The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (First Volume — 1895–1899) · 53

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.[272] 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[273] 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.

[274]

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.[383]

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”[275]... 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.