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

To-day November 5. Y. P. Morning.

Yesterday was a terrible day.

… At night I hardly slept and was depressed. I just now found the prescriptions[142 - See Journal, Oct. 20, 1896. Thoughts 9 (#October_20_1896_Thought_9) and 10 (#October_20_1896_Thought_10).] in my diary, looked them over and began to feel better; to separate one’s true “self” from that which is offended and vexed, to remember that this is no hindrance, no accidental unpleasantness, but the very work predestined me, and above all to know that if I have a dislike for any one, then as long as there is that dislike in me – then I am the guilty one. And as soon as you know you are guilty, you feel better.

To-day, lying on the bed, I thought about love towards God … I wish I could say, the love of God, i.e., divine love – that the first and principal commandment is divine love, but that the other resembling it and flowing from it, especially flowing from it, is the love for neighbour.

Yesterday I wrote 18 pages of introduction to Art.[143 - This served as a beginning to Tolstoi’s book, What Is Art? completed by him only in 1898.]

It is wrong to say of a work of art, “You don’t yet understand it.” If I don’t understand it, that means that the work of art is poor, because its task is in making understandable that which is not understandable.

November 6. Y. P. If I live.

November 6. Y. P.

Am alive. It is the third day that I continue to write on art. It seems to me it is good. At least I am writing willingly and easily.

… Have received a good letter from Vanderveer. Wrote another letter to the commander of the battalion in the Caucasus. Chertkov sent me his copy of a similar letter.

To-day I rode horseback to Tula. A marvellous day and night. I am just now going to take a walk to meet the girls.

Have been thinking.

1) Natural sciences, when they wish to determine the very essence of things, fall into a crude materialism, i.e., ignorance. Such, besides Descartes’ whirlwinds, are atoms and ether and the origin of species. All that I can say, is that it appears to me so, just as the heavenly vault appears round to me, while I know that it is not round and that it appears to me so, only because my sight for all directions extends on only one radius.

2) The highest perfection of art is its cosmopolitanism. But on the contrary, with us at present it is becoming more and more specialised, if not according to nations, then according to classes.

3) The refinement of art and its strength are always in inverse proportion.

4) “Conservatism lies in this” … That is the way I have it noted, but further I can’t remember now.

5) Why is it pleasant to ride? Because it is the very emblem of life. Life – you ride.

I wanted to take a walk…

November 7. Y. P. If I live.

To-day November 12. Y. P.

I haven’t noted down anything during this time. I was writing the essay on Art. To-day a little on the Declaration of Faith. A weakness of thought and I am sad. One must learn to be satisfied with stupidity. If I do not love, at least not not to love. That, thank the Lord, I have attained.

November 16. Y. P. Morning.

I still work just as badly and am therefore depressed. The day after to-morrow I am going to Moscow, if God commands.[144 - The initials I. G. C. in the original.]

… In the meantime I received a strange letter from the Spaniard Zanini, with an offer of 22,000 francs for good works. I answered that I would like to use them for the Dukhobors. What is going to happen?[145 - The Spaniard, Demetrio Zanini, wrote from Barcelona to Tolstoi that the members of a certain club, who were his admirers, decided to offer him a present of a splendid inkwell, money for the purchase of which was being collected by subscription. At the request of Tolstoi, his daughter, Tatiana Lvovna, wrote to Zanini, saying that he preferred this money to be used for some good work. In answer to this, Zanini informed Tolstoi that they had already collected about 22,500 francs. Tolstoi explained in a letter to him the miserable condition of the Dukhobors and suggested using the money collected for their help.] I wrote to Kuzminsky on Witte and Dragomirov[146 - A close friend of Tolstoi, Senator Alexander Mickailovich Kuzminsky, president at this time of the St. Petersburg District Court. The finance-Minister, S. Y. Witte, wanted to communicate with Tolstoi through A. M. Kuzminsky, hoping to call forth his approval in the matter of his introducing the government sale of vodka and the founding of temperance societies. Tolstoi’s letter to A. M. Kuzminsky, in which he answered Witte’s proposal in the negative, with the omission of the harsh opinions concerning General Dragomirov (the author of the periodical, The Soldier’s Manual, which was being displayed in the barracks) was printed in the bulletin of the Tolstoi Museum Society, 1911, Nos. 3 to 5.] and the day before yesterday I wrote diligently all morning on War.[147 - This article has remained unfinished and up to the present has not been printed anywhere.] Something will come of it.

I am thinking continually about art and about the temptations or seductions which becloud the mind, and I see that art belongs to this class, but I do not know how to make it clear. This occupies me very, very much. I fall asleep and wake up with this thought, but up to now I have come to no conclusion.

The notes during this time about God and the future life are:

1) They say that God must be understood as a personality. In this lies great misunderstanding; personality is limitation. Man feels himself a personality, only because he comes in contact with other personalities. If man were only one, he would not be a personality. These two conceptions are mutually determined; the outer world, other beings, and the personality. If there were not a world of other beings, man would not feel himself, would not recognise himself as a personality; if man were not a personality he would not recognise the existence of other beings. And therefore man within this Universe is inconceivable otherwise than as a personality. But how can it be said of God, that He is a personality, that God is personal? In this lies the root of anthropomorphism.

Of God it only can be said what Moses and Mohammed said, that he is one, and one, not in that sense that there is no other or other gods (in relation to God there can be no notion of number and therefore it is even impossible to say of God that he is one (1 in the sense of a number), but in that sense that he is monocentric, that he is not a conception, but a being, that which the Greek Orthodox call a living God in opposition to a pantheistic God, i.e., a superior spiritual being living in everything. He is one in that sense that He is, like a being to whom one can address oneself, i.e., not exactly to pray, but that there is a relationship between me, something which is limited, a personality, and God – something inconceivable but existing.

The most inconceivable thing about God for us consists exactly in this, that we know Him as a one being, can know him in no other way, and at the same time it is impossible for us to understand a one being who fills up everything with himself. If God is not one, then He is scattered and He does not exist. If He is one, then we involuntarily represent him to ourselves in the shape of a personality and then He is no longer a higher being, no longer everything. But, however, in order to know God and to lean on Him one must understand Him as filling everything and at the same time as one.