Began to reread Resurrection and reached up to his decision to marry and threw it away with disgust. It is all untrue, invented, weak. It is hard to repair a spoiled thing. In order to repair it, there is necessary: 1) alternately to describe his feeling and life, and hers,¹⁶⁷ and 2) sympathetically and seriously hers, and critically and with a smile, his. I shall hardly finish it. It is all very spoilt.

Yesterday I read Arkhangelsky’s¹⁶⁸ article “Whom to Serve” and was very delighted.

Have finished the notebook. And here I am writing from it:

1) My article on … must be written for the people …

2) (For The Notes of a Madman or for The Drama). Despair because of madness and wretchedness of life. Salvation from this despair in the recognition of God and one’s filiality to Him. The recognition of filiality is the recognition of brotherhood. The recognition of the brotherhood of man and the cruel, brutal, unbrotherly arrangement of life which is justified by people – leads inevitably to a recognition of one’s own insanity or that of the whole world.

3) I read Nakashidze’s¹⁶⁹ letter about the Congress of the Dukhobors, where they discussed social questions. Here is an instance of the possibility of administration without violence. One condition is necessary – no, two conditions: the respect of the youth and of the spiritually weak in general, to the resolutions of the elected elders, the spiritually stronger – the “little old men” as the Dukhobors call them; and the second condition that these “little old men” be rational and loving. At this Congress the question of uniting property (in common), was discussed and the “little old men” were in favour of it, but constantly repeated: “Only let there be no violence, let things be done voluntarily.”

Among the people and the Dukhobors this respect and recognition of the necessity of fulfilling the resolutions of the old men exist. And all this without forms; the election of the elders and the methods of agreement.

4) No matter how you grind a crystal, how you dissolve it, compress it, it will mould itself again at the first opportunity into the same form. And so the structure of society will be always the same, no matter to what changes you submit it. The form of a crystal will only then be changed when chemical changes occur in it, inner ones; the same with society.

5) It would be good to write a preface to Spier¹⁷⁰ containing the following:

The world is such as we see it, only if there do not exist any other beings differently built from us and endowed with other senses than ours. If we see not only the possibility, but the necessity, of the existence of other beings endowed with other senses than ours, then the world is in no case, merely such as we see it. Our imagination of the world shows only our attitude to the world, just as the visual picture which we form for ourselves from what we see as far as the horizon and the sky represents in no way the actual outlines of the objects seen. The other senses, hearing, smell, principally – touch, in verifying our visual impressions give us a more definite conception of the seen objects; but that which we know as broad, thick, hard or soft or how the things seen by us sound or smell, do not prove that we know these things fully and that if a new sense (above the five) were given us, it would not disclose to us that our conception of things formed by our five senses was not just as deceptive as that conception of the flatness of objects and their diminishing in perspective which sight only gives us.

I see a man in the mirror, hear his voice and am fully convinced that he is a real man; but I approach, I want to grasp his hand and I touch the glass of the mirror and see my delusion. The same thing must come to pass in a dying man; a new feeling is born which discloses to him (through his new feeling and the new knowledge it gives him) the delusion of recognising his body as himself, and of all that he recognised as existing through the means of the senses of this body.

So that the world is certainly not such as we know it to be: let there be other instruments of knowledge – and there will be another world.

But no matter how that which we consider as the world, our attitude to the world, should change – one thing is unalterably such as we know it and is always unchanging, it is that which knows. And it knows not only in me, but in everything which knows. This thing which knows is the same everywhere and in everything and in itself. It is God, and it is that for some reason limited particle of God which composes our actual “self.”

But what then, is this God, i. e., something eternal, infinite, omnipotent, which has become mortal, finite, weak? Why did God divide himself within himself? I do not know, but I know that this is so, and that in this is life. All that we know is nothing else than just such divisions of God. All that we know as the world is the knowledge of these divisions. Our knowledge of the world (that which we call matter in space and time) is the contact of the limits of our divinity with its other divisions. Birth and death are the transitions from one division into another.

6) The difference between Christian happiness and pagan is this, that the pagan seeks happiness, prepares it for himself, awaits it, demands it – the Christian seeks, prepares, awaits and demands the kingdom of God and accepts happiness when it comes as something unexpected, undeserved, unprepared. And it is no less.

Jan. 18. Moscow.

Dismal, horrid. Everything repels me in the life they lead around me. Now I free myself from sadness and suffering, then again I fall into it. In nothing is it so apparent, as in this, how far I am from what I want to be. If my life were really entirely in the service of God, there would be nothing which could disturb it.

I am still writing on art. It is bad. A Dukhobor was here.

Feb. 4. Nicholskoe with the Olsuphievs.

I am already here the 4th day and am inexpressibly sad. I am writing badly on art. I just now prayed and became horrified at how low I have fallen. I think, I ask myself, what am I to do; I doubt, I hesitate, as if I did not know or had forgotten who I was and therefore what I was to do. To remember that I am not master, but servant and to do that to which I have been put. With what labour have I struggled and attained this knowledge, how undoubted is this knowledge and how I can forget it nevertheless – not exactly forget it, but live without applying it.

… Well, enough about this.

I am going to write out what I thought during this time:

1) When all is said and done, it is those people over whom violence is used who always rule, i.e., those who fulfil the law of non-resistance. So women seek rights, but it is they who rule, just because they are the ones subjected to force – they were and they still are. Institutions are in the power of men, but public opinion is in the power of women. And public opinion is a million times stronger than any laws and armies. The proof that public opinion is in the hands of women is that not only the construction of homes, food, are determined by women, and not only do the women spend the wealth, consequently control the labour of men, but the success of works of art, of books, even the appointment of rulers, are determined by public opinion; and public opinion is determined by women. Some one well said that men must seek emancipation from women, and not the contrary.

2) (For The Appeal).¹⁷¹ Unmask the deceivers, spread the truth and do not fear. If it were a matter of spreading deception and murder, then of course, it would be terrible, but here you would be spreading the freedom from deception and murder. Besides, there is no ground for fear. Of whom? They … are themselves afraid.

I remember there worked for us in our village a weak and phlegmatic 12 year-old boy who once caught on the road and brought back, an enormous healthy peasant, a thief, who had taken a coat from the hall.

3) The poets, the verse-makers torture their tongues in order to be able to say every possible kind of thought in every possible variety of word and to be able to form from all these words something which resembles a thought. Such exercise can only be indulged in by unserious people. And so it is.

4) If we never moved, then everything which we saw would appear to us flat and not in perspective. Motion gives us a conception of things in three dimensions of space. The same thing is true concerning the material side of things: if we weren’t living, were not moving in life, we would see only the material side of things; but moving in life, moving our spiritual side across the material side of the world, we recognise the falseness of the idea that the material is actually such as it appears to us.

5) Twenty times I have repeated it, and 20 times the thought comes to me as new, that release from all excitement, fear, suffering, from physical and especially from spiritual, lies in destroying in one’s self the illusion of the union of one’s spiritual “self” with one’s physical. And this is always possible. When the illusion is destroyed then the spiritual “self” can suffer only from the fact that it is joined to the physical, but not from hunger, pain, sorrow, jealousy, shame, etc. In the first case, as long as it is joined it does that which the physical “self” wants: it gets angry, condemns, scolds, strikes; in the second case, when it is separated from the physical, it does only that which can free it from the torturing union. And only the manifestations of love frees it.

6) For the article on Art. When it is beauty that is recognised as the aim of art, then everything will be art which for certain people will appear as beauty, i.e., everything which will please certain people.

7) I have noted, “the harm of art, especially music” and I wanted to write that I had forgotten, but while I was writing, I remembered. The harm of art is principally this, that it takes up time, hiding from people their idleness. I know that it is harmful when it encourages idleness both for the producers and those who enjoy it, but I cannot see a clear definition of when it is permissible, useful, good. I should like to say only then when it is a rest from labour, like sleep, but I do not yet know if that is so.

8) (For The Appeal). You are mistaken, you poor, if you think that you can shame or touch or convince the rich man to divide with you. He cannot do that because he sees that you want the same thing that he wants and that you are fighting him with the same means with which he fights you. You will not only convince him, but you will compel him to yield to you only by ceasing to seek that which he seeks, ceasing to struggle with him, but if you cease to struggle you will cease also … (very important).

9) If the end of art is not the good, but pleasure, then the distribution of art will be different. If its end is the good, then it will inevitably be spread among the greatest number of people; if its end is pleasure, then it will be confined to a small number (not exact and still unclear).

10) Art is – I was going to write food, but it is better to say – sleep, necessary for the sustenance of the spiritual life. Sleep is useful, necessary after labour. But artificial sleep is harmful, does not refresh, does not stimulate, but weakens.

11) I heard counterpoint singing and …¹⁷² This is the destruction of music, a means of perverting it. There is no sense to it, no melody, and any first senseless sequence of sounds are taken and from the combination of these insignificant sequences is formed some kind of a tedious resemblance to music. The best is when the last chord is finished.

12) The most severe and consequential agnostic, whether he wants it or does not want it, recognises God. He cannot but recognise that in the first place, in the existence both of himself and of the whole world, there is some meaning inaccessible to him; and in the second, there is a law of his life, a law to which he can submit or from which he can escape. And it is this recognition of the highest meaning of life, inaccessible to man but inevitably existing, and of the law of one’s life, which is God and His will. And this recognition of God is immensely stronger than the recognition of … etc. To believe like this means to dig to bedrock, to the mainland, and to build the house on that.

13) Stepa¹⁷³ related the physiologic process which takes place in the infant when it separates from its mother. Truly it is a miracle.

This thought occupied me in relation to the doctrine that everything material is illusion. How can illusion take place there where I do not see it? As you see it, so it takes place. You see everything through your glasses. That is well enough as regards all other phenomena, but here the most fundamental thing is taking place, that from which the whole of my life and of everything living is composed: the detachment from the world. And here right in front of my eyes this detachment is taking place; there was one and there became two, like among the first cells, (unclear.)

14) Every living being carries within himself all the possibilities of its ancestors. Having been detached, he manifests several of them, but carries in himself the remaining ones and acquires new ones. In this lies the process of life; to unite and to separate. (Still more unclear.)

I have decided no matter what happens, to write every day. Nothing strengthens one so much for the good. It is the best prayer.

Evening, February 4. Nicholskoe.

In the morning I wrote this diary and later tried to write, but could do nothing; had no desire. Undoubtedly if there be strength and capacity to write, then one ought to serve God.

It is just as gloomy. I do not pray enough, hourly.

February 5, Nicholskoe. If I live.

February 5, Nicholskoe.

Still the same intellectual, creative, weakness. But I think it is almost hopeless. There was a search at Chertkov’s. S. arrived.

I thought: I, a worker, am I doing the work commanded? In this is everything. Lord, help me.

Feb. 6. Nicholskoe.

In the morning Gorbunov arrived; in the evening a telegram that the Chertkovs are leaving on Thursday.¹⁷⁴ I prepared to go with Sonya.¹⁷⁵ Am just going. Health better.

Feb. 7. Petersburg.

Went to Chertkov. It is joyous there. Then to Yaroshenko.¹⁷⁶

… I pray that I do not abandon here or anywhere the consciousness of my mission, to be fulfilled by kindness.

Feb. 8. Petersburg. If I live.

I was alive, but made no entries the two days. To-day, Feb. 10.

It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, silence. I was at Stasov’s and Tolstoi’s.¹⁷⁷ Did nothing bad, but nothing good either. Rather some good. Lord keep me from a spell, but I am better. Have thought nothing.

Again at the Olsuphievs in Nicholskoe, Feb. 16.

I returned on the morning of the day before yesterday, and fell ill. Yesterday I was better, wrote on art. Good.

… Women do not consider the demands of reason binding upon themselves and cannot progress according to them. They haven’t got this sail spread. They row without a rudder.¹⁷⁸

I am again feeling unwell and very sweetly sad. Wrote a letter to the Chertkovs and to Posha. Am not working.

Feb. 17. Nicholskoe.

I do not feel well. I tried to write on art…

… Received letters; an adaptation of On Life from the American.¹⁷⁹ Wrote two letters to Sonya yesterday and sent them to-day.¹⁸⁰

Having been thinking even before Petersburg:

1) (For The Appeal): To describe the condition of the factory workers, the servants, soldiers, agricultural labourers in comparison with the rich, and show that it all comes from…

2) In the Middle Ages, in the XIth Century, poetry was general – the people and the masters, les courtois et les vilains; then they separated and les vilains began to mimic the masters’ and the masters the people’s. A union ought to take place again.

3) A hundred times I have said it to myself and have written it down: the real and only salvation from all sorrow is the knowledge of one’s mission, the anxiety whether you have done that for which you were sent.

4) Nearly every husband and wife reproach each other for things for which they do not consider themselves guilty. But on the one side there is no ceasing to accuse, nor on the other to vindicate.

5) They do not run after a poet or a painter so much, as after an actor, and especially after a musician. Music calls forth a direct physical effect, sometimes acute, sometimes chronic.

6) We absolutely falsely ascribe intelligence and goodness to talent, and the same to beauty. In this lies great self-delusion.

7) It came into my head with remarkable clearness that in order to always feel good, it is necessary always to think of others, especially when you speak with some one.

8) The movement of life, the broadening of a separate being gives time. If there would be no movement, no enlarging of love, then there would be no time; as to space, it is the representation of other beings. If there were no other beings, there would be no space. (All nonsense, unthought).

9) Women are deprived of a moral sense for a motor. They haven’t got this sail spread and therefore it does not carry.

Feb. 18, Nicholskoe. If I live.

Feb. 18. Nicholskoe.

Forty-five years ago I was in battle.¹⁸¹

I feel a great sinking in energy. I am very weak, cannot work. But is it not possible to live unceasingly before God, doing His work in proportion to His strength. I shall try. Help me, Lord. I shall take up the letters. Here demands are made, and it is possible to fulfil His work.

Evening. Indisposed. Apathy, weakness. Am not taking up the essay,¹⁸² wrote letters. Just now a letter from Biriukov. I answered it.

February 19. Nicholskoe.

I am just as apathetic, but am not worried. Wrote letters. Wrote to every one. I am going to bed, it is past twelve.

To-day, Feb. 20, Nicholskoe. Seven o’clock in the evening.

I still feel just as badly; constipation and heart-burn. I fell asleep in the morning. Then, not trying to work, I took a walk. Extreme weakness. My soul is calm, only it is a bore that I am unable to work. The house is full of people.

… Yesterday I wrote many letters.

I walked and thought:

There is no greater cause for error and confusion of ideas, the most unexpected ones, and inexplicable in any other way, than the recognition of authorities, i.e., the infallible truthfulness or beauty of certain persons, of books or of works of art. M. Arnold¹⁸³ was a thousand times right when he said that the business of criticism lies in detaching the good from the bad, from all that has been written and done, and mainly the bad from that which is recognised as splendid, and the good from that which is recognised as bad, or is not recognised at all. The most striking instance of this error and its terrible consequences, holding back for ages the forward movement of Christian mankind, is the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the Gospels. How many of the most unexpected and remarkable absurdities, sometimes necessary for its own justification, sometimes not necessary for anything, are said and written in the text of the Holy Scriptures… The same thing happens in the Greek Tragedies, in Vergil, Shakespeare, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Raphael and in the new authorities.

Perhaps I omitted the 21st. To-day, perhaps the 22nd. February, Saturday. Nicholskoe.

Yesterday I did not work. I read through the first draft on art – pretty good. I went for Yushkova’s¹⁸⁴ dress. It was a nice trip. In the evening they spoke about Art and then I heard the brothers Konius¹⁸⁵ who arrived…

To-day I am a little better in my health, I went on skiis and felt weak at heart and uneasy when I went far. It is evening now. I feel like writing letters.

I thought for The Appeal when I looked at the numberless sons of N. in their overcoats: He is bringing them up, “making” men of the world of them. What for?

You will say: you live as you do for the sake of the children. What for? Why bring up another generation of the same cheated slaves, not knowing why they live, and living such a joyless life?

Feb. 23. Nicholskoe. If I live.

February 23, Nicholskoe.

To-day I wrote willingly and eagerly all morning and it seems to me I advanced on the essay on art. Then I took a walk before dinner. There is still a pile of people. No serious talk. Yesterday there was music… To-day an amateur theatrical. Tania and Michail Adamovich played very well.¹⁸⁶ It is now evening. The day has passed almost without heart-burn.

February 24. Nicholskoe.

To-day I arose apathetic and fell asleep again right after luncheon. After one, I went to meet the riders. Came home, dined. Am struggling successfully with heart-burn. Went for a walk in the evening.

Read and am reading Aristotle (Bénard) on æsthetics. Very important.

Thought during these days:

1) Thought; why is it impossible to even speak to some people … about truth and good – so far are they away from it. This is so, because they are surrounded by such a thick layer of temptations that they have become impenetrable. They are unable to struggle with sin, because they do not see the sin for the temptations. In this lies the principal danger and all the horror of temptations.

2) They say to me when I condemn religious propaganda: You also are preaching. No, I do not preach – mainly because I have nothing to preach. Even to atheists I am not going to preach God (if I preached, I erred). I only draw conclusions from what people accept, pointing out the contradictions which are enclosed in what they accept, and which they do not notice.

3) … a general, respectable, clean, correct, with thick eye-brows and important mien (and uncommonly good-natured, but deprived of every moral motive sense) gave me the striking thought, as to how and by what means those most indifferent to social life, to the good of society – as to how just those people rise involuntarily to the position of rulers of people. I see how he will manage institutions upon which a million lives depend, and just because he likes cleanliness, elegance, refined food, dancing, hunting, billiards and every possible kind of amusement, and not having the means to keep himself in those regiments, or institutions, or societies where all this exist, is advanced little by little as a good and harmless man and made a ruler of people. All are like N. and their name is legion.

4) I am reading Aristotle. He says in Politics (Book VII, Chapter VIII): “Dans cette république parfaite, où la vertu des citoyens sera réele, ils s’abstiendront de toute profession méchanique, de toute spéculation mercantile, travaux dégradés (dégradants?)¹⁸⁷ et contraires à la vertu. Ils ne se livreront pas davantage á l’agriculture. Il faut du loisir pour acquérir la vertu” …¹⁸⁸

All his æsthetics has for its end ( )¹⁸⁹ virtue. And we with the Christian understanding of the brotherhood of man want to be guided by the ethical and æsthetical conception of the ancients!!

Feb. 25. Nicholskoe. If I live.

February 25. Nicholskoe.

I am alive. I have written a little – not as easily as yesterday. The guests have departed. Went for a walk twice. Am reading Aristotle. To-day I received letters …

Yesterday, while walking, I prayed and experienced a remarkable sensation which is perhaps similar to that which the mystics excite in themselves by spiritual works; I felt myself to be a spiritual, free being bound by the illusion of the body.

Feb. 26. Nicholskoe. If I live.

Feb. 26, Nicholskoe.

I am alive. I am writing, so as to keep my resolution. To-day I wrote letters all morning, but I had no energy for work.

Went to Mme. Shorin.¹⁹⁰ I had a good talk with her. Perhaps even to some purpose. Just as Anna Michailovna¹⁹¹ said to-day, that I helped her. And thanks be.

I copied the letter to Posha.

Feb. 27. Nicholskoe.

Wrote this morning poorly, but cleared up something or other. Am well. Took a walk. Spoke with Tania. And that is all.

Yesterday was Feb. 28. Nicholskoe.

I have written nothing. In the morning I worked badly. Received a letter from Chertkov and Ivan Michailovich and wrote to both. Walked and went to Safonovo.¹⁹²

This morning I thought of something which seemed to me important, namely:

1) I wiped away the dust in my room and walking around, came to the divan and could not remember whether I had dusted it or not. Just because these movements are customary and unconscious I could not remember them and I felt that it was impossible to. So that if I dusted and forgot it, i.e., if I did an act unconsciously; then it is just the same as if it never existed. If some one conscious saw it, then perhaps it could be restored. But if no one saw it, or saw it unconsciously; if the whole complex life of many people pass along unconsciously, then that life is as if it had never existed. So that life – life only exists then, when it is lit by consciousness.

What, then, is this consciousness? What are the acts which are lit by consciousness? The acts which are lit by consciousness are those acts which we fulfil freely, i.e., fulfilling them we know that we might have acted otherwise. Therefore, consciousness is freedom. Without consciousness there is no freedom and without freedom there can be no consciousness (if we are subjected to violence and we have no choice as to how we should bear that violence, we do not feel the violence).

Memory is nothing else than the consciousness of the past, of the past freedom. If I were unable to dust or not to dust, I would not be conscious of dusting, if I were not conscious of dusting, I would not have the choice of dusting or not dusting. If I did not have consciousness and freedom, I would not remember the past, I would not unite it into one. Therefore the very basis of life is freedom and consciousness – a freedom-consciousness.

(It seemed to me clearer when I was thinking.)

March 1, Nicholskoe.

… To-day I could not write anything in the morning at all – fell asleep. I took a walk both in the morning and in the evening. It was very pleasant.

I thought two things:

1) That death seems to me now just as a change: a discharge from a former post and an appointment to a new one. It seems that I am all worn out for the former post and I am no longer fit.

2) I thought about N as a good character for a drama; good-natured, clean, spoilt, loving pleasure but good, and incapable of conceiving a radical moral requirement.

I also thought:

3) There is only one means for steadfastness and peace: love, love towards enemies.

Yes, here this problem was presented to me from a special, unexpected angle and how badly I was able to solve it. I must try harder. Help me, Father.

March 2, Nicholskoe. If I live.

March 2, Nicholskoe.

I am alive. Entirely well. To-day I wrote pretty well. In the evening after dinner I went to Shelkovo. It was a very pleasant walk in the moonlight.

Wrote a letter to Posha. Received a letter from Tregubov. He is irritated because they intercept the letters. But I am not vexed. I have understood that one has to pity them, and I pity truly. To-morrow we go. We have been here a whole month.

Yesterday was March 3rd. Moscow.

In the morning I did almost nothing. I stumbled up against the historic course of art. I took a walk. After dinner I left. I arrived at 10.

March 4, Moscow.

Got up late. Handled my papers, wrote letters to Posha, Nakashidze. Went to the public library, took books. In the evening Dunaev and Boulanger were here. It is now late. I am going to bed. S. is at a concert.

March 5. Moscow. If I live.

Heavens, how many days I have skipped: To-day, March 9. Moscow.

Out of the four days, I wrote two days on art and to-day pretty much. I wanted to write Hadji Murad very much and thought out something pretty well – touching. A letter from Posha. Wrote to Chertkov and Koni about the terrible thing that happened to Miss Vietrov.¹⁹³ I am not going to write out what I have noted.

I am still in the same peaceful, because loving, mood. As soon as I feel like being hurt or wearied I remember God and that my work is only one, to love, not to think of that which will be – and I feel better right away.

Tania is going to Yasnaya.

To-day, March 15, Moscow.

Lived not badly. I see the end of the essay on art. Still the same peace. I thank God. I have just now written letters. It is evening. I am going into the tedious drawing-room.

To-day, April 4, Moscow.

Almost a month I have not written (20 days), and I have lived the time badly, because I worked little. Wrote all the time on art, became confused these last days. And now for two days I haven’t written.

I have not lost my peace, but my soul is troubled, still I am master of it. Oh, Lord! If only I could remember my mission, that through oneself must be manifested (shine) divinity. But the difficulty is, that if you remember that alone you will not live; and you must live, live energetically, and yet remember. Help me, Father.

I have prayed much lately that my life be better. But as it is, the consciousness of the lawlessness of my life is shameful and depressing.

Yesterday I thought very well about Hadji Murad – that in it the principal thing was to express a deception of trust. How good it would have been, were it not for this deception. Also I am thinking more and more often of The Appeal.

I am afraid that the theme of art has occupied me lately for personal, selfish and bad reasons. Je m’entends.

During this time I made few notes and if I had been thinking about anything I have forgotten it.

1) The world which we know and represent for ourselves, is nothing else than laws of co-relation between our senses (sens), and therefore, a miracle is a violation of these laws of co-relation, it therefore destroys our conception of the world. In the crudest form, it is thus: I know that water (not frozen) is always liquid. And its specific gravity is less than that of my body. My eyes, hearing, touch, demonstrate to me liquid water; and suddenly a man walks on this water. If he walked on the water, then it proves nothing, but only destroys my conception of water.

167. Katiusha Maslov and Nekhliudov, the principal characters of the novel.

168. Alexander Ivanovich Arkhangelsky (1857–1906), an adherent of Tolstoi’s views, about whom after his death in the letter of October 26, 1906, Tolstoi wrote: “This was one of the best men I ever happened to know in my life.” A. I. Arkhangelsky was a veterinary surgeon in the district of Bronnitsk, Province of Moscow. Later, becoming acquainted with the works of Tolstoi, he left his position, considering it impossible to apply against the peasants the compulsory measures required of him as veterinary surgeon, and became a watch-maker, by which he supported himself until his death. His work, Whom to Serve? is devoted to explaining the question of the incompatibility … with the service to God. When he read this work in manuscript in 1895, Tolstoi wrote Arkhangelsky that “it will do the people much good and will advance the word of God.” This work was issued only in 1911 in the Russian language by the publishing house, “Vozrozhdenie,” in Bourgas (Bulgaria). The same publishing house issued a biography of A. I. Arkhangelsky compiled by Kh. N. Abrikosov. Extracts from Whom to Serve signed by the pseudonym, “Buka,” were printed by Tolstoi in The Reading Circle. It should be also mentioned that the publication of the Veterinary Manual compiled by Arkhangelsky was suspended at one time by the censor, who demanded that it include the compulsory regulations. Protesting against this, Arkhangelsky wrote a remarkable letter to I. I. Gorbunov which Tolstoi included in his Archives of L. N. Tolstoi, No. 5. This letter formed the basis of the article, “Whom To Serve.” Later the veterinary manual was issued by Posrednik.

169. Prince Ilya Petrovich Nakashidze, a Georgian writer, a close adherent of Tolstoi’s ideas.

170. Tolstoi had the intention of writing (but did not write) an introduction to the Russian translation of the Philosophical Work of A. A. Spier, which was to have appeared in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology.

171. Tolstoi was considering at this time an appeal against the existing social-political order.

172. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

173. Stepan Andreevich Behrs, Tolstoi’s brother-in-law, author of Recollections About Count L. N. Tolstoi (Smolensk, 1894), now dead.

174. V. G. Chertkov and P. I. Biriukov, and later also I. M. Tregubov, were exiled after a search of their homes: V. G. Chertkov abroad – P. I. Biriukov to Bausk in Courland, and I. M. Tregubov to Goldingen, also in Courland. The cause of exiling was the writing of an appeal to help the persecuted Dukhobors (see ) and their activity in behalf of the Dukhobors and the persecuted sects in general. See the memoirs of P. I. Biriukov, “The Story of My Exile,” printed in the publication O Minuvshen (Petrograd, 1909). These memoirs contain several letters by Tolstoi to Biriukov.

175. Tolstoi went to take leave of the Chertkovs who were then living in Petrograd.

176. Nicholai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko (1846–1898), a well-known artist, to whose brush belongs also the portrait of Tolstoi, painted in 1895.

177. Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoi (1817–1904), a second cousin of Tolstoi, lady-in-waiting to the Empress. Tolstoi in his youth was on friendly terms with her. His correspondence with the Countess A. A. Tolstoi, with the addition of a memoir by her, was published by the Tolstoi Museum Society, Petrograd, 1911. In reference to this meeting with her, mentioned by Tolstoi in the Journal, see the memoirs (pages 71, 72 of the above mentioned publication). About this same meeting and about the visit to Petrograd in general, Tolstoi wrote to V. G. Chertkov the following (February 15, 1897): “St. Petersburg gave me a most joyous impression. Of course the principal thing was the meeting at your house. The depressing impression was my conversation with A. A. Tolstoi. The terrible thing was not only the coldness, but the cruelty and the forcing oneself into one’s soul and the violence, the very same which had estranged us. What a bad belief it is, which makes good people so cruel and therefore so insensible to the spiritual condition of others. Believe word for word as I do, otherwise if you are not exactly my enemy, still you are a stranger.” It should be noted that from the autumn of 1895, for the course of several years, Tolstoi did not write at all to the Countess A. A. Tolstoi.

178. In considering Tolstoi’s opinions concerning women found in the Journal, one should be particularly careful to avoid misunderstanding. First, Tolstoi, wishing from natural delicacy to make his remarks impersonal, often generalised his private impressions and observations from intercourse with separate individuals, and therefore these remarks in reality carried no reflection whatever against all women in general. Second, even in those instances where Tolstoi consciously expressed himself adversely about women in general, he had in mind the most commonplace modern woman with her adverse qualities. But in his mind he absolutely discriminated in favour of the intelligent, religious woman whom seldom he happened to meet in life and who always attracted his attention. So, for instance, he valued very highly the distant relative who brought him up, T. A. Ergolsky, for her self-sacrificing life; Mmes. M. A. Schmidt and L. F. Annenkov he respected for their true religious lives, and among the women writers he especially valued an American, Lucy Mallory, for her exceptional writings, from which he selected many thoughts for The Reading Circle. For women of this type he always had the greatest respect, recognising fully their merits and their great significance to humanity. In his literary works, Tolstoi, as is known, frequently reproduced the highest type of woman (for instance, Pashenka in Father Sergius, or the old woman, Maria Semenovna in The Forged Coupon). Also in his other writings, Tolstoi did not always express himself adversely about women, as can be seen, for instance, from the following extracts: “Oh, how I would like to show to woman the whole significance of chaste women. The chaste woman (not in vain is the legend of Mary) will save the world.” (Journal, .) “One of the most necessary tasks of humanity consists in the bringing up of chaste women.” (Journal, .) “The virtues of men and women are the same; temperance, truthfulness, kindness; but in the woman, these same virtues attain a special charm.” (The Reading Circle, June 2.) “Men cannot do that highest, best work, which brings men more than anything else nearer to God – the work of love, the work of complete self-surrender to him whom you love, which good women have done so well and so naturally, are doing, and will do. What would happen to the world, what would happen to us men, if women had not that quality and if they did not exercise it … Without mothers, helpers, friends, comforters, who love in a man all that is best in him, and who with a suggestion hardly to be noticed, call forth and support all the best in him – without such women it would be bad to live in this world. Christ would not have had Mary and Magdalene; Francis of Assisi would not have had Clara; the Decembrists would not have had their wives with them in exile; the Dukhobors would not have had their wives who did not hold their husbands back, but supported them in their martyrdom for truth, there would not have been those thousands and thousands of unknown women, the very best, as everything that is unknown, the comforters of the drunken, the weak, the debauched, those for whom the consolations of love are more necessary than for any one else. In this love, whether it is directed to Kukin or to Christ, is the principal, great and irreplaceable strength of women.” (Appendix to Chekhov’s story, Dushechka.)

179. On Life– a religious-philosophic work by Tolstoi, written by him in 1887 and printed in all his collected works. An abbreviation of this work and an exposition of it written in simple language for plain readers was made by an American, Bolton Hall, and was approved by Tolstoi and printed under the title, Life, Love and Death. Later a translation of this under the title, True Life, appeared in an issue of the Ethical Artistic Library, Moscow, 1899. See article of Bolton Hall in the International Tolstoi Almanac compiled by P. A. Sergienko (Kniga, 1909).

180. See Letters of L. N. Tolstoi to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, pages 518 to 519.

181. Tolstoi made a mistake of one year: the battle against the Caucasian mountaineers in which he took part in the capacity of an artillerist, took place February 18, 1853. (See P. Biriukov’s Biography of Tolstoi, Volume I, page 226.) Nine years after the above mentioned note, February 18, 1903, Tolstoi wrote to Rusanov: “To-day it is fifty-three years since hostile enemy shells struck the wheel of that cannon which I directed. If the muzzle of the gun from which the shell emerged had deviated 1-10,000ths of an inch to one side or another, I would have been killed and I would no longer have lived. What nonsense. I would have existed in a form now inconceivable to me.”

182. What Is Art?

183. Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), a well-known English poet, critic and student of literature. Shortly before his death, Arnold printed an article in The Fortnightly Review, devoted to the critical analysis of Anna Karenin and some of the religious philosophic writings of Tolstoi. (See Novoe Vremia, December 11, 1887, the article, “An English Critic on Leo Tolstoi.”) The thought quoted by Tolstoi was expressed by Arnold in his article, “The Problems of Modern Criticisms” (a Russian translation was issued by Posrednik). Tolstoi valued the writings of Arnold highly, especially his book, Literature and Dogma, of which a Russian translation was published by Posrednik under the title, Wherein Lies the Essence of Christianity and Judaism (Moscow, 1907).

184. Tolstoi, for the sake of an airing, rode about ten versts to a dressmaker, for the dress of Nadezhda Mikhailovna Yushkova.

185. Jules and Leo Edwardovich Konius, the violinist and the pianist.

186. Countess T. L. Tolstoi and Count Mikhail Adamovich Olsuphiev performed two small plays, Feminine Nonsense by I. L. Stcheglov and The Lady Agreeable In All Respects.

187. According to the copy in possession of the editors.

188. Evidently a mistake in the copy in possession of the editors. This extract refers not to Book VII, but to Book VI of Politics. The quotation cited by Tolstoi reads in the Russian translation of Prof. S. A. Zhebelev in this way: “In a state enjoying the best organisation, and uniting in itself men absolutely just, and not relatively just (in relation to this or that political system), the citizens should not lead a life such as is led by craftsmen or merchants (such a life is ignoble and is contrary to virtue); the citizens of the state planned by us should likewise not be agricultural workers, because they will be in need of leisure for the development of their virtue.” Aristotle’s Politics: Works of the Petrograd Philosophic Society, Petrograd, 1911, pages 318, 319.

189. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

190. The editor knows nothing about the acquaintanceship of Tolstoi with Madame Shorin.

191. Countess A. M. Olsuphiev, who had been on friendly terms with Tolstoi. In a note to V. G. Chertkov, written on a piece of proof of Resurrection, June 8, 1899, Tolstoi communicated: “I have a sorrow. Anna Mikhailovna Olsuphiev died.”

192. A village near Nicholskoe, as well as the village Shelkovo, mentioned .

193. A young lively girl, whom Tolstoi met at the Chertkovs’ when they lived in the summer of 1896 near Yasnaya Polyana. Being arrested on suspicion of revolutionary activity and imprisoned in the fortress of Peter and Paul, she committed suicide by setting herself on fire. In the letter to V. G. Chertkov, Tolstoi wrote: “In Petersburg on February 12th the following occurred: Vietrova, Maria Fedosievna, whom you know and whom I knew, a student confined in the House of Detention before Trial in the strike case, little connected with it, was transferred to the fortress of Peter and Paul. There, as they say and surmise, after inquiry and violation (that is still unestablished) she poured kerosene on herself, set fire to it and on the third day died. Her comrades who visited her, kept on bringing her things, which were accepted, and only after two weeks, were they told that she had burnt herself. The youth, all the students, up to three thousand persons (there were some also from the Theological Seminary) gathered in the Kazan Cathedral for the service of the dead. They were not permitted, but they themselves began to sing “Eternal Memory” and with wreaths, intended to march on the Nevsky Prospect, but were not permitted, and they went along Kazan Street. Their names were taken and they were let free. Every one is indignant. I receive letters and people come and tell me about it. I feel great pity for all who take part in these affairs, and I have a greater and greater desire to explain to people how they ruin themselves simply because they neglect that law (or they do not know it) which was given by Christ and which frees from such deeds and from the participation in them.” Tolstoi approached A. F. Koni for advice, whether it were possible to publish what was authentically known about this terrible case, and secondly about “what to do in order to resist” this kind of event?