The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (First Volume — 1895–1899) · 29

Aug. 15. Y. P.

I am continuing to work. Am advancing.

Lombroso was here—a limited, naïve little old man. The Maklakovs. Leo arrived with his wife.[216] Boulanger—a nice man. Wrote letters to everybody: Posha and Ivan Michailovich and Van-der-Veer. The oppressive Leontev[217] was here.

There was something I wanted to write very much, but have forgotten....

A revolting report concerning the missionary congress in Kazan.[218]

There is noted: “Woman’s character”—and I remember that it was something very good. Now I have forgotten. It seems to me that it was that the peculiarity of woman’s character is that her feeling alone guides her life, and that reason only serves her feeling. She cannot even understand that feeling can be made subservient to reason.

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2) But there are not so many women—as there are such men—who do not hear, do not see, the unpleasant, do not see it just as if it didn’t exist.

3) When people haven’t the power to get rid of superstition and they continue to pay tribute to it, and at the same time when they see that others have freed themselves, they grow angry at those who have freed themselves. “But I suffer when I commit stupidities and he is free.”

4) Art, i.e., artists, instead of serving people, exploit them.

5) From the time I became old, I began to confuse people,... belonging or being marked in my mind as one type. So that I do not know N, N N, but I know a collective personality to which N, N N, belong.

6) We are so accustomed to the thought that everything is for us, that the earth is mine, that when we have to die, we are surprised that my earth, something belonging to me, will remain and I won’t. Here the principal mistake is in thinking the earth as something acquired and complementary to me, when it is I who am acquired by the earth, an appendage to it.

7) How good it would be if we could live with the same concentration, do the work of life—principally; communion among people—with[148] that concentration with which we play chess, read music, etc.

Aug. 16. Y. P. If I live.

To-day Sept. 19. Y. P.

More than a month I have made no entries. Things are the same and the work has been advancing all the time. And it could advance still more as to form, but there is absolutely no time. Such an amount of work! A typist is making the final copy on a Remington. I have reached the 19th chapter, inclusive.

During this time the important thing was the expulsion of Boulanger.[219]

My work has been interrupted occasionally only by a letter to the Swedish papers about the Dukhobors[220] on the occasion of the Nobel prize.

Also ill health interrupted: a terrible boil on the cheek. I thought it was a cancer, and I am happy that it was not very unpleasant to think that: I am receiving a new appointment; one which in any case, isn’t slipping past me.

St. John was here.[221]

My work was interrupted also by the arrival of the Molokans from Samara—in reference to their children which were taken away.[222] I wanted to write abroad and even wrote a very violent, and what seemed to me, strong letter, but[149] changed my mind. It was not to be done before God. I have to try again.

To-day I wrote letters: to the Emperor,[223] to Olsuphiev,[224] to Heath,[225] and to E. I. Chertkov,[226] and saw the Molokans off.

I wanted to write from my notebooks, but it is late. I am going to bed.

Sept. 20. Yasn. P. If I live.

Sept. 20. Y. P.

Let me write even a few words. The boil still bothers me very much. I have no full liberté d’esprit. I wrote the Swedish letter to-day, and in the evening translated it into Swedish[227] with the Swede.

I am not writing from the notebook, but I will note that which entered my head with special vividness.

Our life is so arranged that all our care for ourselves, the use of our reason (our spiritual forces) for the care of ourselves, brings only unhappiness. And yet this egotism is necessary in order to live a separate life. That is His mysterious will. As soon as you live for yourself, you perish; when you live beyond yourself, there is peace and joy both for yourself and for others.

Sept. 20. Y. P. If I live.

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