. Y. P.

For the second day, I have been thinking with special clearness about this:

1) My life, my consciousness of my personality, gets weaker and weaker all the time, will become still weaker and will end in coma, and in an absolute end of the consciousness of my personality. At the same time, absolutely simultaneously and in the same tempo with the destruction of my personality, that thing will begin to live, and will live ever stronger and stronger, that which my life made, the results of my thought, feelings; it is living in other people, even in animals, in dead matter. And so I feel like saying that this is what will live after me.

But all this lacks consciousness, and therefore I cannot say that it lives. But who said that it lacked consciousness? Why can I not suppose that all this will be united in a new consciousness which I can justly call my consciousness, because it is all made from my consciousness? Why cannot this other new being live among these things which live now? Why not suppose that all of us are particles of consciousness of other higher beings, such as we are going to be?

“My Father has many dwellings.”[248] Not in the sense that there are various places, but that[169] the various consciousnesses, personality, are inter-enclosed and interwoven one into the other. In fact, the whole world as I know it, with its space and time, is a product of my personality, my consciousness. As soon as there is another personality, another consciousness, then there is an entirely different world, the elements of which are formed by our personalities. Just as when I was a child, my consciousness awoke little by little (which made it so that even when a child, an embryo, I saw myself as a separate being), so it will awake and is awakening now—in the consequences of my life, in my future “self” after my death.

“The Church is the body of Christ.”[249] Yes, Christ, in his new consciousness, lives now through the life of all the living and dead and all the future members of the Church. And in the same way each one of us will live through his own church. And even the most valueless man will have his own valueless and perhaps bad church, but a church which will create his new body. But how? This is what we cannot imagine, because we cannot imagine anything which is beyond our consciousness. And there are not many dwellings, but many consciousnesses.

But here is the last, most terrible, insoluble problem: What is it for? For what is this movement, this passing over from some lower,[170] more separate consciousnesses, into a more common, higher one? For what—that is a mystery which we cannot know. It is for this that God is necessary and faith in Him. Only He knows it and one must have faith that so it ought to be.

2) And again I thought to-day, entirely unexpectedly, about the charm—exactly the charm—of awakening love, when against the background of joyous, pleasant, sweet relationships, that little star suddenly begins to shine. It is like the perfume of the linden or the falling shadow from the moon. There is no full-blown blossom yet, no clear light and shadow, but there is a joy and fear of the new, of the charming. This is good, but only when it is for the first time and the last.

3) And again I thought about that illusion which all are subjected to, especially people whose activity is reflected on others—the illusion that, having been accustomed to see the effects of your acts on others, you verify the correctness of your acts by their effect on others.

4) I thought still further: For hypnotism it is necessary to have faith in the importance of that which is being suggested (the hypnotism of all artistic delusions). And for this faith, it is necessary to have ignorance and cultivation of credulence.

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