ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE
 
 ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE 
 
 BY LEO SHESTOV 
 
 AUTHORISED TRANSLATION 
 
 BY S. S. KOTELIANSKY 
 
 WITH A FOREWORD BY 
 
 D. H. LAWRENCE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 ROBERT M. McBRlDE ^ CO. 
 
 1920
 
 P Cr 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Leo Shestov is one of the living Russians. He is 
 about fifty years old. He was born at Kiev, and 
 studied at the university there. His first book 
 appeared in 1898, since which year he has gradually 
 gained an assured position as one of the best critics 
 and essayists in Russia. A hst of his works is as 
 follows : — 
 
 1898. Shakespeare and his Critic, Brandes. 
 
 1900. Good in the Teaching of Dostoevsky and 
 Nietzsche : Philosophy and Preaching. 
 
 1903. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche : The Philosophy 
 of Tragedy. 
 
 1905. The Apotheosis of Groundlessness (here trans- 
 lated under the title " All Things are 
 Possible "). 
 
 1908. Beginnings and Ends. 
 
 1912. Great Vigils. 
 
 640383
 
 FOREWORD„ 
 
 In his paragraph on 7he Russian Spirit, 
 Shestov gives us the real clue to Russian 
 literature. European culture is a rootless 
 thing in the Russians. With us, it is our 
 very blood and bones, the very nerve and root 
 of our psyche. We think in a certain fashion, 
 we feel in a certain fashion, because our whole 
 substance is of this fashion. Our speech and 
 feeling are organically inevitable to us. 
 
 With the Russians it is different. They 
 have only been inoculated with the virus of 
 European culture and ethic. The virus works 
 in them like a disease. And the inflammation 
 and irritation comes forth as literature. The 
 bubbling and fizzing is almost chemical, not 
 organic. It is an organism seething as it 
 accepts and masters the strange virus. What 
 
 7
 
 thg Russian is struggling zvith, crying out 
 against, is not life itself : it is only European 
 culture which has been introduced into his 
 psyche^ and which hurts him. The tragedy 
 is not so much a real soul tragedy, as a surgical 
 one. Russian art, Russian literature after 
 all does not stand on the same footing as 
 European or Greek or Egyptian art. It is 
 not spontaneous utterance. It is not the 
 flowering of a race. It is a surgical outcry, 
 horrifying^ or marvellous, lacerating at first; 
 hut when we get used to it, not really so pro- 
 found, not really ultimate, a Utile extraneous. 
 What is valuable is the evidence against 
 European culture, implied in the novelists^ 
 here at last expressed. Since Peter the Great 
 Russia has been accepting Europe, and seeth- 
 ing Europe down in a curious process of 
 katabolism. Russia has been expressing 
 nothing inherently Russian. Russia's modern 
 Christianity even was not Russian. Her 
 genuine Christianity, Byzantine and Asiatic, 
 is incomprehensible to us. So with her true 
 philosophy. What she has actually uttered 
 8
 
 is her own unwilling^ fantastic reproduction of 
 European truths. What she has really to 
 utter the coming centuries will hear. For 
 Russia will certainly inherit the future. What 
 we already call the greatness of Russia is only 
 her pre-natal struggling. 
 
 It seems as if she had at last absorbed and 
 overcome the virus of old Europe. Soon her 
 new, healthy body will begin to act in its own 
 reality, imitative no more, protesting no more, 
 crying no more, but full and sound and lusty 
 in itself. Real Russia is born. She will 
 laugh at us before long. Meanwhile she goes 
 through the last stages of reactio?i against us, 
 kicking away from the old womb of Europe. 
 
 In Shestov one of the last kicks is given. 
 True, he seems to be only reactionary and 
 destructive. But he can find a little amuse- 
 ment at last in tweaking the European nose, 
 so he is fairly free. European idealism is 
 anathema. But more than this, it is a little 
 comical. We feel the new independence in 
 his new, half-amused indi-fference. 
 
 He is only tweaking the nose of European 
 
 9
 
 idealism. He is preaching nothing : so he 
 protests time and again. He absolutely re- 
 futes any imputation of a central idea. He is 
 so afraid lest it should turn out to he mother 
 hateful hedge-stake of an ideal. 
 
 " Everything is possible " — this is his really 
 central cry. It is not nihilism. It is only 
 a shaking free of the human psyche from old 
 bonds. The positive central idea is that the 
 human psyche^ or soul, really believes in its elf ^ 
 and in nothing else. 
 
 Dress this up in a little comely language^ 
 and we have a real new ideal, that will last 
 us for a 7iezv, long epoch. The human soul 
 itself is the source and well-head of creative 
 activity. In the unconscious human soul the 
 creative prompting issues first into the universe. 
 Open the consciousness to this prompting, 
 away with all your old sluice-gates, locks, 
 dams, channels. No ideal on earth is anything 
 more than an obstruction, in the end, to the 
 creative issue of the spontaneous soul. Away 
 with all ideals. Let each individual act 
 spontaneously from the forever-incalculable 
 10
 
 prompting of the creative well-head within 
 him. There is no universal law. Each being 
 is, at his purest, a law unto himself, single, 
 unique, a Godhead, a fountain from the 
 unknown, 
 
 7 his is the ideal which Shestov refuses 
 positively to state, because he is afraid it 
 may prove in the end a trap to catch his own 
 free spirit. So it may. But it is none the 
 less a real, living ideal for the moment, the 
 very salvation. When it becomes ancient, 
 and like the old lion who lay in his cave and 
 whined, devours all its servants, then it 
 can be despatched. Meanwhile it is a really 
 liberating word. 
 
 Shestov' s style is puzzling at first. Having 
 found the " ands " and " buts " and " be- 
 causes " and " therefores " hampered him, he 
 clips them all off deliberately and even spite- 
 fully, so that his thought is like a ma?i zvith 
 no buttons on his clothes, ludicrously hitching 
 along all undone. One must be amused, not 
 irritated. Where the armholes were a bit 
 tight, Shestov cuts a slit. It is baffling, but 
 
 II
 
 really rather piquant. The real conjunction, 
 
 the real unification lies in the reader's own 
 
 amusement, not in the author's unbroken 
 
 logic. 
 
 D. H. Lawrence. 
 
 12
 
 PART I 
 
 Zu fragmentarish ist Welt und Lehen. 
 
 H. Heine.
 
 I 
 
 The obscure streets of life do not oflPer 
 the conveniences of the central thorough- 
 fares : no electric light, no gas, not even a 
 kerosene lamp-bracket. There are no pave- 
 ments : the traveller has to fumble his 
 way in the dark. If he needs a light, he 
 must wait for a thunderbolt, or else, 
 primitive-wise, knock a spark out of a 
 stone. In a glimpse will appear unfamiliar 
 outlines ; and then, what he has taken in 
 he must try to remember, no matter whether 
 the impression v/as right or false. For he 
 will not easily get another light, except he 
 run his head against a wall, and see sparks 
 that way. What can a wretched pedestrian 
 gather under such circumstances ? How 
 can we expect a clear account from him 
 whose curiosity (let us suppose his curi- 
 osity so strong) led him to grope his way 
 among the outskirts of life ? Why should 
 we try to compare his records with those of 
 the travellers through brilliant streets ? 
 
 15
 
 2 
 
 The law of sequence in natural pheno- 
 mena seems so plausible, so obvious, that 
 one is tempted to look for its origin, not 
 in the realities of actual life, but in the 
 promptings of the human mind. This law 
 of sequence is the most mysterious of all 
 the natural laws. Why so much order ? 
 Why not chaos and disorderliness ? Really, 
 if the hypothesis of sequence had not 
 offered such blatant advantages to the 
 human intelligence, man would never have 
 thought of raising it to the rank of eternal 
 and irrefutable truth. But he saw his 
 opportunity. Thanks to the grand hypo- 
 thesis, man is forewarned and forearmed. 
 Thanks to this master-key, the future is at 
 his mercy. He knows, in order that he 
 may foreknow : savoir pour prhoir. Here, 
 is man, by virtue of one supreme assump- 
 tion, dictator henceforward of all nature. 
 The philosophers have ever bowed the knee 
 to success. So down they went before the 
 newly-invented law of natural sequence, 
 they hailed it with the title of eternal truth. 
 But even this seemed insufficient. Uappetit 
 vient en mangeant. Like the old woman in 
 the fairy-tale about the golden fish, they 
 had it in their minds that the fish should 
 
 i6
 
 do their errands. But some few people at 
 last could not stand this impudence. Some 
 very few began to object 
 
 3 
 
 The comfortable settled man says to 
 
 himself : " How could one live without 
 being sure of the morrow ; how could one 
 sleep without a roof over one's head ? " 
 But misfortune turns him out of house and 
 home. He must perforce sleep under a 
 hedge. He cannot rest, he is full of terrors. 
 There may be wild beasts, fellow-tramps. 
 But in the long run he gets used to it. 
 He will trust himself to chance, live like a 
 tramp, and sleep his sleep in a ditch. 
 
 4 
 
 A writer, particularly a young and inex- 
 perienced writer, feels himself under an 
 obligation to give his reader the fullest 
 answers to all possible questions. Con- 
 science will not let him shut his eyes to 
 tormenting problems, and so he begins to 
 speak of " first and ultimate things." As 
 he cannot say anything profitable on such 
 subjects — for it is not the business of the 
 young to be profoundly philosophical — 
 he grows excited, he shouts himself to 
 
 B 17
 
 hoarseness. In the end he is silent from 
 exhaustion. And then, if his words have 
 had any success with the public, he is 
 astonished to find that he has become a 
 prophet. Whereupon, if he be an average 
 sort of person, he is filled with an insatiable 
 desire to preserve his influence till the end 
 of his days. But if he be more sensitive 
 or gifted than usual, he begins to despise 
 the crowd for its vulgar credulity, and 
 himself for having posed in the stupid and 
 disgraceful character of a clown of lofty ideas. 
 
 5 
 How painful it is to read Plato's account 
 
 of the last conversations of Socrates ! The 
 
 days, even the hours of the old man are 
 
 numbered, and yet he talks, talks, talks. . . . 
 
 Crito comes to him in the early morning 
 
 and tells him that the sacred ships will 
 
 shortly return to Athens. And at once 
 
 Socrates is ready to talk, to argue. ... It 
 
 is possible, of course, that Plato is not 
 
 altogether to be trusted. It is said that 
 
 Socrates observed, of the dialogues already 
 
 written down by Plato. " How much that 
 
 youth has belied me ! " But then from 
 
 all sources we have it, that Socrates spent 
 
 the month following his verdict in incessant 
 
 l8
 
 conversations with his pupils and friends. 
 That is what it is to be a beloved master, 
 and to have disciples. You can't even die 
 quietly. . . . The best death is really the 
 one which is considered the worst : to die 
 alone, in a foreign land, in a poor-house, or, 
 as they say, like a dog under a hedge. 
 Then at least one may spend one's last 
 moments honestly, without dissembling or 
 ostentation, preparing oneself for the dread- 
 ful, or wonderful, event. Pascal, as his 
 sister tells us, also talked a great deal 
 before his death, and de Musset cried like 
 a baby. Perhaps Socrates and Pascal talked 
 so much, for fear they should start crying. 
 It is a false shame ! 
 
 6 
 
 The fact that some ideas, or some series 
 of ideas, are materially unprofitable to 
 mankind cannot serve as a justification for 
 their rejection. Once an idea is there, the 
 gates must be opened to it. For if you 
 close the gates, the thought will force a 
 way in, or, like the fly in the fable, will 
 sneak through unawares. Ideas have no 
 regard for our laws of honour or morality. 
 Take for example realism in literature. At 
 its appearance it aroused universal indigna- 
 
 19
 
 tion. Why need we know the dirt of life ? 
 And honestly, there is no need. Realism 
 could give no straightforward justification 
 for itself. But, as it had to come through, 
 it was ready with a lie ; it compared itself 
 to pathology, called itself useful, beneficial, 
 and so obtained a place. We can all see 
 now that realism is not beneficial, but harm- 
 ful, very harmful, and that it has nothing 
 in common with pathology. Nevertheless, 
 it is no longer easy to drive it from its 
 place. The prohibition evaded, there is 
 now the Justus titulus possessionis. 
 
 7 
 Count Tolstoy preached inaction. It seems 
 
 he had no need. We *' inact '* remarkably. 
 
 Idleness, just that idleness Tolstoy dreamed 
 
 of, a free, conscious idling that despises 
 
 labour, this is one of the chief characteristics 
 
 of our time. Of course I speak of the higher, 
 
 cultured classes, the aristocracy of spirit — 
 
 " We write books, paint pictures, compose 
 
 symphonies " — But is that labour ? It is 
 
 only the amusement of idleness. So that 
 
 Tolstoy is much more to the point when, 
 
 forgetting his preaching of inaction, he 
 
 bids us trudge eight hours a day at the tail 
 
 of the plough. In this there is some 
 
 20
 
 sense. Idleness spoils us. We were re- 
 turning to the most primitive of all the 
 states of our forefathers. Like paradisal 
 Adam and Eve, having no need to sweat 
 for our bread, we were trying to pilfer the 
 fruit from the forbidden tree. Truly we 
 received a similar punishment. Divine laws 
 are inscrutable. In Paradise everything is 
 permitted, except curiosity. Even labour 
 is allowed, though it is not obligatory, as it 
 is outside. Tolstoy realised the dangers of 
 the paradisal state. He stooped to talk of 
 inaction for a moment — and then he began 
 to work. Since in regular, smooth, con- 
 stant, rhythmical labour, whether it is 
 efficient or whether it merely appears efficient, 
 like Tolstoy's farming, there is peace of 
 mind. Look at the industrious Germans, 
 who begin and who end their day with a 
 prayer. In Paradise, where there is no 
 labour, and no need for long rest and heavy 
 sleep, all temptations become dangerous. 
 It is a peril to live there. . . . Perhaps 
 present-day people eschew the paradisal 
 state. They prefer work, for where there 
 is no work there is no smoothness, no 
 regularity, no peacefulness, no satisfaction. 
 In Eden, even the well-informed individuals 
 cannot tell what will come next, savoir 
 
 21
 
 four prevoir does not answer, and ever- 
 lasting laws are exposed to ridicule. Amongst 
 ourselves also a few of the work-abjurors, 
 the idlers, are beginning to question our 
 established knowledge. But the majority 
 of men, and particularly Germans, still 
 defend a priori judgments, on the ground 
 that without these, perfect knowledge would 
 be impossible, there could be no regulation 
 of the course of natural phenomena, and 
 no looking ahead. 
 
 8 
 
 To escape from the grasp of contemporary 
 ruling ideas, one should study history. The 
 lives of other men in other lands in other 
 ages teach us to realise that our " eternal 
 laws " and infallible ideas are just abortions. 
 Take a step further, imagine mankind living 
 elsewhere than on this earth, and all our 
 terrestial eternalities lose their charm. 
 
 9 
 
 We know nothing of the ultimate realities 
 
 of our existence, nor shall we ever know 
 anything. Let that be agreed. But it 
 does not follow that therefore we must 
 accept some or other dogmatic theory as 
 a modus vivendi, no, not even positivism, 
 
 22
 
 which has such a sceptical face on it. It 
 only follows that man is free to change his 
 conception of the universe as often as he 
 changes his boots or his gloves, and that 
 constancy of principle belongs only to one's 
 relationships with other people, in order 
 that they may know where and to what 
 extent they may depend on us. Therefore, 
 on principle man should respect order in 
 the external world and complete chaos in 
 the inner. And for those who find it diffi- 
 cult to bear such a duality, some internal 
 order might also be provided. Only, they 
 should not pride themselves on it, but 
 always remember that it is a sign of their 
 weakness, pettiness, dullness. 
 
 10 
 
 The Pythagoreans assumed that the sun 
 is motionless and that the earth turns 
 round. What a long time the truth had to 
 wait for recognition ! 
 
 II 
 
 In spite of Epicurus and his exasperation 
 we are forced to admit that anything what- 
 soever may result from anything whatso- 
 ever. Which does not mean, however, that 
 a stone ever turned into bread, or that 
 
 23
 
 our visible universe was ever " naturallv '* 
 formed from nebulous puffs. But from our 
 own minds and our own experience we can 
 deduce nothing that would serve us as a 
 ground for setting even the smallest limit 
 to nature's own arbitrary behaviour. If 
 whatever happens now had chanced to 
 happen quite differently, it would not, 
 therefore, have seemed any the less natural 
 to us. In other words, although there may 
 be an element of inevitability in our human 
 judgments concerning the natural pheno- 
 mena, we have never been able and prob- 
 ably never shall be able to separate the 
 grain of inevitable from the chaff of acci- 
 dental and casual truth. Moreover, we do 
 not even know which is more essential and 
 important, the inevitable or the casual. 
 Hence we are forced to the conclusion that 
 philosophy must give up her attempt at 
 finding the veriiates aeternae. The business 
 of philosophy is to teach man to live in 
 uncertainty — man who is supremely afraid 
 of uncertainty, and who is forever hiding 
 himself behind this or the other dogma. 
 More briefly, the business of philosophy is 
 not to reassure people, but to upset them. 
 
 24
 
 12 
 
 When man finds in himself a certain defect, 
 of which he can by no means rid himself, 
 there remains but to accept the so-called 
 failing as a natural quality. The more 
 grave and important the defect, the more 
 urgent is the need to ennoble it. From 
 sublime to ridiculous is only one step, and an 
 ineradicable vice in strong men is always 
 rechristened a virtue. 
 
 On the whole, there is little to choose 
 between metaphysics and positivism. In 
 each there is the same horizon, but the 
 composition and colouring are different. 
 Positivism chooses grey, colourless paint and 
 ordinary composition ; metaphysics prefers 
 brilliant colouring and complicated design, 
 and always carries the vision away into the 
 infinite ; in which trick it often succeeds, 
 owing to its skill in perspective. But the 
 canvas is impervious, there is no melting 
 through it into " the other world." Never- 
 theless, skilful perspectives are very alluring, 
 so that metaphysicians will still have some- 
 thing to quarrel about with the positivists. 
 
 iS
 
 The task of a writer : to go forward and 
 share his impressions with his reader. In 
 spite of everything to the contrary, he is 
 not obliged to prove anytliing. But, because 
 every step of his progress is dogged by those 
 police agents, morality, science, logic, and 
 so forth, he needs always to have ready some 
 sort of argument with which to frustrate 
 them. There is no necessity to trouble too 
 deeply about the quality of the argumenta- 
 tion. Why fret about being " inwardly 
 right." It is quite enough if the reasoning 
 which comes handiest will succeed in occupy- 
 ing those guardians of the verbal highways 
 whose intention it is to obstruct his passage. 
 
 The Secret of Poushkin's " inner har- 
 mony." — To Poushkin nothing was hope- 
 less. Nay, he saw hopeful signs in every- 
 thing. It is agreeable to sin, and it is 
 just as delightful to repent. It is good to 
 doubt, but it is still better to believe. It is 
 jolly " with feet shod in steel " to skate the 
 ice, it is pleasant to wander about with 
 gypsies, to pray in church, to quarrel with 
 a friend, to make peace with an enemy, to 
 swoon on waves of harmony, to weep over 
 
 26
 
 a passing fancy, to recall the past, to peep 
 into the future. Poushkin could cry hot 
 tears, and he who can weep can hope. 
 " I want to live, so that I may think and 
 suffer," he says ; and it seems as if the 
 word " to suffer," which is so beautiful in 
 the poem, just fell in accidentally, because 
 there was no better rhyme in Russian for 
 " to die." The later verses, which are 
 intended to amplify to think and to su-ffer, 
 prove this. Poushkin might repeat the 
 words of the ancient hero : " danger is 
 dangerous to others, but not to me." There- 
 in lies the secret of his harmonious moods. 
 
 i6 
 The well-trodden field of contemporary 
 thought should be dug up. Therefore, on 
 every possible occasion, in season and out, 
 the generally-accepted truths must be ridi- 
 culed to death, and paradoxes uttered in 
 their place. Then we shall see ... 
 
 What is a Weltanschauung, a world- 
 conception, a philosophy ? As we all know, 
 Turgenev was a realist, and from the first 
 he tried to portray life truthfully. Although 
 we had had no precise exponents of realism, 
 
 27
 
 yet after Poushkin it was impossible for a 
 Russian writer to depart too far from 
 actuality. Even those who did not know 
 what to do with *' real life '* had to cope 
 with it as best they could. Hence, in order 
 that the picture of life should not prove too 
 depressing, the writer must provide himself 
 in due season with a philosophy. This 
 philosophy still plays the part of the magic 
 wand in literature, enabling the author to 
 turn anything he likes into anything else. 
 
 Most of Turgenev's works are curious in 
 respect of philosophy. But most curious 
 is his Diary of a Superfluous Man. Turgenev 
 was the first to introduce the term " a 
 superfluous man " into Russian literature. 
 Since then an endless amount has been 
 written about superfluous people, although 
 up till now nothing important has been 
 added to what was already said fifty years 
 ago. There are superfluous people, plenty 
 of them. But what is to be done with 
 them ? No one knows. There remains 
 only to invent philosophies on their behalf. 
 In 1850 Turgenev, then a young man, thus 
 solved the problem. He ends the Diary 
 — with a humorous postscript, supposed 
 to have been scribbled by an impertinent 
 reader on the last fly-leaf of the MS. 
 
 28
 
 7his MS. was ready and contents thereof 
 
 disapproved^ 
 by Peter Zudotyeshin. MM. MM. 
 Dear Sir, Peter Zudotyeshin, My dear Sir, 
 
 It is obvious Turgenev felt that after a 
 tragedy must follow a farce, and therein 
 lies the substance of his philosophy. It is 
 also obvious that in this feeling he has the 
 whole of European civilisation behind him. 
 Turgenev was the most educated, the most 
 cultured* of all Russian writers. He spent 
 nearly all his life abroad, and absorbed into 
 himself all that European learning could offer. 
 He knew this, although he never directly 
 admitted it, owing to an exaggerated 
 modesty which sometimes irritates us by 
 Its obviousness. He believed profoundly 
 that only learning, only European science 
 could open men's eyes to life, and explain 
 all that needed explanation. According 
 to this belief he judges even Tolstoy. 
 " The saddest instance of the lack of real 
 freedom," the sixty-year-old Turgenev writes 
 of PFar and Peace^ in his literary memoirs : 
 " the saddest instance of the lack of real 
 freedom, arising from the lack of real 
 knowledge, is revealed to us in Leo Tolstoy's 
 latest work, a work which at the same time, 
 
 29
 
 by virtue of its creative^ poetic force, ranks 
 almost first among all that has appeared 
 in Russian literature since 1840. No ! with- 
 out culture, without freedom in the widest 
 sense, freedom within oneself, freedom from 
 preconceived ideas, freedom with regard to 
 one's own nation and history, without this, 
 the real artist is unthinkable ; without this 
 free air he cannot breathe." Listening to 
 Turgenev one might imagine that he had 
 learned some great secret in the West, a 
 secret which gave him the right to bear 
 himself cheerfully and modestly when other 
 people despaired and lost their heads. . . . 
 A year after the writing of the literary 
 memoirs above quoted, Turgenev happened 
 to be present at the execution of the notorious 
 murderer, Tropman. His impressions are 
 superbly rendered in a long article called 
 " Tropman's Execution.'* The description 
 produces a soul-shaking effect upon the 
 reader ; for I think I shall not exaggerate if 
 I say that the essay is one of the best, at 
 least one of the most vigorous of Turgenev's 
 writings. It is true that Tolstoy describes 
 scenes of slaughter with no less vigour, and 
 therefore the reader need not yield too much 
 to the artist's power. Yet when Turgenev 
 relates that, at the decisive moment, when 
 
 30
 
 the executioners like spiders on a fly 
 threw themselves on Tropman and bore 
 him to the ground — " the earth quietly 
 swam away from under my feet " — we are 
 forced to believe him. Men respond only 
 faintly to the horrors that take place around 
 them, except at moments, when the savage, 
 crying incongruity and ghastliness of our 
 condition suddenly reveals itself vivid before 
 our eyes, and we are forced to know what 
 we are. Then the ground slides away 
 from under our feet. But not for long. 
 The horror of the sensation of groundless- 
 ness quickly brings man to himself. He 
 must forget everything, he must only get 
 his feet on earth again. In this sense 
 Turgenev proved himself in as risky a state 
 at sixty as he was when, as a young man, 
 he wrote his Diary of a Superfluous Man. 
 The description of Tropman's execution 
 ends with these words : " Who can fail to 
 feel that the question of capital punishment 
 is one of the urgent, immediate problems 
 which modern humanity must settle ? I 
 shall be satisfied ... if my story will 
 provide even a few arguments for those 
 who advocate the abolition, or at least 
 the suppression of the publicity of capital 
 punishments." Again the mountain has 
 
 31
 
 brought forth a mouse. After a tragedy, 
 a farce. Philosophy enters into her 
 power, and the earth returns under one's 
 feet. 
 
 I emphasise and repeat : Turgenev is not 
 alone responsible for his attitude. With 
 his lips speaks the whole of European 
 civilisation. On principle all insoluble 
 problems are rejected. During her thousand 
 years of experience, the old civilisation has 
 acquired the skill which allows her children 
 to derive satisfaction and benefit out of 
 anything, even the blood of their neigh- 
 bour. Even the greatest horrors, even crimes 
 are beneficial, properly construed. Turgenev 
 was, as we know, a soft, " humane " man, 
 an undoubted idealist. In his youth he 
 had been through the Hegelian school. 
 And from Hegel he learned what an enormous 
 value education has, and how supremely 
 important it is for an educated man to 
 have a complete and finished — most certainly 
 a " finished " philosophy. 
 
 i8 
 
 To praise oneself is considered improper, 
 immodest ; to praise one's own sect, one's 
 own philosophy, is considered the highest 
 duty. Even the best writers have taken at 
 
 32
 
 least as much trouble to glorify their philo- 
 sophy as to found it, and have always had 
 more success in the former case than in the 
 latter. Their ideas, whether proven or 
 not, are the dearest possession in life to 
 them, in sorrow a consolation, in difficulty 
 a source of counsel. Even death is not 
 terrible to ideas ; they will follow man 
 beyond the grave, they are the only im- 
 perishable riches. All this the philosophers 
 repeat, very eloquently repeat and reiterate 
 concerning their ideas, not less skilfully 
 than advocates plead their cases on behalf 
 of thieves and swindlers. But nobody has 
 ever yet called a philosopher " a hired 
 conscience," though everybody gives the 
 lawyer this nickname. Why this partiality ? 
 
 Certain savage tribes believe that their 
 kings need no food, neither to eat nor to 
 drink. As a matter of fact, kings eat and 
 drink, and even relish a good mouthful 
 more than ordinary mortals. So, having 
 no desire, even for the sake of form, to 
 abstain too long, they not infrequently 
 interrupt the long-drawn-out religious cere- 
 monies of their tribes, in order to command 
 refreshment for their frail bodies. But 
 
 c 33
 
 none must witness, or even be aware of 
 this refreshing, and so while he eats the 
 king is hidden within a purple pall. Meta- 
 physicians remind one of these savage 
 kings. They ^/ant everyone to believe 
 that empiricism, which means all reality 
 and substantial existence, is nothing to 
 them, they need only pure ideas for their 
 existence. In order to keep up this fiction, 
 they appear before the world invested in a 
 purple veil of fine words. The crowd knows 
 perfectly well that it is all a take-in, but 
 since it likes shows and bright colours, 
 and since also it has no ambition to appear 
 too knowing, it rarely betrays that it has 
 caught the trick of the comedy. On the 
 contrary, it loves to pretend to be fooled, 
 knowing by instinct that actors always do 
 their best when the audience believes im- 
 plicitly in what happens. Only inexperi- 
 enced youths and children, unaware of the 
 great importance of the conventional atti- 
 tide, now and then cry out in indignation 
 and give the lie to the performance : like 
 the child in Andersen's story, who so 
 unexpectedly and inopportunely broke the 
 general, deliberate illusion by calling out — 
 " But the king is naked.'* Of course every- 
 body knows without telling that the king is 
 
 34
 
 naked : that the metaphysicians not only 
 are unable to explain anything, but that 
 hitherto they have not been able to present 
 even a single hypothesis free from contra- 
 diction. It is necessary to pretend to 
 believe that kings eat nothing, that philo- 
 sophers have divined the secrets of the 
 universe, that arbitrary theories are more 
 precious than empirical harvests, and so on. 
 There remains only one difficulty : grown- 
 ups may be won over to the conventional 
 lie, but what about the children ? With 
 them the only remedy is the Pythagorean 
 system of upbringing, so glorified by Hegel. 
 Children must keep silent and not raise their 
 voice until they realise that some things 
 may not be talked about. This is our 
 method. With us pupils remain silent, 
 not only for five years, as the Pythagoreans 
 recommended, but for ten or more — until 
 they have learned to speak like their 
 masters. And then they are granted a 
 freedom which is no longer any good to 
 them. Perhaps they had wings, or might 
 have had them, but they have crawled all 
 their life long in imitation of their masters, 
 so how can they now dream of flight ? To a 
 well-informed man, who has studied much, 
 the very thought of the possibility of tearing 
 
 35
 
 himself away from the earth, even for a 
 moment, is horrifying : as if he knew 
 beforehand what the result would be. 
 
 20 
 
 The best, the most effective way of 
 convincing a reader is to begin one's argu- 
 ment with inoffensive, commonplace asser- 
 tions. When suspicion has been sufficiently 
 lulled, and a certainty has been begot that 
 what follows will be a confirmation of the 
 readers own accepted views — then has the 
 moment arrived to speak one's mind openly, 
 but still in the same easy tone, as if there 
 were no break in the flow of truisms. The 
 logical connection is unimportant. Conse- 
 quence of manner and intonation is much 
 more impressive than consequence of ideas. 
 The thing to do is to go on, in the same 
 suave tone, from uttering a series of banal- 
 ities to expressing a new and dangerous 
 thought, without any break. If you suc- 
 ceed in this, the business is done. The 
 reader will not forget — the new words will 
 plague and torment him until he has 
 accepted them. 
 
 36
 
 21 
 
 The habit of logical thinking kills imagina- 
 tion. Man is convinced that the only way 
 to truth is through logic, and that any 
 departure from this way leads to error and 
 absurdity. The nearer we approach the 
 ultimate questions of existence, in our 
 departure from logicality, the more deadly 
 becomes the state of error we fall into. The 
 Ariadne ball has become all unwound long 
 ago, and man is at the end of the tether. 
 But he does not know, he holds the end of 
 the thread firmly, and marks time with 
 energy on the same spot, imagining his 
 progress, and little realising the ridiculous 
 situation into which he has fallen. How 
 should he realise, considering the innumer- 
 able precautions he has taken to prevent 
 himself from losing the logical way ? He 
 had better have stayed at home. Once he 
 set out, once he decided to be a Theseus and 
 kill the Minotaur, he should have given 
 himself up, forfeited the old attachment, 
 and been ready never to escape from the 
 labyrinth. True, he would have risked losing 
 Ariadne : and this is why long journeys 
 should be undertaken only after family 
 connections have become a burden. Such 
 being the case, a man deliberately cuts the 
 
 37
 
 thread which binds him to hearth and home, 
 80 that he may have a legitimate excuse to 
 his conscience for not going back. Philo- 
 sophy must have nothing in common with 
 logic ; philosophy is an art which aims at 
 breaking the logical continuity of argument 
 and bringing man out on the shoreless sea 
 of imagination, the fantastic tides where 
 everything is equally possible and im- 
 possible. Certainly it is difficult, given 
 sedentary habits of life, to be a good philo- 
 sopher. The fact that the fate of philosophy 
 has ever lain in the hands of professors 
 can only be explained by the reluctance of 
 the envious gods to give omniscience to 
 mortals. Whilst stay-at-home persons are 
 searching for truth, the apple will stay on 
 the tree. The business must be undertaken 
 by homeless adventurers, born nomads, 
 to whom ubi bene ibi patrta. It seems to 
 me that but for his family and his do- 
 mesticity, Count Tolstoy, who lives to such 
 a ripe old age, might have told us a great 
 many important and interesting things. 
 . . . Or, perhaps, had he not married, like 
 Nietszche he would have gone mad. "If 
 you turn to the right, you will marry, if 
 to the left, you will be killed." A true 
 philosopher never chooses the middle course ; 
 
 38
 
 lie needs no riches, he does not know what 
 to do with money. But whether he turns 
 to the right or to the left, nothing pleasant 
 awaits him. 
 
 22 
 Scratch a Russian and you will find a 
 Tartar. Culture is an age-long develop- 
 ment, and sudden grafting of it upon a race 
 rarely succeeds. To us in Russia, civili- 
 sation came suddenly, whilst we were still 
 savages. At once she took upon herself the 
 responsibilities of a tamer of wild animals, 
 first working with decoys and baits, and 
 later, when she felt her power, with threats. 
 We quickly submitted. In a short time we 
 were swallowing in enormous doses those 
 poisons which Europe had been gradually 
 accustoming herself to, gradually assimil- 
 ating through centuries. Thanks to which, 
 the transplanting of civilisation into Russia 
 turns out to be no mild affair. A Russian 
 had only to catch a whiff of European 
 atmosphere, and his head began to swim. 
 He interpreted in his own way, savage-like, 
 whatever he heard of western success. 
 Hearing about railways, agricultural 
 machines, schools, municipalities, his imagi- 
 nation painted miracles : universal happi- 
 ness, boundless freedom, paradise, wings, 
 
 39
 
 etc. And the more impossible his dreams, 
 the more eager he was to believe them real. 
 How disillusioned with Europe the westerner 
 Herzen became, after living for years on 
 end abroad ! Yet, with all his acuteness, 
 it did not occur to him that Europe was not 
 in the least to blame for his disillusionment. 
 Europe had dropped miracles ages ago ; 
 she contented herself with ideals. It is we 
 in Russia who will go on confusing miracles 
 with ideals, as if the two were identical, 
 whereas they have nothing to do with each 
 other. As a matter of fact, just because 
 Europe had ceased to believe in miracles, 
 and realised that all human problems resolve 
 down to mere arrangements here on earth, 
 ideas and ideals had been invented. But 
 the Russian bear crept out of his hole and 
 strolled to Europe for the elixir of life, the 
 flying carpet, the seven-leagued shoes, and 
 so on, thinking in all his naivete that 
 railways and electricity were signs which 
 clearly proved that the old nurse never 
 told a lie in her fairy tales. . . . All this 
 happened just at the moment when Europe 
 had finally made away with alchemy and 
 astrology, and started on the positive 
 researches resulting in chemistry and 
 astronomy. 
 
 40
 
 ^3 
 
 The first assumption of all metaphysics 
 
 is, that by dialectic development of any 
 concept a whole system can be evolved. 
 Of course the initial concept, the a priori, 
 is generally unsound, so there is no need to 
 mention the deductions. But since it is 
 very difficult in the realm of abstract 
 thought to distinguish a lie from truth, 
 metaphysical systems often have a very 
 convincing appearance. The chief defect 
 only appears incidentally, when the taste for 
 dialectic play becomes blunted in man, as 
 it did in Turgenev towards the end of his 
 life, so that he realises the uselessness of 
 philosophical systems. It is related that a 
 famous mathematician, after hearing a 
 musical symphony to the end, inquired, 
 " What does it prove ? " Of course, it 
 proves nothing, except that the mathema- 
 tician had no taste for music. And to him 
 who has no taste for dialectics, metaphysics 
 can prove nothing, either. Therefore, those 
 who are interested in the success of meta- 
 physics must always encourage the opinion 
 that a taste for dialectics is a high distinction 
 in a man, proving the loftiness of his soul. 
 
 41
 
 ^4 
 
 Man is used to having convictions, so 
 
 there we are. We can none of us do with- 
 out our hangers-on, though we despise 
 them at the bottom of our souls. 
 
 Socrates and Plato tried to determine 
 under the shifting change of appearance 
 the immutable, unchanging reality. In the 
 Platonic " ideas " the attempt was incar- 
 nated. The visible reality, never true to 
 itself, assuming numberless varying forms, 
 this is not the genuine reahty. That which 
 is real must be constant. Hence the ideas 
 of objects are real, and the objects them- 
 selves are fictitious. Thus the root of the 
 Platonic philosophy appears to be a funda- 
 mental defect in human reasoning — a defect 
 regarded as the highest merit. It is difficult 
 for the philosopher to get a good grasp of 
 this agitated, capricious life, and so he 
 decides that it is not life at all, but a fig- 
 ment. Dialectics is supreme only over 
 general concepts — and the general concepts 
 are promoted to an ideal. Since Plato and 
 Socrates, only such philosophers have 
 succeeded largely who have taught that the 
 unchangeable is preferable to the change- 
 
 42
 
 able, the eternal to the temporal. The 
 ordinary individual, who lives unconsciously, 
 never reckoning his spiritual credit against 
 his spiritual debit, naturally regards the 
 philosopher as his legitimate book-keeper, 
 keeper of the soul's accounts. Already in 
 Greece the Athenian youth watched with 
 passionate interest the dexterity which 
 Socrates displayed in his endeavour to 
 restore by means of dialectics the lost 
 " ultimate foundations " of human conduct. 
 Now in book-keeping, as we are aware, not 
 a single farthing must disappear untraceably. 
 Socrates was trying to come up to expecta- 
 tions. The balance between man's spiritual 
 assets and liabilities was with him ideally 
 established. Perhaps in this lies the secret 
 of that strange attraction he exerted even 
 over such volatile and unsteady natures 
 as that of Alcibiades, drawing the young men 
 to him so that they were attached to him 
 with all their soul. Alcibiades had long 
 since lost all count of his spiritual estate, 
 and therefore from time to time he had need 
 to recourse to Socrates, who by speeches 
 and dissertations could bring order into 
 chaos and harmony into the spiritual con- 
 fusion of his young friend. Alcibiades 
 turned to Socrates to be relieved. Of 
 
 43
 
 course, he sought relief in order that he 
 might begin again his riotous living : rest 
 is so sweet to a tired man. But to conclude 
 that because Alcibiades exhausted himself, 
 and because rest is sweet, therefore all men 
 must rest, this is absurd. Yet Socrates 
 dictated this conclusion, in all his ideas. 
 He wished that all men should rest, rest 
 through eternity, that they should see their 
 highest fulfilment in this resting. It is 
 easier to judge of Socrates since we have 
 Count Tolstoy with us. Probably the physi- 
 ognomist Topir would say of Tolstoy as he 
 said of Socrates, that there are many evil 
 propensities lurking in him. Topir is not 
 here to speak, but Tolstoy has told us 
 himself how wicked he found his own nature, 
 how he had to struggle with it. Tolstoy is not 
 naturally over-courageous ; by long effort 
 he has trained himself to be bold. How 
 afraid of death he was in his youth And 
 how cleverly he could conceal that fear. 
 Later on, in mature age, it was still the fear 
 of death which inspired him to write his 
 confession. He was conquering that fear, 
 and with it all other fears. For he felt 
 that, since fear is very difficult to master 
 in oneself, man must be a much higher 
 being when he has learned not to be afraid 
 
 44
 
 any more. Meanwhile, who knows ? Peir 
 haps " cowardice," that miserable, despic- 
 able, much-abused weakness of the under- 
 world, is not such a vice after all. Perhaps 
 it is even a virtue. Think of Dostoevsky 
 and his heroes, think of Hamlet. If the 
 underworld man in us were afraid of nothing, 
 if Hamlet was naturally a gladiator, then 
 we should have neither tragic poetry nor 
 philosophy. It is a platitude, that fear of 
 death has been the inspiration of philo- 
 sophers. Numberless quotations could be 
 drawn from ancient and modern writers, 
 if they were necessary. Maybe the poetic 
 daimon of Socrates, which made him wise, 
 was only fear personified. Or perhaps it 
 was his dark dreams. That which troubled 
 him by day did not quit him by night. 
 Even after the sentence of death Socrates 
 dreamed that he ought to engage in the arts, 
 so in order not to provoke the gods he began 
 to compose verses, at the age of seventy. 
 Tolstoy also at the age of fifty began to per- 
 form good deeds, to which performance he 
 had previously given not the slightest atten- 
 tion. If it were our custom nowadays to 
 express ourselves mythologically, w^e should 
 no doubt hear Tolstoy telling us about 
 his daimon or his dreams. Instead he 
 
 45
 
 squares his accounts with science and 
 morality, in place of gods or demons. Many 
 a present-day Alcibiades, who laves all the 
 week in the muddy waters of life, comes on 
 Sundays to cleanse himself in the pure 
 stream of Tolstoyian ideas. Book-keeping 
 is satisfied with this modest success, and 
 assumes that if it commands universal 
 attention one day in the week, then obvi- 
 ously it is the sum and essence of life, beyond 
 which man needs nothing. On the same 
 grounds the keepers of public baths could 
 argue that, since so many people come to 
 them on Saturdays, therefore cleanliness is 
 the highest ambition of man, and during 
 the week no one should stir at all, lest he 
 sweat or soil himself. 
 
 26 
 
 In an old French writer, a contemporary 
 of Pascal, I came across the following 
 remarkable words : " L'homme est si 
 miserable que rinconstance avec laquelle il 
 abandonne ses desseins est, en quelque sorte, 
 sa plus grande vertu ; parce qu'il temoigne 
 par la qu'il y a encore en lui quelque reste 
 de grandeur qui le porte a se degouter de 
 choses qui ne meritent pas son amour et 
 son estime." What a long way modern 
 
 46
 
 thought has travelled from even the possi- 
 bility of such an assumption. To consider 
 inconstancy the finest human virtue ! Surely 
 in order to get somewhere in life it is neces- 
 sary to give the whole self, one's whole 
 energy to the service of some one particular 
 purpose. In order to be a virtuoso, a master 
 of one's art and one's instrument, it is 
 necessary with a truly angelic or asinine 
 patience to try over and over again, dozens, 
 hundreds, thousands of times, different 
 ways of expressing one's ideas or moods, 
 sparing neither labour, nor time, nor health. 
 Everything else must take a second place. 
 The first must be occupied by " the Art»" 
 Goncharov, in his novel Obryv, cleverly 
 relates how a 'cellist struggled all day, like 
 a fish against the ice, sawing and sawing 
 away, so that later on, in the evening, he 
 might play super-excellently well. And 
 that is the general idea. Objectionable, 
 tedious, irritating labour, — this is the condi- 
 tion of genius, which no doubt explains the 
 reason why men so rarely achieve anything. 
 Genius must submit to cultivate an assi 
 within itself — the condition being so humili- 
 ating that man will seldom take up the job. 
 The majority prefer talent, that medium 
 which lies between genius and mediocrity. 
 
 47
 
 And many a time, towards the end of life, 
 does the genius repent of his choice. " It 
 would be better not to startle the world, 
 but to live at one with it," says Ibsen in his 
 last drama. Genius is a wretched, blind 
 maniac, whose eccentricities are condoned 
 because of what is got from him. And 
 still we all bow to persevering talent, to the 
 only god in whom we moderns believe, and 
 the eulogy of inconstancy will awake very 
 little sympathy in our hearts. Probably 
 we shall not even regard it seriously. 
 
 We very often express in a categorical 
 form a judgment of which we do not feel 
 assured, we even lay stress on its absolute 
 validity. We want to see what opposition 
 it will arouse, and this can be achieved 
 only by stating our assumption not as a 
 tentative suggestion, which no one will 
 consider, but as an irrefutable, all-important 
 truth. The greater the value an assumption 
 has for us, the more carefully do we conceal 
 any suggestion of its improbability. 
 
 28 
 Literature deals with the most difficult 
 and important problems of existence, and, 
 
 48
 
 therefore, litterateurs consider themselves 
 the most important of people. A bank 
 clerk, who is always handing money out, 
 might just as well consider himself a 
 millionaire. The high estimate placed upon 
 unexplained, unsolved questions ought really 
 to discredit writers in our eyes. And yet 
 these literary men are so clever, so cunning 
 at stating their own case and revealing the 
 high importance of their mission, that in the 
 long run they convince everybody, them- 
 selves most of all. This last event is surely 
 owing to their own limited intelligence. 
 The Romans augurs had subtler, more 
 versatile minds. In order to deceive others, 
 they had no need to deceive themselves. 
 In their own set they were not afraid to 
 talk about their secrets, even to make fun 
 of them, being fully confident that they 
 could easily vindicate themselves before 
 outsiders, in case of necessity, and pull a 
 solemn face befitting the occasion. But 
 our writers of to-day, before they can lay 
 their improbable assertions before the public, 
 must inevitably try to be convinced in 
 their own minds. Otherwise they cannot 
 begin. 
 
 49
 
 29 
 
 " The writer is writing away, the reader 
 is reading away " — the writer doesn't care 
 what the reader is after, the reader doesn't 
 care what the writer is about. Such a 
 state of things hurt Schedrin very much. 
 He would have liked it different ; no sooner 
 has the writer said a word, than the reader 
 at once scales the wall. This was his 
 ideal. But the reader is by no means so 
 naive as all that. He prefers to rest easy, 
 and insists that the writer shall climb the 
 wall for him. So those authors succeed 
 with the public who write " with their 
 heart's blood." Conventional tournaments, 
 even the most brilliant, do not attract the 
 masses any more than the connoisseurs. 
 People rush to see a fight of gladiators, 
 where awaits them a scent of real, hot, 
 smoking blood, where they are going to 
 see real, not pretended victims. 
 
 Thus many writers, like gladiators, shed 
 their blood to gratify that modern Caesar, 
 the mob. " Salve, Caesar, morituri te 
 salutant ! " 
 
 Anton Tchekov tells the truth neither 
 out of love or respect for the truth, nor yet 
 because, in the Kantian manner, a high 
 
 50
 
 duty bids him never to tell a lie, even to 
 escape death. Neither has he the impulse 
 which so often pushes young and fiery souls 
 into rashness : that desire to stand erect, 
 to keep the head high. On the contrary, 
 Tchekhov always walks with a stoop, his 
 head bent down, never fixing his eyes on the 
 heavens, since he will read no signs there. 
 If he tells the truth, it is because the most 
 reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even 
 though he swallow it not in the modest 
 doses that idealism offers, but in immoderate 
 quantities, thousand-gallon-barrel gulps. He 
 would taste the bitterness, but it would not 
 make his head turn, as it does Schiller's, or 
 Dostoevsky's, or even Socrates', whose head, 
 as we know, could stand any quantity of 
 wine, but went spinning with the most 
 commonplace lie. 
 
 Noblesse Oblige. — The moment of obliga- 
 tion, compulsion, duty, that moment 
 described by Kant as the essential, almost 
 the only predicate of moral concepts, serves 
 chiefly to indicate that Kant was modest 
 in himself and in his attitude towards all 
 whom he addressed, perceiving in all men 
 beings subject to the ennobling effect of 
 
 51
 
 morality. Nobles sg oblige is a motto not 
 for the aristocracy, which recognises in its 
 privileges its own instant duties, but for 
 the self-made, wealthy parvenues who pant 
 for an illustrious title. They have been 
 accustomed to telling lies, to playing pol- 
 troon, swindling, and meanness, and the 
 necessity for speaking the truth impartially, 
 for bravely facing danger, for freely giving of 
 their fortunes scares them beyond measure. 
 Therefore it is necessary that they should 
 repeat it to themselves and to their children, 
 in whose veins the lying, sneaking blood 
 still runs, hourly, lest they forget : " You 
 must not tell lies, you must be open, mag- 
 nanimous." It is silly, it is incompre- 
 hensible — but " noblesse oblige.^' 
 
 Homo homini lupus is one of the most 
 steadfast maxims of eternal morality. In 
 each of our neighbours we fear a wolf. 
 " This fellow is evil-minded, if he is not 
 restrained by law he will ruin us," so we 
 think every time a man gets out of the rut 
 of sanctified tradition. 
 
 The fear is just. We are so poor, so 
 weak, so easily ruined and destroyed ! How 
 can we help being afraid ! And yet, behind 
 
 52
 
 danger and menace there is usually hidden 
 something significant, which merits our 
 close and sympathetic attention. But fear's 
 eyes are big. We see danger, danger only, 
 we build up a fabric of morality inside which 
 as in a fortress we sit out of danger all our 
 lives. Only poets have undertaken to praise 
 dangerous people — Don Juans, Fausts, 
 Tannhaiisers. But nobody takes the poets 
 seriously. Common-sense values a com- 
 mercial-traveller or a don much more highly 
 than a Byron, a Goethe, or a Moliere. 
 
 33 
 
 The possibilities which open out before 
 
 mankind are sufficiently limited. It is im- 
 possible to see everything, impossible to 
 know everything, impossible to rise too 
 high above the earth, impossible to penetrate 
 too deeply down. What has been is hidden 
 away, what will be we cannot anticipate, 
 and we know for certain that we shall 
 never grow wings. Regularity, immutably 
 regular succession of phenomena puts a 
 term to our efforts, drives us into a regular, 
 narrow, hard-beaten road of everyday 
 life. But even on this road we may not 
 wander from side to side. We must watch 
 our feet, consider each step, since the 
 
 53
 
 moment we are off our guard disaster is 
 upon us. Another life is conceivable, how- 
 ever : life in which the word disaster does 
 not exist, where responsibility for one's 
 actions, even if it be not completely abolish- 
 ed, at least has not such a deadly and 
 accidental weight, and where, on the other 
 hand, there is no " regularity," but rather 
 an infinite number of possibilities. In such 
 a life the sense of fear — most disgraceful 
 to us — disappears. There the virtues are 
 not the same as ours. Fearlessness in face 
 of danger, liberality, even lavishness are 
 considered virtues with us, but they are 
 respected without any grounds. Socrates 
 was quite right when he argued that not 
 all courage, but only the courage which 
 measures beforehand the risks and the 
 chances of victory, is fully justifiable. To 
 the same extent those economical, careful 
 people who condemn lavishness are in the 
 right. Fearlessness and lavishness do not 
 suit mortal men, rather it becomes them 
 to tremble and to count every penny, 
 seeing what a state of poverty and impotence 
 they exist in. That is why these two 
 virtues are so rarely met with, and when 
 they are met, why they arouse such super- 
 stitious reverence in the crowd. " This man 
 
 54
 
 fears nothing and spares nothing : he is 
 probably not a man, but a demi-god, perhaps 
 even a god." Socrates did not believe 
 in gods, so he wanted to justify virtue 
 by reason. Kant also did not believe in 
 God, and therefore he derived his morals 
 from " Law." But if there is God, and all 
 men are the children of God, then we should 
 be afraid of nothing and spare nothing. 
 And then the man who madly dissipates 
 his own life and fortunes, and the lives and 
 fortunes of others, is more right than the 
 calculating philosophers who vainly seek 
 to regulate mankind on earth. 
 
 34 
 Moral people are the most revengeful 
 
 of mankind, they employ their morality 
 as the best and most subtle weapon of ven- 
 geance. They are not satisfied with simply 
 despising and condemning their neighbour 
 themselves, they want the condemnation to 
 be universal and supreme : that is, that 
 all men should rise as one against the con- 
 demned, and that even the o-Qenier's own 
 conscience shall he against him. Then only 
 are they fully satisfied and reassured. 
 Nothing on earth but morality could lead 
 to such wonderful results.
 
 ^5 
 
 Inveterate wickedness. — Heretics were often 
 most bitterly persecuted for their least 
 digression from accepted belief. It was 
 just their obstinacy in trifles that irritated 
 the righteous to madness. " Why can they 
 not yield on so trifling a matter ? They 
 cannot possibly have serious cause for 
 opposition. They only want to grieve us, to 
 spite us." So the hatred mounted up, piles 
 of faggots and torture machines appeared 
 against obdurate wickedness. 
 
 36 
 
 I do not know where I came across the 
 remark, whether in Tolstoy or Turgenev, 
 that those who have been subjected to 
 trial in the courts of justice always acquire 
 a particularly noble expression of face. 
 iUthough logic does so earnestly recommend 
 caution in the forming of contradictory 
 conclusions, come what may I shall for 
 once risk a deduction : a noble expression 
 of face is a sign that a man has been under 
 trial — but certainly not a trial for political 
 crime — for theft or bribe-taking. 
 
 S6
 
 37 
 The most important and significant revela- 
 tions come into the world naked, without 
 a wordy garment. To find words for them 
 is a delicate, difficult business, a whole 
 art. Stupidities and banalities, on the con- 
 trary, appear at once in ready-made apparel, 
 gaudy even if shabby. So that they are 
 ready straight away to be presented to 
 the public. 
 
 A strange impatience has taken possession 
 of Russian writers lately. They are all 
 running a race after the " ultimate words." 
 They have no doubt that the ultimate 
 words will be attained. The question is, 
 who will lay hold of them first. 
 
 39 
 
 The appearance of Socrates on the 
 
 philosophic horizon is hailed by historians 
 as the greatest event. Morals were begin- 
 ning to work loose, Athens was threatened 
 with ruin. Socrates' mission was to put 
 an end to the violent oscillation in moral 
 judgments which extreme individualism 
 on the one hand and the relativism of the 
 sophists on the other had set up. The 
 great teacher did all he could. He gave 
 
 57
 
 up his usual occupations and his family 
 life, he took no thought for the morrow, 
 he taught, taught, taught — simple people or 
 eminent, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned. 
 Notwithstanding, he did not save the 
 country. Under Pericles, Athens flourished 
 without wisdom, or at least independently 
 of Socratic wisdom. After Pericles, in spite 
 of the fact that the Socratic teaching found 
 such a genius as Plato to continue it, Athens 
 steadily declined, and Aristotle is already 
 master to the son of Philip of Macedon. 
 Whence it is obvious that the wisdom of 
 Socrates had not saved the country, and as 
 this had been its chief object, it had failed in 
 its object, and therefore was not worthy of 
 the exaggerated respect it received. It 
 is necessary to find some justification for 
 philosophy other than country-saving. This 
 would be the easiest thing in the world. 
 But altogether we must give up the favourite 
 device of the philosophers, of looking to 
 find in the well-being of society the raison 
 (Tetre of philosophy. At the best, the trick 
 was a risky one. As a rule, wisdom goes 
 one way, society the other. They are 
 artificially connected. It is public orators 
 who have trained both the philosophers 
 and the masses to regard as worthy of 
 
 58
 
 attention only those considerations which 
 have absolutely everything on their side : 
 social utility, morality, even metaphysical 
 wisdom. . . . Why so much ? Is it not 
 sufficient if some new project will prove 
 useful ? Why try to get the sanction of 
 morality and metaphysics ? Nay, once the 
 laws of moraHty are autonomous, and once 
 ideas are allowed to stand above the em- 
 pirical needs of mankind, it is impossible 
 to balance ideas and morality with social 
 requirements, or even with the salvation 
 of the country from ruin. Per eat mundus, 
 fiat philosophia. If Athens was ruined 
 because of philosophy, philosophy is not 
 impugned. So the autonomous thinker 
 should hold. But de facto, a thinker does 
 not like quarrelling with his country. 
 
 When a writer has to express an idea 
 whose foundation he has not been able to 
 establish, and which yet is dear to his heart, 
 so that he earnestly wishes to secure its 
 general acceptance, as a rule he interrupts his 
 exposition, as if to take breath, and makes 
 a small, or at times a serious digression, 
 during which he proves the invalidity of 
 this or that proposition, often without 
 
 59
 
 any reference to his real iheme. Having 
 triumphantly exposed one or more 
 absurdities, and thus acquired the aplomb 
 of a solid expert, he returns to his proper 
 task, calculating that now he will inspire 
 his reader with greater confidence. His 
 calculation is perfectly justified. The reader 
 is afraid to attack such a skilled dialectician, 
 and prefers to agree rather than to risk 
 himself in argument. Not even the greatest 
 intellects, particularly in philosophy, disdain 
 such stratagems. The idealists, for example, 
 before expounding their theories, turn and 
 rend materialism. The materialists, we 
 remember, at one time did the same with 
 the idealists, and achieved a vast success. 
 
 Theories of sequence and consequence 
 are binding only upon the disciples, not 
 upon the masters. Fathers of great ideas 
 tend to be very careless about their progeny, 
 giving very little heed to their future 
 career. The offspring of one and the same 
 philosopher frequently bear such small 
 resemblance to one another, that it is 
 impossible to discern the family connection. 
 Conscientious disciples, wasting away under 
 the arduous effort to discover that which 
 
 60
 
 does nol exist, are brought to despair of 
 their task. Having got an inkling of the 
 truth concerning their difficulty, they give 
 up the job for ever, they cease their attempt 
 at reconciling glaring contradictions. But 
 then they only insist the harder upon the 
 necessity for studying the philosophers, 
 studying them minutely, circumstantially, 
 historically, philologically even. So the 
 history of philosophy is born, which now is 
 taking the place of philosophy. Certainly 
 the history of philosophy may be an exact 
 science, since by means of historical research 
 it is often possible to decide what exactly 
 a certain philosopher did mean, and in 
 what sense he employed his peculiar terms. 
 And seeing that there have been a fair 
 number of philosophers, the business of 
 clearing them all up is a respectable under- 
 taking, and deserves the name of a science. 
 For a good translation or a commentary on 
 the chief works of Kant a man may be given 
 the degree of doctor of philosophy, and 
 henceforth recognised as one who is initiated 
 in the profundities of the secrets of the 
 universe. Then why ever should anybody 
 think out new systems — or even write 
 them ? 
 
 6i
 
 42 
 
 The raptures of creative activity ! — empty 
 words, invented by men who never had an 
 opportunity of judging from their own 
 experience, but who derive their conclusion 
 syllogistically : " if a creation gives us such 
 delight, what must the creator himself 
 experience ! " Usually the creator feels only 
 vexations. Every creation is created out of 
 the Void. At the best, the maker finds 
 himself confronted with a formless, meaning- 
 less, usually obstinate and stiff matter, 
 which yields reluctantly to form. And he 
 does not know how to begin. Every time a 
 new thought is gendered, so often must that 
 new thought, which for the moment seems so 
 brilliant and fascinating, be thrown aside as 
 worthless. Creative activity is a continual 
 progression from failure to failure, and the 
 condition of the creator is usually one of 
 uncertainty, mistrust, and shattered nerves. 
 The more serious and original the task which 
 a man sets himself, the more tormenting 
 is the self-misgiving. For this reason even 
 men of genius cannot keep up the creative 
 activity to the last. As soon as they have 
 acquired their technique, they begin to 
 repeat themselves, well aware that the 
 public willingly endures the monotony of a 
 
 6z
 
 favourite, even finds virtue in it. Every 
 connoisseur of art is satisfied if he recognises 
 in a new work the accepted " manner " of the 
 artist. Few realise that the acquiring of a 
 manner is the beginning of the end. Artists 
 realise well enough, and would be glad to be 
 rid of their manner, which seems to them 
 a hackneyed affair. But this requires too 
 great a strain on their powers, new torments, 
 doubts, new groping. He who has once been 
 through the creative raptures is not easily 
 tempted to try again. He prefers to turn 
 out work according to the pattern he has 
 evolved, calmly and securely, assured of his 
 results. Fortunately no one except himself 
 knows that he is not any longer a creator. 
 What a lot of secrets there are in the world, 
 and how easy it is to keep one's secret safe 
 from indiscreet glances ! 
 
 43 
 A writer works himself up to a pitch of 
 
 ecstasy, otherwise he does not take up his 
 
 pen. But ecstasy is not so easily distinguished 
 
 from other kinds of excitement. And as a 
 
 writer is always in haste to write, he has 
 
 rarely the patience to wait, but at the first 
 
 promptings of animation begins to pour 
 
 himself forth. So in the name of ecstasy we 
 
 63
 
 are oflered suc]\ quantities of banal, by no 
 means ecstatic effusions. Particularly easy 
 it is to confound with ecstasy that very 
 common sort of spring-time liveliness which 
 in our language is well-named calf-rapture. 
 And calf-rapture is much more acceptable to 
 the public than true inspiration or genuine 
 transport. It is easier, more familiar. 
 
 44 
 
 A school axiom : logical scepticism refutes 
 
 itself, since the denial of the possibility of 
 positive knowledge is already an aihrmation. 
 But, in the first place, scepticism is not bound 
 to be logical, for it has no desire whatever to 
 gratify that dogma which raises logic to the 
 position of law. Secondly, where is the 
 philosophic theory which, if carried to its 
 extreme, would not destroy itself ? There- 
 fore, why is more demanded from scepticism 
 than from other systems ? especially from 
 scepticism, which honestly avows that it 
 cannot give that which all other theories 
 claim to give. 
 
 45. 
 
 The Aristotelian logic, which forms the 
 
 chief component in modern logic, arose, as 
 we know, as a result of the permanent 
 controversies which were such sport to the 
 
 64
 
 Greeks. In order to argue, it is indeed 
 necessary to have a common ground ; in 
 other words, to agree about the rules of the 
 game. But in our day dialectic tournaments, 
 like all other bouts of contention, no longer 
 attract people. Thus logic may be relegated 
 to the background. 
 
 In Gogol's Portrait, the artist despairs 
 at the thought that he has sacrificed art for 
 the sake of " life." In Ibsen's drama, 
 When We Dead Awaken, there is also an 
 artist, who has become world-famous, and 
 who repents that he has sacrificed his life — 
 to art. Now, choose — which of the two 
 ways of repentance do you prefer \ 
 
 Mcin is often quite indifferent to success 
 whilst he has it. But once he loses his 
 power over people, he begins to fret. And 
 — vice versa. 
 
 48 . 
 
 Turgenev's Insarov strikes the imagina- 
 tion of Elena because he is a man preparing 
 for battle. She prefers him to Shubin the 
 painter, or to Berseniev the savant. Since 
 
 s 65
 
 ancient days women have looked with favour 
 on warriors rather than on peaceful men. 
 Had Turgenev invested that idea with less 
 glamour, he would probably not have become 
 the ideal of the young. Who does not get a 
 thrill from Elena and her elect ? Who has not 
 felt the fascination of Turgenev's women ! 
 And yet all of them give themselves to the 
 strong male. With such " superior people," as 
 with beasts, the males fight with each other, 
 the woman looks on, and when it is over, she 
 submits herself the slave of the conqueror. 
 
 A caterpillar is transformed into a 
 chrysalis, and for a long time lives in a 
 warm, quiet little world. Perhaps if it had 
 human consciousness it would declare that 
 that world was the best, perhaps the only one 
 possible to live in. But there comes a time 
 when some unknown influence causes the 
 little creature to begin the work of destruc- 
 tion. If other caterpillars could see it how 
 horrified they would be, revolted to the 
 bottom of their soul by the awful work in 
 which the insurgent is engaged. They 
 would call it immoral, godless, they would 
 begin to talk about pessimism, scepticism, and 
 so on. To destroy what has cost such labour 
 
 66
 
 to construct ! Why, what is wrong with 
 this complete, cosy, comfortable little world ? 
 To keep it intact they call to their aid sacred 
 morality and the idealistic theory of know- 
 ledge. Nobody cares that the caterpillar 
 has grown wings, that when it has nibbled its 
 old nest away it will fly out into space — 
 nobody gives a thought to this. 
 
 Wings — that is mysticism ; self-nibbling 
 —this is actuality. Those who are engaged 
 in such actuality deserve torture and execu- 
 tion. And there are plenty of prisons and 
 voluntary hangmen on the bright earth. 
 The majority of books are prisons, and great 
 authors are not bad hangmen. 
 
 Nietzsche and Dostoevsky seem to be 
 typical " inverted simulators," if one may 
 use the expression. They imitated spiritual 
 sanity, although they were spiritually insane. 
 They knew their morbidity well enough, but 
 they exhibited their disease only to that 
 extent where freakishness passes for 
 originality. With the sensitiveness peculiar 
 to all who are in constant danger, they never 
 went beyond the limits. The axe of the 
 guillotine of public opinion hung over them : 
 one awkward move, and the execution 
 
 67
 
 automatically takes place. But they knew 
 how to avoid unwarrantable moves. 
 
 . SI 
 
 The so-called ultimate questions troubled 
 mankind in the world's dawn as badly as they 
 trouble us now. Adam and Eve wanted 
 *' to know," and they plucked the fruit at 
 their risk. Cain, whose sacrifice did not 
 please God, raised his hand against his 
 brother : and it seemed to him he committed 
 murder in the name of justice, in vindication 
 of his own injured rights. Nobody has ever 
 been able to understand why God preferred 
 Abel's sacrifice to that of Cain. In our own 
 day Sallieri repeats Cain's vengeance and 
 poisons his friend and benefactor Mozzart, 
 according to the poem of Poushkin. " All 
 say, there is no justice on earth ; but there is 
 no justice up above : this is as clear to me as 
 a simple scale of music." No man on earth 
 can fail to recognise in these words his own 
 tormenting doubts. The outcome is creative 
 tragedy, which for some mysterious reason 
 has been considered up till now as the highest 
 form of human creation. Everything is 
 being unriddled and explained. If we com- 
 pare our knowledge with that of the ancients, 
 we appear very wise. But we are no nearer 
 
 68
 
 to solving the riddle of eternal justice than 
 Cain was. Progress, civilisation, all the 
 conquests of the human mind have brought 
 us nothing new here. Like our ancestors, 
 we stand still with fright and perplexity 
 before ugliness, disease, misery, senility, 
 death. All that the wise men have been 
 able to do so far is to turn the earthly horrors 
 into problems. We are told that perhaps all 
 that is horrible only appears horrible, that 
 perhaps at the end of the long journey some- 
 thing new awaits us. Perhaps ! But the 
 modern educated man, with the wisdom of 
 all the centuries of mankind at his command, 
 knows no more about it than the old singer 
 who solved universal problems at his own 
 risk. We, the children of a moribund 
 civilisation, we, old men from our birth, in 
 this respect are as young as the first man. 
 
 They say it is impossible to set a bound 
 between the "I" and society. Naivete! 
 Crusoes are to be found not only on desert 
 islands. They are there, in populous cities. 
 It is true they are not clad in skins, they 
 have no dark Fridays in attendance, and so 
 nobody recognises them. But surely Friday 
 and a fur jacket do not make a Crusoe. 
 
 69
 
 Loneliness, desertion, a boundless, shoreless 
 sea, on which no sail hasrisen for tens of years, 
 — do not many of our contemporaries live 
 in such a circumstance ? And are they not 
 Crusoes, to whom the rest of people have 
 become a vague reminiscence, barely dis- 
 tinguishable from a dream ? 
 
 53 
 
 To be irremediably unhappy — this is 
 
 shameful. An irremediably unhappy person 
 is outside the laws of the earth. Any 
 connection between him and society is 
 severed finally. And since, sooner or later, 
 every individual is doomed to irremediable 
 unhappiness, the last word of philosophy is 
 loneliness. 
 
 54 
 " It is better to be an unhappy man, 
 
 than a happy pig." The utilitarians hoped 
 by this golden bridge to get over the chasm 
 which separates them from the promised 
 land of the ideal. But psychology stepped 
 in and rudely interrupted : ^here are no 
 unhappy people^ the unhappy ones are all 
 pigs. Dostoevsky's philosopher of the under- 
 world, Raskolnikov, also Hamlet, and such- 
 like, are not simply unhappy men whose 
 fate might be esteemed, or even preferred 
 
 70
 
 before sorrie happy fates ; they are simply 
 unhappy swine. And they themselves are 
 principally aware of it .... He that hath 
 ears to hear, let him hear. 
 
 55 
 
 If you want people to envy you your 
 sorrow or your shame, look as if ycu were 
 proud of it. If you have only enough of 
 the actor in you, rest assured, you will 
 become the hero of the day. Since the 
 parable of the Pharisee and the publican was 
 uttered, what a lot of people who could 
 not fulfil tlieir sacred duties pretended 
 to be publicans and sinners, and so aroused 
 sympathy, even envy. 
 
 Philosophers dearly love to call their 
 utterances '' truths," since in that guise 
 they become binding upon us all. But 
 each philosopher invents his own truths. 
 Which means that he asks his pupils to 
 deceive themselves in the way he shows, 
 but that he reserves for himself the option 
 of deceiving himself in his own way. Why ? 
 Why not allow everyone to deceive him- 
 self just as he likes ? 
 
 71
 
 r' 
 
 57 
 When Xanthippe poured slops over Soc- 
 rates, as he returned from his philosophical 
 occupations, tradition says that he observed : 
 " After a storm there is always rain.'* 
 Would it not be more worthy (not of the 
 philosopher, but of philosophy) to say : 
 \fter one's philosophical exercise, one 
 feels as if one had had slops emptied over 
 one's head. And therefore Xanthippe did 
 but give outward expression to what had 
 taken place in Socrates' soul. Symbols 
 are not always beautiful. 
 
 S8 
 
 From the notes of an underworld man — 
 " I read little, I write little, and, it seems 
 to me, I think little. He who is ill-disposed 
 towards me will say that this shows a great 
 defect in my character, perhaps he will 
 call me lazy, an Oblomov, and will repeat 
 the copy-book maxim that idleness is the 
 mother of all the vices. A friend, on the 
 other hand, will say it is only a temporary 
 state, that perhaps I am not quite well — 
 in short, he will find random excuses for 
 me, more with the idea of consoling me than 
 of speaking the truth. But for my part, 
 I say let us wait. If it turns out at the end 
 
 72
 
 of my life that I have * done * not less 
 than others — why, then — it will mean that 
 idleness may be a virtue." 
 
 Borne, a contemporary of Heine, was 
 very much offended when his enemies 
 insisted on explaining his misanthropic out- 
 pourings as the result of a stomach and 
 liver disease. It seemed to him much 
 nobler and loftier to be indignant and 
 angry because of the triumph of evil on 
 earth, than because of the disorders of 
 his own physical organs. Sentimentality 
 apart — was he right, and is it really nobler ? 
 
 60 
 
 A real writer disdams to repeat from 
 hearsay events which he has not witnessed. 
 It seems to him tedious and humiliating 
 to tell " in his own words," like a school- 
 boy, things which he has fished out of 
 another man's books. But there — how can 
 we expect him to stoop to such insig- 
 nificance ! 
 
 61 
 
 Whilst conscience stands between the 
 educated and the lower classes, as the only 
 possible mediator, there can be no hope for 
 
 73
 
 mutual understanding. Conscience demands 
 sacrifices, nothing but sacrifices. It says 
 to the educated man : " You are happy, 
 well-off, learned — the people are poor, un- 
 happy, ignorant ; renounce therefore your 
 well-being, or else soothe your conscience 
 with suave speeches." Only he who has 
 nothing to sacrifice, nothing to lose, having 
 lost everything, can hope to approach the 
 people as an equal. 
 
 This is why Dostoevsky and Nietzsche 
 were not afraid to speak in their own name, 
 and did not feel compelled either to stretch 
 up or to stoop down in order to be on a 
 level with men. 
 
 62 
 
 Not to know what you want is considered 
 a shameful weakness. To confess it is 
 to lose for ever not only the reputation of 
 a writer, but even of a man. None the 
 less, " conscience " demands such a con- 
 fession. True, in this case as in most 
 others the demands of conscience are satisfied 
 only when they incur no very dire conse- 
 quences. Leaving aside the fact that people 
 are no longer terrified of the once-so-terrible 
 public opinion (the public has been tamed, 
 it listens with reverence to what is told to 
 
 74
 
 it, and never dares judge) — the admission 
 " I do not know myself what I want " 
 seems to offer a guarantee of something 
 important. Those who know what they 
 want generally want trifles, and attain 
 to inglorious ends : riches, fame, or at 
 the best, progress or a philosophy of their 
 own. Even now it is sometimes not a 
 sin to laugh at such wonders, and may-be 
 the time is coming when a rehabilitated 
 Hamlet will announce, not with shame 
 but with pride : " I don't in the least know 
 what I want." And the crowd will applaud 
 him, for the crowd always applauds heroes 
 and proud men. 
 
 Fear of death is explained conclusively 
 by the desire for self-preservation. But 
 at that rate the fear should disappear in 
 old and sick people, who ought by nature to 
 look with indifference on death. Whereas 
 the horror of death is present in all living 
 things. Does not this suggest that there 
 is still some other reason for the dread, 
 and that even where the pangs of horror 
 cannot save a man from his end, still it is 
 a necessary and purposeful anguish ? The 
 natural-scientific explanation here, as usual, 
 
 75
 
 stops halfway, and fails to lead the human 
 mind to the promised goal. 
 
 ... ^4 
 
 Moral indignation is only a refined form 
 of ancient vengeance. Once anger spoke 
 with daggers, now words will do. And 
 happy is the man who, loving and thirsting to 
 chastise his offender, yet is appeased when 
 the offence is punished. On account of the 
 gratification it offers to the passions,morality^ 
 which has replaced bloody chastisement, 
 will not easily lose its charm. But there 
 are offences, deep, unforgettable offences, 
 inflicted not by people, but by "laws of 
 nature." How are we to settle these ? 
 Here neither dagger nor indignant word will 
 serve. Therefore, for him who has once 
 run foul of the laws of nature morality 
 sinks, for ever or for a time, into subsidiary 
 importance. 
 
 Fatalism frightens people particularly in 
 that form which holds it just to say, of 
 anything that happens, or has happened, or 
 will happen : be it so ! How can one 
 acquiesce in the actuality of life, when it 
 contains so many horrors ? But amor fati 
 does not imply eternal acquiescence in 
 
 76
 
 actuality. It is only a truce, for a more or 
 less lasting period. Time is needed in which 
 to estimate the forces and intentions of the 
 enemy. Under the mask of friendship the 
 old enmity persists, and an awful revenge is 
 in preparation. 
 
 66 
 
 In the " ultimate questions of life " we are 
 not a bit nearer the truth than our ancestors 
 were. Everybody knows it, and yet so 
 many go on talking about infinity, without 
 any hope of ever saying anything. It is 
 evident that a result — in the usual accept- 
 ance of the word — is not necessary. In the 
 very last resort we trust to instinct, even in 
 the field of philosophy, where reason is 
 supposed to reign supreme, uttering its 
 eternal " Why ? " " Why ? " laughs at all 
 possible " becauses." Instinct, however, does 
 not mock. It simply ignores the whys, and 
 leads us by impossible ways to ends that our 
 divine reason would hold absurd, if it could 
 only see them in time. But reason is a 
 laggard, without much foresight, and there- 
 fore, when we have run up to an unexpected 
 conclusion, nothing remains but for reason 
 to accept : or even to justify, to exalt the 
 new event. And therefore, — *' reality is 
 
 77
 
 reasonable," say the philosophers : reason- 
 able, not only when they draw their philo- 
 sophic salaries, as the socialists, and with them 
 our philosopher \ladimir Soloviov, explain; 
 but still reasonable even when philosophers 
 have their maintenance taken away from 
 them. Nay, in the latter case, particularly 
 in the latter case, in spite of the socialists 
 and VI. Soloviov, reality shows herself most 
 reasonable. A philosopher persecuted, 
 
 downtrodden, hungry, cold, receiving no 
 salary, is nearly always an extreme fatalist — 
 although this, of course, by no means hinders 
 him from abusing the existing order. 
 Theories of sequence and consequence, as 
 we already know, are binding only upon 
 disciples, whose single virtue lies in their 
 scrupulous, logical developing of the master's 
 idea. But masters themselves invent ideas, 
 and, therefore, have the right to substitute 
 one for another. The sovereign power which 
 proclaims a law has the same power to 
 abolish it. But the duty of the subordinate 
 consists in the praise, in the consequential 
 interpretation and the strict observance of 
 the dictates of the higher will. 
 
 78
 
 The Pharisee in the parable fulfilled all that 
 religion demanded of him : kept his fasts, 
 paid his tithes, etc. Had he a right to be 
 pleased with his own piety, and to despise the 
 erring publican ? Everybody thought so, 
 including the Pharisee himself. 7he judg- 
 ment of Christ came as the greatest surprise to 
 him. He had a clear conscience. He did not 
 merely pretend before others to be righteous, 
 he himself believed in his own righteousness. 
 And suddenly he turns out guilty, awfully 
 guilty. But if the conscience of a righteous 
 man does not help him to distinguish between 
 good and evil, how is he to avoid sin ? What 
 does Kant's moral law mean, that law which 
 was as consoling as the starry sky ? Kant 
 lived his life in profound peace of soul, he 
 met his death quietly, in the consciousness 
 of his own purity. But if Christ came again, 
 he might condemn the serene philosopher for 
 his very serenity. For the Pharisee, we 
 repeat, was righteous, if purity of inten- 
 tions, together with a firm readiness to fulfil 
 everything which appears to him in the light 
 of duty, be righteousness in a man. 
 
 79
 
 68 
 We jeer and laugh at a man not because he 
 is ridiculous, but because we want to have a 
 laugh out of him. In the same way we are 
 indignant, not because this or the other act 
 is revolting to us, but because we want to let 
 off our steam. But it does not follow from 
 this that we ought always to be calm and 
 smooth. Woe to him who would try to 
 realise the ideal of justice on earth. 
 
 We think with peculiar intensity during 
 the hard moments of our life — we write when 
 we have nothing else to do. So that a writer 
 can only communicate something of import- 
 ance in reproducing the past. When we are 
 driven to think, we have unfortunately no 
 mind to write, which accounts for the fact 
 that books are never more than a feeble echo 
 of what a man has gone through. 
 
 70 
 Tchekhov has a story called Misfortune 
 which well illustrates the difficulty a man 
 finds in adapting himself to a new truth, if 
 this truth threaten the security of his 
 condition. The Merchant Avdeyer does not 
 believe that he is condemned, that he has 
 
 80
 
 been brought to trial, and tried, and found 
 guilty, for his irregularities in a public bank. 
 He still thinks the verdict is yet to come — he 
 still waits. In the world of learning some- 
 thing like this is happening. The educated 
 have become so accustomed to think them- 
 selves not guilty, perfectly in the right, that 
 they do not admit for a moment even now 
 that they are brought to court. When 
 threatening voices reach them, calling them 
 to give an account of themselves, they only 
 suspiciously shrug their shoulders. " All this 
 will pass away " — they think. Well, when 
 at last they are convinced that misfortune 
 has befallen them, they will probably begin 
 to justify themselves, like Avdeyer, declaring 
 that they cannot even read printed matter 
 sufficiently .well. As yet, they pass for 
 respectable, wise, experienced, omniscient 
 men. 
 
 71 
 If a man had come to Dostoevsky and said 
 
 to him, " I am hopelessly unhappy," the 
 
 great artist in human misery would probably, 
 
 at the bottom of his soul, have laughed at 
 
 the naivete of the poor creature. May one 
 
 confess such things of oneself ? May one go 
 
 to such lengths of complaint, and still expect 
 
 consolation from his neighbour ? 
 
 81
 
 Hopelessness is the most solemn and 
 supreme moment in life. Till that point we 
 have been assisted — now we are left to our- 
 selves. Previously we had to do with men 
 and human laws — now with eternity, and 
 with the complete absence of laws. Is it not 
 obvious ? 
 
 Byelinsky, in his famous letter, accuses 
 Gogol, among other things, that in his 
 Correspondence with Friends ^ he, Gogol, 
 succumbs to the fear of death, of devils, and 
 of hell. I find the accusation just : Gogol 
 definitely feared death, demons, and hell. 
 The point is, whether it is not right to fear 
 these things, and whether fearlessness would 
 be a proof of the high development of a 
 man's soul. Schopenhauer asserts that 
 death inspired philosophy. All the best 
 poetry, all the wonderful mythology of the 
 ancients and of modern peoples have for 
 their source the fear of death. Only modern 
 science forbids men to fear, and insists on a 
 tranquil attitude towards death. So we 
 arrive at utilitarianism and the positivist 
 philosophy. If you wish to be rid of both 
 these creeds you must be allowed to think 
 again of death, and without shame to fear 
 hell and its devils. It may be there is really 
 
 8z
 
 a certain justification for concealing fears of 
 such kind : in the abiHty to conceal one's 
 agitation at moments of great danger there 
 is a true beauty. But to deaden human 
 sensitiveness and to keep the human intelli- 
 gence within the bounds of perception, such 
 a task can have charms only for a petty 
 creature. Happily, mankind has no means 
 by which to perform.on itself such monstrous 
 castration. Persecuted Eros, it is true, has 
 hidden himself from the eyes of his enemies, 
 but he has never abjured himself ; and even 
 the strictest mediaeval monks could not 
 completely tear out their hearts from their 
 breasts. Similarly with the aspiration 
 towards the infinite : science persecuted it 
 and put a veto on it. But laboratory 
 workers themselves, sooner or later, recover 
 their senses, and thirstily long to get out of 
 the enclosure of positive knowledge, with 
 that same thirsty longing that tortured the 
 monks who wanted to get out of the enclosure 
 of monastery walls. 
 
 73 
 If fate — and they say there is such a law — 
 
 punishes criminals, it has its penalty also for 
 
 the lovers of good. The former it throttles, 
 
 the latter it spits upon. The former end in 
 
 bitter torment, the latter — in ignominy. 
 
 83
 
 74 
 
 Philosophy has always loved to occupy 
 the position of a servant. In the Middle 
 Ages she was the ancilla theologiie, nowadays 
 she waits on science. At the same time she 
 calls herself the science of sciences. 
 
 75 
 I wonder which more effectually makes a 
 
 man rush forwards without looking back : 
 
 the knowledge that behind him hovers the 
 
 head of Medusa, with horrible snakes, ready 
 
 to turn him into stone ; or the certainty that 
 
 in the rear lies the unchangeable order laid 
 
 down by the law of causality and by modern 
 
 science. Judging from what we see, judging 
 
 from the degree of tension which human 
 
 .thought has reached to-day, it would seem 
 
 that the head of Medusa is less terrible than 
 
 the law of causality. In order to escape the 
 
 latter, man will face anything. Rather than 
 
 return to the bosom of scientific cause and 
 
 effect, he embraces madness : not that fine 
 
 frenzy of madness which spends itself in 
 
 fiery speeches, but technical madness, for 
 
 which one is stowed away in a lunatic 
 
 asylum. 
 
 84
 
 76. . 
 
 *' To experience a feeling of joy or sorrow, 
 of triumph or despair, ennui or happiness, 
 and so on, without having sufficient cause 
 for such feeling, is an unfailing sign of mental 
 disease . . . ." One of the modern truths 
 which is seeing its last days. 
 
 77 
 Count Tolstoy's German biographer 
 
 regrets the constant misunderstanding and 
 quarrels which took place between Tolstoy 
 and Turgenev. He reminds us of Goethe 
 and Schiller, and thinks that Russian 
 literature would have gained a great deal if 
 the two remarkable Russian writers had been 
 more pacific, had remained on constantly 
 friendly terms with one another, and 
 bequeathed to posterity a couple of volumes 
 of letters dealing with literary and philo- 
 sophic subjects. It might have been very 
 nice — but I refuse to imagine Tolstoy and 
 Turgenev keeping up a long, peaceful corre- 
 spondence, particularly on high subjects. 
 Nearly every one of Turgenev's opinions 
 drove Tolstoy to madness, or was capable of 
 so driving him. Dostoevsky's dislike of Tur- 
 genev was even stronger than Tolstoy's ; he 
 wrote of him very spitefully and offensively, 
 
 8s
 
 libelling him rather than drawing a cari- 
 cature. Evidently Dostoevsky, like Tolstoy, 
 detested the " European " in their confrere. 
 But here he was mistaken, in spite of his 
 psychological acuteness. To Dostoevsky, it 
 was enough that Turgenev wore European 
 clothes and tried to appear like a westerner. 
 He himself did the opposite : he tried to get 
 rid of every trace of Europeanism from him- 
 self, apparently without great success, since 
 he failed to make clear to himself wherein 
 lay the strength of Europe, and where her 
 sting. Nevertheless, the late Mikhailovsky 
 is not wrong in calling Dostoevsky a seeker 
 of buried treasure. Surely, in the second 
 half of his literary activity Dostoevsky no 
 longer sought for the real fruits of life. There 
 awoke in him the Russian, the elemental 
 man, with a thirst for the miraculous. 
 Compared with what he wanted, the fruits of 
 European civilisation seemed to him trivial, 
 flat, insipid. The agelong civilisation of his 
 neighbours told him that there never had 
 been a miracle, and never would be. But all 
 his being, not yet broken-in by civilisation, 
 craved for the stupendous unknown. There- 
 fore, the apparently-satisfied progressivist 
 enraged him. Tolstoy once said of Turgenev : 
 *' I hate his democratic backside." Dostoev- 
 
 86
 
 sky might have repeated these words . . . 
 And now, for the gratification of the German 
 critic, please reconcile the Russian writers 
 and make them talk serenely on high-flown 
 matters! Dostoevsky was within a hair's- 
 breath of a quarrel with Tolstoy, with whom, 
 not long before death interrupted him, he 
 began a long controversy concerning " Anna 
 Karenina." Even Tolstoy seemed to him too 
 compliant, too accommodating. 
 
 78. 
 
 We rarely make a display of that which 
 is dear to us, near and dear and necessary. 
 On the other hand, we readily exhibit that 
 which is of no importance to us — there is 
 nothing else to be done with it. A man 
 takes his mistress to the theatre and sticks 
 her in full view of ever)^body ; he prefers to 
 remain at home with the woman he loves, or 
 to go about with her quietly, unnoticed. 
 So with our " Virtues." Every time we 
 notice in ourselves some quality we do not 
 prize we haste to make a show of it, thinking 
 perhaps that someone would be glad of it. 
 If it wins us approval, we are pleased — so 
 there is some gain. To an actor, a writer, or 
 an orator, his own anticfe, without which he 
 can have no success with the public, are often 
 
 87
 
 disgusting. And yet his knack of making 
 such antics he considers a talent, a divine 
 gift, and he would rather die than that it 
 should be lost to the public. Talent, on the 
 whole, is accounted a divine gift, only because 
 it is always on show, because it serves the 
 public in some way or other. All our. judg- 
 ments are permeated through and through 
 with utilitarianism, and were we to attempt 
 to purify them from this adulteration what 
 would remain of modern philosophy ? That is 
 why youngish, inexperienced writers usually 
 believe in harmonia prcestabilitata, even 
 though they have never heard of Leibnitz. 
 They persuade them.selves that there is no 
 breach between egoistic and idealistic aspira- 
 tions ; that, for instance, thirst for fame 
 and desire to serve mankind are one and the 
 same thing. Such a persuasion is usually 
 very tenacious of life, and lasts long in men 
 of vigorous and courageous mind. It seems 
 to me that Poushkin would not have lost it, 
 even had he lived to a prolonged old age. 
 It was also part of Turgenev's belief — if a 
 man of his spiritual fibre could have any 
 belief. Tolstoy now believed, and now 
 disbelieved, according to the work he had in 
 hand. When he had other people's ideas to 
 destroy he doubted the identity of egoistic 
 
 88
 
 and idealist aspirations ; when he had his 
 own to defend, he believed in it. Which is a 
 line of conduct worthy of attention, and 
 supremely worthy of imitation ; for human 
 truths are proper exclusively for ancillary 
 purposes . . . 
 
 79 
 
 Man is such a conservative creature that 
 
 any change, even a change for the better, 
 scares him, he prefers the bad old way to the 
 new good one. A man who has been all 
 his life a confirmed materialist would not 
 consent to believe that the soul was immortal, 
 not if it were proved to him more geometrico, 
 and not if he were a constitutional coward, 
 fearing death like Shakespeare's Falstaff. 
 Then we must take human conceit into 
 account. Men do not like to admit them- 
 selves wrong. It is absurd, but it is so. 
 Men, trivial, wretched creatures, proved by 
 history and by every common event to be 
 bunglers, yet must needs consider them- 
 selves infallible, omniscient. What for ? 
 Why not admit their ignorance flatly and 
 frankly ? True, it is easier said than done. 
 But why should slavish intellect, in spite of 
 our desire to be straightforward, deck us out 
 with would-be truths, of which we cannot 
 divest ourselves even when we know their 
 
 89
 
 flimsiness. Socrates wanted to think that he 
 knew nothing — but he could not bring it off. 
 He most absorbedly believed in his own 
 knowledge ; nothing could be '' truth," 
 except his teaching ; he accepted the decree 
 of the oracle, and sincerely esteemed himself 
 the wisest of men. And so it will be, as long 
 as philosophers feel it their duty to teach and 
 to save their neighbours. If a man wants 
 to help people, he is bound to become a liar. 
 We should undertake doubt seriously, not 
 in order to return at length to established 
 beliefs, for that would be a vicious circle. 
 Experience shows us that such a process, 
 certainly in the development of ultimate 
 questions, only leads from error to error ; 
 we should doubt so that doubt becomes a 
 continuous creative force, inspiring the very 
 essence of our life. For established know- 
 ledge argues in us a condition of imperfect 
 receptivity. The weak, flabby spirit can- 
 not bear quick, ceaseless change. It must 
 look round, it must have time to gather its 
 wits, and so it must undergo the same 
 experience time after time. It needs the 
 support and the security of habit. But the 
 well-grown soul despises your crutches. He 
 is tired of crawling on his own cabbage 
 patch, he tears himself away from his own 
 
 90
 
 " native " soil, and takes himself off into 
 the far distances, braving the infinitude of 
 space. Surely everybody knows v/e are not 
 to live in the world for ever. But cowardice 
 prevents one straightforward admitting of it, 
 we keep it close till there is an occasion to 
 air it as a truism. Only when misfortune, 
 disease, old age come upon us, then the dread 
 fear of departure walks with us like our own 
 skeleton. We cannot dismiss him. At 
 length, involuntarily, we begin to examine 
 our gruesome companion with curiosity. 
 And then, strangely enough, we observe that 
 he not only tortures us, but, keeping pace 
 with us, he has begun to gnaw through all 
 the threads that bind us to the old existence. 
 At moments it seems as if, a few more threads 
 gone, nothing, nothing will remain to hold us 
 back, the eternal dream of crawling man will 
 be fulfilled, we shall be released from the 
 bonds, we shall betake ourselves in liberty 
 to regions far from this damned vale of 
 earth. ... 
 
 80 
 Moralists are abused because they offer us 
 " moral consolations." This is not quite 
 fair. Moralists would joyfully substitute 
 palpable blessings for their abstract gifts, if 
 they could. When he was young, Tolstoy 
 
 91 
 
 /
 
 wanted to make men happy ; when he was 
 old, and knew he could not make them happy, 
 he began to preach renunciation, resignation, 
 and so forth. And how angry he got when 
 people wouldn't have his teaching ! But 
 if, instead of foisting his doctrines off on us 
 as the solution of the ultimate problems, 
 and as optimism, he had only spoken of the 
 impossibility of finding satisfactory answers, 
 and have offered himself as a pessimist, he 
 would probably have obtained a much more 
 willing hearing. Now he is annoying, 
 because, finding himself unable to relieve his 
 neighbours, he turns to them and insists 
 that they shall consider themselves relieved 
 by him, nay, even made happy by him. To 
 which many will not agree : for why should 
 they voluntarily renounce their rights ? 
 Since although, God knows, the right of 
 quarrelling with one's fate, and cursing it, is 
 not a very grand right, still, it is a right . . . 
 
 8i 
 Ivanov, in Tchekhov's drama of that 
 name, compares himself to an overstrained 
 labourer. The labourer dies, so that all 
 that remains to Ivanov is to die. But 
 logic, as you know, recommends great 
 caution in coming to conclusions by analogy. 
 
 92
 
 Behold Tchekhov himself, who, as far as 
 we can judge, had endured in his own soul 
 all the tragedy, just as Ivanov had, did not 
 die or think of dying, or even turn out a 
 wasted man. He is doing something, he 
 struggles, he seeks, his work seems important 
 and considerable to us, just like other 
 human works. Ivanov shot himself because 
 the drama must end, while Tchekhov had 
 not yet finished his own struggle. Our 
 aesthetics demand that the drama must 
 have a climax and a finale : though we have 
 abandoned the Aristotelian unities. Given 
 a little more time, however, dramatic 
 writers will have got rid of this restriction 
 also. They will frankly confess that they 
 do not know how, or with what event to 
 end their dramas. Stories have already 
 learnt to dispense with an ending. 
 
 82 
 More of the same. — Ivanov says : *' Now, 
 where is my salvation ? In what ? If an 
 intelligent, educated, healthy man for no 
 discoverable reason sets up a Lazarus lament 
 and starts to roll down an inclined plane, then 
 he is rolling without resisting, and there is 
 no salvation for him." One way out would 
 be to accept the inclined plane and the 
 
 93
 
 gathering impetus as normal. Even further, 
 one might find in the rolling descent a proof 
 of one's spiritual superiority to other men. 
 Of course in such a case one should go apart 
 from the rest, not court young girls or 
 fraternise with those who are living the 
 ordinary life, but be alone. "Love is 
 nonsense, caresses maudlin, work is meaning- 
 less, and song and fiery speeches are banal, 
 played-out," continued Ivanov. To young 
 Sasha these words are horrible, — but Ivanov 
 will be responsible for them. He is already 
 responsible for them. That he is tottering 
 is nothing : it is still full early for him to 
 shoot himself. He will live whilst his 
 creator, Tchekhov, lives. And we shall 
 listen to the shaky, vacillating philosophy. 
 We are so sick of symmetry and harmony 
 and finality, sick as we are of bourgeois 
 self-complacency, 
 
 83 
 
 It will be seen from the above that 
 already in Ivanov^ one of his early 
 works, Tchekhov has assumed the role of 
 advocatus diaboli. Wherever Ivanov appears 
 he brings ruin and destruction. It is true, 
 Tchekhov hesitates to take his side openly, 
 and evidently does not know what to do 
 
 94
 
 with his hero, so that in the end he shakes 
 him off, so to speak, he washes his hands 
 of him in the accepted fashion : Ivanov 
 shoots himself in the sight of everybody, 
 has not even time to go discreetly into a 
 corner. The only justification of Ivaiiov 
 is that caricature of honesty, Doctor Lvov. 
 Lvov is not a living figure — that is obvious. 
 But this is why he is remarkable. It is 
 remarkable that Tchekhov should deem it 
 necessary to resurrect the forgotten Staro- 
 doum, that utterer of truisms in Fon-Visin's 
 comedy ; and to resurrect him no longer 
 that people may bow their heads before the 
 incarnation of virtue, but so that they shall 
 jeer at him. Look at Doctor Lvov ! Is he 
 not Starodoum alive again f He is honesty 
 personified. From force of old habit, 
 honesty sticks his chest out, and speaks in 
 a loud voice, with imperious tone, and yet 
 not one of this old loyal subjects gives a 
 brass farthing for him. They don't even 
 trouble to gibe at him, but spit on him and 
 shove him through the door, as a disgusting 
 and impudent toady. Poor honesty ! What 
 has he sunk to ! Evidently virtues, like 
 everything else, should not live too long on 
 
 earth. 
 
 Tchekhov's " Uncle Vanya " is waiting 
 
 95
 
 to throw himself on the neck of his friend 
 and rival, the doctor, throw himself on his 
 neck and sob there like a little child. But 
 he finds that the doctor himself has an 
 unquenchable thirst for consolation and 
 encouragement, whilst poor Sonia can bear 
 her maiden sorrows no longer. They all 
 go wandering round with big, lost eyes, 
 looking for someone to relieve them from 
 part of their woes, at least. And lo, every- 
 body is in the same street as themselves. 
 All are over-heavy-laden, not one can carry 
 his own burden, let alone give a lift to 
 another's. The last consolation is taken 
 away. It is no use complaining : there is no 
 sympathetic response. On all faces the 
 same expression of hopelessness and despair. 
 Each must bear his cross in silence. None 
 may weep nor utter pitiful cries — it would be 
 uncalled-for and indecent. When Uncle 
 Vanya, who has not realised at once the 
 extremity of his situation, begins to cry 
 out : " My life's a waste ! " nobody wants 
 to listen to him. " Waste, waste ! Every- 
 body knows it's a waste ! Shut your 
 mouth, howling won't help you : neither 
 will pistol-shots solve anything. Everyone 
 of us might start your cry — but we don't, 
 neither do we shout : 
 
 96
 
 — I'ou think ni weep ; 
 No, ril not weep : I have full cause of weeping. 
 But this heart shall break into a hundred 
 
 thousand flaws. 
 Or ere Pll weep ; Fool, I shall go mad.^^ 
 
 Gradually there settles down a dreadful, 
 eternal silence of the cemetery. All go 
 mad, without words, they realise what is 
 happening within them, and make up their 
 minds for the last shift : to hide their 
 grief for ever from men, and to speak in 
 commonplace, trivial words which will be 
 accepted as sensible, serious, and even lofty 
 expressions. No longer will anyone cry : 
 " Life is a waste," and intrude his feelings 
 on his neighbours. Everybody knows that 
 it is shameful for one's life to be a waste, 
 and that this shame should be hidden from 
 every eye. The last law on earth is — 
 loneliness .... 
 
 Resigne-toi, mon cceur, dors ton sommeil 
 de brute ! 
 
 Groundless assumptions. — " Based on 
 nothing," because they seem to derive from 
 common assumption of the reasonableness 
 of human existence, which assumption surely 
 is the child of our desires, and probably a 
 
 « 97
 
 bastard at that ..... In his Miserly 
 Knight Poushkin represented a miser as a 
 romantic figure. Gogol, with his Plyushkin, 
 creates on the contrary a repulsive figure of 
 a miser. Gogol was nearer to reaHty, A 
 miser is ugly, whatever view you take of 
 him — inward or outward. Yet Gogol ought 
 not to teach people to preserve in their age 
 the ideals of their youth. Once old age 
 is upon us — it must not be improved upon, 
 much less apologised for. It must be 
 accepted, and its essence brought to light. 
 Plyushkin, the vulgar, dirty maniac is 
 disgusting — but who knows ? perhaps he is 
 fulfilling the serious mission of his own 
 being. He is possessed by one desire — to 
 everything else, to all happenings in the 
 outer world he is indifferent. It is the same 
 to him whether he is hungry or full, warm or 
 cold, clean or dirty. Practically no event 
 can distract his attention from his single 
 purpose. He is disinterestedly mean, if 
 one may say so. He has no need for his 
 riches. He lets them rot in a disgusting 
 heap, and does not dream, like Poushkin's 
 knight, of palaces and power, or of sportive 
 nymphs. Upon what end is he concentrated ? 
 No one has tlie time to think it out. At the 
 sight of Plyushkin everyone recalls the 
 
 98
 
 damage the miser has done. Everyone of 
 course is right : Plyushkins, who heap up 
 fortunes to let them rot, are very harmful. 
 The social judgment is nearly always to the 
 point. But not quite always. It won't 
 hurt morals and social considerations if at 
 times they have to hold their tongue — and 
 at such times we might succeed in guessing 
 the riddle of meanness, sordidness, old age. 
 
 86 
 
 We have sufficient grounds for taking life 
 mistrustfully : it has defrauded us so often 
 of our cherished expectations. But we have 
 still stronger grounds for mistrusting reason : 
 since if life deceived us, it was only because 
 futile reason let herself be deceived. Per- 
 haps reason herself invented the deception, 
 and then to serve her own ambitious ends, 
 thre.v the blame on life, so that life 
 shall appear sick-headed. But if we have 
 to choose between life and reason, we choose 
 life, and then we no longer need try to foresee 
 and to explain, we can wait, and accept all 
 that is unalterable as part of the game. 
 And thus Nietzsche, having realised that 
 all his hopes had gradually crumbled, and 
 that he could never get back to his former 
 strength, but must grow worse and worse 
 
 99
 
 every day, wrote in a private letter of May 
 28, 1883: ^^ Ich will es so schwer haben, 
 wie nuT irgend ein Mensch es hat ; erst 
 unter diesem Drucke gewinne ich das gute 
 Gewissen dafur, etzvas zu besitzen, das wenige 
 Menschen haben und gehabt haben : Fliigel, 
 um im Gleichnisse zu reden.''^ In these 
 few simple words lies the key to the philo- 
 sophy of Nietzsche. 
 
 " So long as Apollo calls him not to the 
 sacred offering, of all the trifling children 
 of men the most trifling perhaps is the 
 poet." Put Poushkin's expression into 
 plain language, and you will get a page 
 on neuropathology. All neurasthenic indi- 
 viduals sink from a state of extreme excita- 
 tion to one of complete prostration. Poets 
 too : and they are proud of it. 
 
 88 
 Shy people usually receive their impres- 
 sions post-dated. During those moments 
 when an event is taking place before their 
 eyes, they can see nothing, only later on, 
 having evoked from their memory a frag- 
 ment of what happened, they make for 
 themselves an impression of the whole scene. 
 
 100
 
 And then, retrospectively arise in their soul 
 feelings of pity, offence, surprise, so vivid, 
 as if they were the flames of the instant 
 moment, not rekindlings from the past. 
 Thus shy people always think a great deal, 
 and are always too late for their work. It 
 is never too late for thought. Timid before 
 others, they reach great heights of daring 
 when alone. They are bad speakers — but 
 often excellent writers. Their life is insigni- 
 ficant and tedious, they are not noticed, — 
 until they become famous. And by the 
 time fame comes, they do not need popular 
 attention any more. 
 
 89 
 
 If Tchekhov's Layevsky, in 7he Duel^ 
 had been a writer with a literary talent, 
 people would have said of him that he was 
 original, and that he was engaged in the 
 study of the " mysticism of sex," like 
 Gabriele D'Annunzio for example ; whereas, 
 as he stands, he is only banal. His idleness 
 is a reproach to him : people would prefer 
 that at least he should copy out extracts 
 from documents. 
 
 loi
 
 . 90 . 
 
 From observations on children. — Egoism 
 
 in a man strikes us unpleasantly because it 
 betrays our poverty. " I cannot dole out 
 my abundance to my neighbour, for if I 
 do I myself shall be left with little." We 
 should like to be able to scatter riches with 
 a royal hand ; and, therefore, when we see 
 someone else clutching his rags with the 
 phrase, " property is sacred," we are hurt. 
 What is sacred comes from the gods, and 
 the gods have plenty of everything, they 
 do not count and skimp, like mortals. 
 
 91 
 
 We see a man repent for his actions, and 
 
 conclude that such actions should be 
 avoided : an instance of false, but apparently 
 irreproachable reasoning. Time passes, and 
 we see the same man repenting again of the 
 self-same acts. If we love logic, this will 
 confirm us in our first conclusion. But if 
 we do not care for logic, we shall say : man 
 is under an equal necessity to commit these 
 acts, and to repent of them. Sometimes, 
 however, the first conclusion is corrected 
 differently. Having decided that repent- 
 ance proves that a certain course of action 
 should be avoided, man avoids it all his 
 
 102
 
 life ; only to realise in the end, suddenly, 
 with extraordinary clarity, how bitter is his 
 regret that he has not trodden the for- 
 bidden course. But by this time a new 
 conclusion is already useless. Life is over, 
 and the newly-enlightened mind no longer 
 knows how to rid itself of the superfluous 
 light. 
 
 92 
 A version of one of the scenes of Tolstoy's 
 Power of Darkness reminds us exactly of 
 a one-act piece of Maeterlinck. There can 
 be no question of imitation. When the 
 Power of Darkness was written nobody had 
 heard of Maeterlinck. Tolstoy evidently 
 Avanted to try a new method of creating, 
 and to get rid of his own manner, which 
 he had evolved through tens of years of 
 dogged labour. But the risk was too great. 
 He preferred to cure himself of his doubts 
 by the common expedient, manual toil 
 and an outdoor life. So he took up the 
 plough. 
 
 Every woodcock praises its own fen ; 
 Lermontov saw the sign of spiritual pre- 
 eminence in dazzling white linen, and there- 
 fore his heroes always dressed with taste. 
 Dostoevsky, on the other hand, despised 
 
 103
 
 show : Dmitri Karamazov wears dirty 
 linen — and this is assigned to him as a merit, 
 or almost a merit. 
 
 94 
 
 While he was yet young, when he wrote 
 
 his story, Enough, Turgenev saw that some- 
 thing terrible hung over his life. He saw, 
 but did not get frightened, although he 
 understood that in time he ought to become 
 frightened, because life without a continual 
 inner disturbance would have no meaning 
 for him. 
 
 95 
 
 Napoleon is reputed to have had a 
 
 profound insight into the human soul ; 
 Shakespeare also. And their vision has 
 nothing in common. 
 
 .96. . 
 
 What we call imagination, which we 
 value so highly in great poets — is, essentially, 
 unbridled, loose, or if you will, even per- 
 verted mentality. In ordinary mortals we 
 call it vice ; but to the poets everything is 
 forgiven on account of the benefit and 
 pleasure we derive from their works. In 
 spite of our high-flown theories we have 
 always been extremely practical, great 
 
 104
 
 utilitarians. Two-and-a-half-thousand years 
 went by before Tolstoy got up, and, in his 
 turn, offered the poets their choice : either 
 to be virtuous, or to stop creating and forfeit 
 the fame of teachers. If Tolstoy did not 
 make a laughing-stock of himself, he has 
 to thank his grey hairs and the respect 
 which was felt for his past. Anyhow, 
 nobody took him seriously. Far from it ; for 
 never yet did poets feel so free from the 
 shackles of morality as they do now. If 
 Schiller were writing his dramas and philo- 
 sophic essays to-day, he would scarcely find 
 a reader. In Tolstoy himself it is not so 
 much his virtues as his vices which we find 
 interesting. We begin to understand his 
 works, not so much in the light of his 
 striving after ideals, but from the standpoint 
 of that incongruity which existed between 
 the ideas he artificially imposed upon him- 
 self, and the demands of his own non- 
 virtuous soul, which struggled ever for 
 liberty. Nicolenka Irtenyev, in Childhood 
 and 2'outh, would sit for hours on the terrace, 
 turning over in his mind his elder brother 
 Volodya's love-making with the chamber- 
 maids. But, although he desired it '* more 
 than anything on earih^^ he could never 
 bring himself to be like Volodya. The maid 
 
 105
 
 said to the elder brother, *' Why doesn't 
 Nicolai Petrovitch ever come here and have 
 a lark ? " She did not know that Nicolai 
 Petrovitch was sitting at that moment 
 under the stairs, ready to give anything on 
 earth to take the place of the scamp Volodya. 
 " Everything on earth " is twice repeated. 
 Tolstoy gives a psychological explanation 
 of his Httle hero's conduct. " I was timid 
 by nature," Nicolenka tells us, " but my 
 shyness was increased by the conviction 
 of my ugliness." Ugliness, the conscious- 
 ness of one's ugliness, leads to shyness ! 
 What good can there be in virtue which has 
 such a suspicious origin ? And how can 
 the morality of Tolstoy's heroes be trusted f 
 Consciousness of one's ugHness begets shy- 
 ness, shyness drives the passions inwards 
 and allows them no natural outlet. Little 
 by little there develops a monstrous dis- 
 crepancy between the imagination and its 
 desires, on the one hand, and the power to 
 satisfy these desires, on the other. Per- 
 manent hunger, and a contracted alimentary 
 canal, which does not pass the food through. 
 Hence the hatred of the imagination, with 
 its unrealised and unrealisable cravings. . , . 
 In our day no one has scourged love so 
 cruelly as Tolstoy in Pozver of Darkness, 
 
 io6
 
 But the feats of the village Don Juan need 
 not necessarily end in tragedy. " More 
 than anything on earth," however, Tolstoy 
 hates the Don Juans, the handsome, brave, 
 successful, the self-confident, who spon- 
 taneously act upon suggestion, the con- 
 querors of women, who stretch out their 
 hands to living statues cold as stone. As 
 far as ever he can he has his revenge on 
 them in his writing. 
 
 97 
 In the drama of the future the whole 
 
 presentation will be different. First of all, 
 the difficulties of the denouement will be 
 set aside. The new hero has a past — 
 reminiscent — but no present ; neither wife, 
 nor sweetheart, nor friends, nor occupation. 
 He is alone, he communes only with himself 
 or with imaginary listeners. He lives a 
 life apart. So that the stage will represent 
 either a desert island or a room in a large 
 densely-populated city, where among millions 
 of inhabitants one can live alone as on a 
 desert island. The hero must not return 
 to people and to social ideals. He must go 
 forward to loneliness, to absolute loneliness. 
 Even now nobody, looking at Gogol's 
 Plyushkin, will feel any more the slightest 
 
 107
 
 response to the pathetic appeal for men to 
 preserve the ideals of youth on into old 
 age. Modern youths go to see Plyushkin, 
 not for the sake of laughing at him or of 
 benefiting from the warning which his 
 terrible miserly figure offers them, but in 
 order to see if there may not be some few 
 little pearls there where they could be least 
 expected, in the midst of his heap of dirt. 
 . . . Lycurgus succeeded in fixing the 
 Spartans like cement for some centuries 
 — but after that came the thaw, and all 
 their hardness melted. The last remains 
 of the petrified Doric art are now removed 
 to museums. ... Is something happen- 
 ing ? 
 
 If I sow not in the spring, in autumn I 
 shall eat no bread. Every day brings 
 troubles and worries enough for poor, weak 
 man. He had to forget his work for a 
 moment, and now he is lost : he will die 
 of hunger or cold. In order merely to 
 preserve our existence we have to strain 
 mind and body to tne utmost : nay more, 
 we have to think of the surrounding world 
 exclusively with a view to gaining a liveli- 
 hood from it. There is no time to think 
 about truth ! This is why positivism was 
 
 108
 
 invented, with its theory of natural develop- 
 ment. Really, everything we see is 
 mysterious and incomprehensible. A tiny 
 midge and a huge elephant, a caressing 
 breeze and a blizzard, a young tree and a 
 rocky mountain — what are all these ? What 
 are they, why are they ? we incessantly 
 ask ourselves, but we may not speak out. 
 For philosophy is ever pushed aside to 
 make room for the daily needs. Only 
 those think who are unable to trouble 
 about self-preservation, or who will not 
 trouble, or who are too careless : that is, 
 sick, desperate, or lazy people. These return 
 to the riddle which workaday men, confirmed 
 in the certainty that they are right, have 
 construed into " naturalness." 
 
 99 
 
 Kant, and after him Schopenhauer, was 
 
 exceedingly fond of the epithet " disin- 
 terested," and used it on every occasion 
 when the supply of laudatory terms he had 
 at his disposal was exhausted. " Disin- 
 terested thinking," which does not pursue 
 any practical aim, is, according to Schopen- 
 hauer, the highest ideal towards which man 
 can strive. This truth he considered uni- 
 versal, an a priori. But had he chanced 
 
 109
 
 to be brought amongst Russian peasants 
 he would have had to change his opinion. 
 With them thoughts about destiny and 
 the why and wherefore of the universe 
 and infinity and so on, would by no means 
 be considered disinterested, particularly 
 if the man who devoted himself to such 
 thoughts were at the same time to announce, 
 as becomes a philosopher, that he claimed 
 complete freedom from physical labour. 
 There the philosopher, were he even Plato, 
 would be stigmatised with the disgraceful 
 nickname, " Idle-jack." There the highest 
 activity is interested activity, directed 
 towards strictly practical purposes; and if 
 the peasants could speak learnedly, they 
 would certainly call the principle upon 
 which their judgment is founded an a 
 priori. Tolstoy, who draws his wisdom 
 from the folk-sources, attacks the learned 
 for the very fact that they do not want to 
 work, but arc disinterestedly occupied in 
 the search for truth. 
 
 100 
 
 It is clear to any impartial observer that 
 practically every man changes his opinion 
 ten times a day. Much has been said on 
 this subject, it has served for innumerable 
 
 no
 
 satires and humorous sketches. Nobodv has 
 ever doubted that it was a vice to be 
 unstable is one's opinions. Three-fourths 
 of our education goes to teaching us most 
 carefully to conceal within ourselves the 
 changeableness of our moods and judgments. 
 A man who cannot keep his word is the 
 last of men : never to be trusted. Likewise, 
 a man with no firm convictions : it is im- 
 possible to work together with him. Morality, 
 here as always making towards utilitarian 
 ends, issues the " eternal " principle : thou 
 shalt remain true to thy convictions. In 
 cultured circles this commandment is con- 
 sidered so unimpeachable that men are terri- 
 fied even to appear inconstant in their own 
 eyes. They become petrified in their beliefs, 
 and no greater shame can happen to them 
 than that they should be forced to admit 
 that they have altered in their convictions. 
 When a straightforward man like Montaigne 
 plainly speaks of the inconstancy of his 
 mind and his views, he is regarded as a libeller 
 of himself. One need neither see, nor hear, 
 nor understand what is taking place around 
 one : once your mind is made up, you have 
 lost your right to grow, you must remain 
 a stock, a statue, the qualities and defects 
 of which are known to everybody. 
 
 Ill
 
 lOI 
 
 Every philosophic world-conception starts 
 from some or other solution of the general 
 problem of human existence, and proceeds 
 from this to direct the course of human 
 life in some particular direction or other. 
 We have neither the power nor the data 
 for the solution of general problems, and 
 consequently all our moral deductions are 
 arbitrary, they only witness to our prejudices 
 if we are naturally timid, or to our pro- 
 pensities and tastes if we are self-confident. 
 But to keep up prejudices is a miserable, 
 unworthy business : nobody will dispute 
 that. Therefore let us cease to grieve about 
 our differences in opinion, let us wish that 
 in the future there should be many more 
 differences, and much less unanimity. There 
 is no arbitrary truth : it remains to suppose 
 that truth lies in changeable human tastes 
 and desires. In so far as our common 
 social existence demands it — let us try 
 to come to an understanding, to agree : 
 but not one jot more. Any agreement 
 which does not arise out of common necessity 
 will be a crime against the Holy Spirit. 
 
 112
 
 102 
 
 Tchekhov was very good at expounding 
 a system of philosophy — even several 
 systems. We have examples in more than 
 one of his stories, particularly in fhe Duel, 
 where Fon-Koren speaks ex cathedra. But 
 Tchekhov had no use for such systems, 
 save for purely literary purposes. When 
 you write a story, and your hero must 
 speak clearly and consistently, a system 
 has its value. But when you are left to 
 yourself, can you seriously trouble your 
 soul about philosophy ? Even a German 
 cannot, it seems, go so far in his " idealism." 
 Vladimir Semionovitch, the young author 
 in Tchekhov's Nice People^ sincerely and 
 deeply believes in his own ideas, but even 
 of him, notwithstanding his blatantly comical 
 limitations, we cannot say more than that 
 his ideas were constant little views or 
 pictures to him, which had gradually become 
 a second natural setting to everything he 
 saw. Certainly he did not live by ideas, 
 Tchekhov is right when he says that the 
 singing of Gaudeamus igitur and the writing 
 of a humanitarian appeal were equally 
 important to Vladimir Semionovitch. As 
 soon as Vladimir's sister begins to think 
 for herself, her brother's highest ideas, 
 
 H 113
 
 which she has formerly revered, become 
 banal and objectionable to her. Her brother 
 cannot understand her, neither her hostility 
 to progress and humanitarianism, nor to 
 the university spree and Gandeamus igitur. 
 But Tchekhov does understand. Only, let 
 us admit, the word " understand " does 
 not carry its ordinary meaning here. So 
 long as the child was fed on its mother's 
 milk, everything seemed to it smooth and 
 easy. But when it had to give up milk 
 and take to vodka, — and this is the 
 inevitable law of human development — 
 the childish suckling dreams receded into 
 the realm of the irretrievable past. 
 
 103 
 
 The summit of human existence, say 
 the philosophers, is spiritual serenity, 
 aeq^ianiniitas. But in that case the animals 
 should be our ideal, for in the matter of 
 imperturbability they leave nothing to be 
 desired. Look at a grazing sheep, or a 
 cow. The\' do not look before and after, 
 and sigh for what is not. Given a good 
 pasture, the present suffices them perfectly. 
 
 114
 
 104 
 
 A hungry man was given a piece of bread, 
 and a kind word. The kindness seemed 
 more to him than the bread. But had he 
 been given only the kind word and no bread, 
 he would perhaps have hated nice phrases. 
 Therefore, caution is always to be recom- 
 mended in the drawing of conclusions : 
 and in none more than in the conclusion 
 that truth is more urgently required than a 
 consoling lie. The connections of isolated 
 phenomena can very rarely be discerned. 
 As a rule, several causes at once produce 
 one effect. Owing to our propensity for 
 idealising, we always make prominent that 
 cause which seems to us loftiest. 
 
 105 
 
 A strange anomaly ! we see thousands 
 of human beings perish around us, yet we 
 walk warily lest we crush a worm. The 
 sense of compassion is strong in us, but it 
 is adapted to the conditions of our existence. 
 It can relieve an odd case here and there — 
 and it raises a terrific outcry over a trifling 
 injustice. Yet Schopenhauer wanted to 
 make compassion the metaphysical basis 
 of morality. 
 
 115
 
 io6 
 
 To discard logic as an instrument, a 
 means or aid for acquiring knowledge, 
 would be extravagant. Why should we ? 
 For the sake of consequentialism ? i.e. for 
 logic's very self ? But logic, as an aim in 
 itself, or even as the only means to know- 
 ledge, is a different matter. Against this 
 one must fight even if he has against him 
 all the authorities of thought — beginning 
 with Aristotle. 
 
 107 
 " When the yellowing corn-fields sway and 
 are moved, and the fresh forest utters sound 
 to the breeze . . . then I see happiness 
 on earth, and God in heaven." It may be so, 
 to the poet ; but it may be quite different. 
 Sometimes the corn-field waves, the woods 
 make noise in the wind, the stream whispers 
 its best tales : and still man cannot perceive 
 happiness, nor forget the lesson taught in 
 childhood, that the blue heavens are only an 
 optical illusion. But if the sky and the 
 boundless fields do not convince, is it 
 possible that the arguments of Kant and 
 the commentations of his dozens of talent- 
 less followers can do anything ? 
 
 116
 
 io8 
 
 The greatest temptation. — In Dostoevsky^s 
 Grand Inquisitor lurks a dreadful idea. 
 Who can be sure, he says — metaphorically, 
 of course — that when the crucified Christ 
 uttered His cry : " Lord, why hast thou 
 forsaken me ? " He did not call to mind the 
 temptation of Satan, who for one word had 
 offered Him dominion over the world ? And, 
 if Jesus recollected this offer, how can we 
 be sure that He did not repent not having 
 taken it ? . . . One had better not be told 
 about such temptations. 
 
 109 
 
 From the Future Opinions concerning con- 
 temporary Europe.''^ — " Europe of the nine- 
 teenth and twentieth centuries presented a 
 strange picture. After Luther, Christianity 
 degenerated into morality, and all the 
 threads connecting man with God were cut. 
 Together with the rationalisation of religion, 
 all life took on a flat, rational character. 
 Knights were replaced by a standing army, 
 recruited on the principle of compulsory 
 military service for all, and existing chiefly 
 for the purpose of parades and official needs. 
 Alchemy, which had been trying to find 
 the philosopher's stone, was replaced by 
 
 117
 
 chemistry, which tried to discover the best 
 means for cheap preparation of cheap com- 
 modities. Astrology, which had sought in 
 the stars the destinies of men, was replaced 
 by astronomy, which foretold the eclipses of 
 the sun and the appearing of comets. Even 
 the dress of the people became strangely 
 colourless ; not only men, but women also 
 wore uniform, monochromatic clothes. Most 
 remarkable of all, that epoch did not notice 
 its own insignificance, but was even proud 
 of itself. It seemed to the man of that day 
 that never before had the common treasury 
 of spiritual riches been so well replenished. 
 We, of course, may smile at their naivete, 
 but if one of their own number had allowed 
 himself to express an opinion disdainful of 
 the bases of the contemporary culture he 
 would have been declared immoral, or put 
 away in a mad-house : a terrible punish- 
 ment, very common in that coarse period, 
 though now it is very difficult even to imagine 
 what such a proceeding impHed. But in 
 those days, to be known as immoral, or to 
 find oneself in a mad-house, was worse than 
 to die. One of the famous poets of the 
 nineteenth century, Alexander Poushkin, 
 said : ' God forbid that I should go mad. 
 Rather let me be a starving beggar.' In 
 
 ii8
 
 those times people, on the whole, were 
 compelled to tell lies and play the hypocrite, 
 so that not infrequently the brightest minds, 
 who saw through the shams of their epoch, 
 yet pretended to believe in science and 
 morality, only in order to escape the persecu- 
 tion of public opinion." 
 
 no 
 
 JFritcrs of tragedies on Shakespeare'^ s model. 
 — To obtain a spark, one must strike with all 
 one's might with an iron upon a stone. 
 Whereupon there is a loud noise, which many 
 are inclined to believe more important than 
 the little spark. Similarly, writers having 
 shouted very loudly, are deeply assured that 
 they have fulfilled their sacred mission, and 
 are amazed that all do not share their 
 raptures, that some even stop their ears and 
 run away. 
 
 Ill 
 
 IMetamor phases. — Sense and folly arc not 
 at all native qualities in a man. In a 
 crisis, a stupid man becomes clever. We 
 need not go far for an example. What 
 a gaping simpleton Dostoevsky looks in his 
 Injured and htsulted, not to mention Poor 
 Folk. But in Letters from the Underworld 
 
 119
 
 .Tud the rest of his books he is the shrewd- 
 est and cleverest of writers. The same 
 may be said of Nietzsche, Tolstoy, or 
 Shakespeare. In his Birth of Tragedy 
 Nietzsche seems just like the ordinary honest, 
 rather simple, blue-eyed provincial German 
 student, and in Zarathustra he reminds 
 one of Machiavelli. Poor Shakespeare got 
 himself into a row for his Brutus — but no 
 man could deny the great mind in Hamlet. 
 The best instance of all, however, is Tolstoy. 
 Right up to to-day, whenever he likes he 
 can be cleverer than the cleverest. Yet at 
 times he is a schoolboy. This is the most 
 interesting and enviable trait in him. 
 
 112 
 
 In Troilus and Cressida Thersites sa)'s : 
 " Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus ? 
 He beats me, and I rail at him : worthy 
 satisfaction ! would it were otherwise ; that 
 I could beat him, whilst he railed at me." 
 Dostoevsky might have said the same of 
 his opponents. He pursued them with 
 stings, sarcasm, abuse, and they drove 
 him to a white heat by their quiet assurance 
 and composure. . . . The present-day ad- 
 mirers of Dostoevsky quietly believe in the 
 teachings of their master. Does it not 
 
 120
 
 mean that de facto they liave betrayed him 
 and gone over to the side of his enemies. 
 
 113 . 
 
 The opinion has gained ground that 
 
 Turgenev's ideal women — Natalie, Elena, 
 Marianna — are created in the image and 
 likeness of Poushkin's Tatyana. The critics 
 have been misled by external appearances. 
 To Poushkin his Tatyana appears as a 
 vestal guarding the sacred flame of high 
 morality — because such a job is not fitting 
 for a male. The Pretender in Boris Godunov 
 says to the old monk Pimen, who preaches 
 meekness and submission : " But you fought 
 under the walls of Kazan, etc." That is 
 a man's work. But in the hours of peace 
 and leisure the fighter needs his own hearth- 
 side, he must feel assured that at home his 
 rights are safely guarded. This is the point 
 of Tatyana's last words : " I belong to 
 another, and shall remain forever true to 
 him." But in Turgenev woman appears 
 as the judge and the reward, sometimes 
 even the inspirer of victorious man. There 
 is a great difference. 
 
 121
 
 114 
 
 trom a German I ntroduciion to Philosophy. 
 — " We shall maintain the opinion that meta- 
 physics, as the crown of the particular 
 sciences, is possible and desirable, and that 
 to it falls the task intermediate between 
 theor}- and practice, experiment and anticipa- 
 tion, mind and feeling, the task of weighing 
 probabilities, balancing arguments, and 
 reconciling difficulties." Thus metaphysics 
 is a weighing of probabilities. Ergo — further 
 than probable conclusions it cannot go. 
 Thus why do metaphysicians pretend to 
 universal and obligatory, established and 
 eternal judgments ? They go beyond them- 
 selves. In the domain of metaphysics there 
 cannot and must not be any established 
 behefs. The word established loses all its 
 sense in the connection. It is reasonable 
 to speak of eternal hesitation and temporality 
 of thought. 
 
 115 
 
 From another Introduction to Philosophy, 
 
 also German. " Compared with the delusion 
 of the materiaHsts ... the wretchedest 
 worshipper of idols seems to us a being 
 capable of apprehending to a certain degree 
 the great meaning and essence of things." .. 
 Perhaps this thought strayed in accidentally 
 122
 
 among the huge herd of the other thoughts 
 of the professor, soHttle does it resemble the 
 rest. But even so, it loses none of its interest. 
 If the materialists here spoken of, those of the 
 nineteenth century, Biichner, Vogt, Mole- 
 schot, all of them men who stood on the 
 pinnacle of natural science, were capable of 
 proving in the realm of philosophy more 
 uninformed than the nakedest savage, then 
 it follows, not only that science has nothing 
 in common with philosophy, but that the 
 two are even hostile. Therefore we ought 
 to go to the savages, not to civilise them, 
 hut even to learn philosophy from them. A 
 Papuan or a Tierra del Fuegan delivering 
 a lecture in philosophy to the professors 
 of the Berlin University — Friedrich Paulsen, 
 for example — is a curious sight. I say to 
 Friedrich Paulsen, and not to Biichner or 
 Moleschot, because Paulsen is also an 
 educated person, and therefore his philosophic 
 sensibility may have suffered from contact 
 with science, even if not so badly as that 
 of the materialists. He needs the assistance 
 of a red-skin. :t" • master. Why have German 
 professors so little daring or enterprise ? 
 Why should not Paulsen, on his own in- 
 itiative, go to Patagonia lo perfect himself 
 in philosophy ? — or at least send his pupils 
 
 123
 
 there, and preach broadcast the new pil- 
 grimage. And now lo and behold he has 
 hatched an original and fertile idea, so he 
 will stick in a corner with it, so that even 
 if you wanted you could not get a good 
 look at it. The idea is important and 
 weighty : our philosophers would lose 
 nothing by sitting at the feet of the 
 savages. 
 
 ii6 
 From a History of Ethics. — " Doubts 
 concerning the existence or the possibility 
 of discovering a moral norm have, of course 
 (I underline it), proved a stimulus to a new 
 speculative establishing of ethics, just as 
 the denial of the possibility of knowledge 
 led to the discovery of the condition of 
 knowledge." With this proposition the 
 author does not play hide-and-seek, as 
 Paulsen with his. He places it in a con- 
 spicuous position, in a conspicuous section 
 of his book, and accompanies it with the 
 trumpeting herald " of course." But only 
 one thing is clear : namely, that the majority 
 share the opinion of Professor Yodl, to 
 whom the quoted words belong. So that 
 the first assumption of ethics has as its 
 foundation the consensus sapientium. It 
 is enough. 
 
 124
 
 "7 
 
 " The normative theory," which has taken 
 
 such hold in Germany and Russia, bears 
 the stamp of that free and easy self-assurance 
 which characterises the state of content- 
 ment, and which does not desire, even for 
 the sake of theoretical perfection, to take 
 into consideration the divided state of soul 
 which usually accompanies discontent. 
 Windelband (Pradudien, p. 313) is evidence 
 of this. He exposes himself with the naive 
 frankness almost of an irrational creature, 
 and is not only unashamed, but even proud 
 of his part. " Philosophic research," he 
 says, *' is possible only to those who are 
 convinced that the norm of the universal 
 imperative is supreme above individual 
 activities, and that such a norm is discover- 
 able." Not every witness will give evidence 
 so honestly. It amounts to this : that 
 philosophic research is not a search after 
 truth, but a conspiracy amongst people 
 who dethrone truth and exalt instead the 
 all-binding norm. The task is truly ethical : 
 morality always was and always will be 
 utilitarian and bullying. Its active principle 
 is : He who is not with us, is against us. 
 
 125
 
 Ii8 
 
 " Ifj besides the reality which is evident 
 to us, we were susceptible to another form 
 of reality, chaotic, lawless, then this latter 
 could not be the subject of thought." 
 (Riehl — Philosophie der Gegenzvart.) This is 
 one of the a priori of critical philosophy — 
 one of the unproved first assumptions, evi- 
 dently. It is only an expression in other 
 words of Windelband's assertion quoted 
 above, concerning the ethical basis of the 
 law of causation. Thus, the a priori of 
 contemporary thought convince us more 
 and more that Nietzsche's instinct was not 
 at fault. The root of all our philosophies 
 lies, not in our objective observations, 
 but in the demands of our own heart, in 
 the subjective, moral will, and therefore 
 science cannot be uprooted except we first 
 destroy morality. 
 
 119 
 
 One of the lofty truisms — " The philoso- 
 pher conquers passion by perceiving it, the 
 artist by bodying it forth." In German 
 it sounds still more lofty : but does not for 
 that reason approach any nearer to the 
 truth. " Der Philosoph iiherzvindet die 
 Leidenschaft, indem er sie begreift — der 
 
 126
 
 Kiinstler, indem er sie darsfeJIt.^^ (Windel- 
 band, Praehidien, p. 198.) 
 
 120 
 
 The Germans always try to get at 
 Allgemeingultigkeit . Well, if the problem 
 of knowledge is to fathom all the depths 
 of actual life, then experience, in so far as 
 it repeats itself, is uninteresting, or at least 
 has a limit of interest. It is necessary, 
 however, to know what nobody yet knows, 
 and therefore we must walk, not on the 
 common road of AllgemeingiiltigkeiL, but on 
 new tracks, which have never yet seen 
 human feet. Thus rnorality, which lays 
 down definite rules and thereby guards life 
 for a time from any surprise, exists only by 
 convention, and in the end collapses before 
 the non-moral surging-up of individual 
 human aspirations. Laws — all of them — 
 have only a regulating value, and are neces- 
 sary only to those who want rest and 
 security. But the first and essential con- 
 dition of life is lawlessness. Laws are a 
 refreshing sleep — lawlessness is creative 
 activity. 
 
 127
 
 121 
 
 A =3 A. — They say that logic does not 
 need this postulate, and could easily develop 
 it by deduction. I think not. On the 
 contrary, in my opinion, logic could not 
 exist without this premiss. Meanwhile it 
 has a purely empirical origin. In the realm 
 of fact, A is always more or less equal to 
 A. But it might be otherwise. The uni- 
 verse might be so constituted as to admit 
 of the most fantastic metamorphoses. That 
 which now equals A would successively 
 equal B and then C, and so on. At present 
 a stone remains long enough a stone, a 
 plant a plant, an animal an animal. But it 
 might be that a stone changed into a plant 
 before our eyes, and the plant into an 
 animal. That there is nothing unthinkable 
 in such a supposition is proved by the theory 
 of evolution. This theory only puts cen- 
 turies in place of seconds. So that, in spite 
 of the risk to which I expose myself from 
 the admirers of the famous Epicurean 
 system, I am compelled to repeat once more 
 that anything you please may come from 
 anything you please, that A may not equal 
 A, and that consequently logic is dependent, 
 for its soundness, on the empirically-derived 
 law of the unchangeableness of the external 
 
 128
 
 world. Admit the possibility of super- 
 natural interference — and logic will lose that 
 certitude and inevitability of its conclusions 
 which at present is so attractive to us. 
 
 122 
 
 The effort to understand people, life, the 
 universe prevents us from getting to know 
 them at all. Since "to know" and "to 
 understand" are two concepts which are 
 not only non-identical, but just the opposite 
 of one another in meaning ; in spite of their 
 being in constant use as synonyms. We 
 think we have understood a phenomenon 
 if we have included it in a list of others, 
 previously known to us. And, since all our 
 mental aspiration reduces itself to under- 
 standing the universe, we refuse to know a 
 great deal which will not adapt itself to the 
 plane .urface of the contemporary world- 
 conceptions. For instance the Leibnitz 
 question, put by Kant into the basis of the 
 critique of reason i " How can we know a 
 thing outside us, if it does not enter into 
 us ? " It is non-understandable ; that is, 
 it does not agree with our notion of under- 
 standing. Hence it follows that it must be 
 squeezed out of the field of view — which is 
 exactly what Kant attempted to do. To 
 
 I 129
 
 us it seems, on the contrary, that in the 
 interests of knowing we should sacrifice, 
 and gladly, understanding, since under- 
 standing in any case is a secondary affair. — 
 Zu fragmentarish ist Welt und Leben / . . . 
 
 1 30
 
 PART II 
 
 Nur fur Schwindeljreie. 
 
 (From Alpine Recollections.)
 
 I 
 
 Light reveals to us beauty — but also ugli- 
 ness. Throw vitriol in the face of a beautiful 
 woman, and the beauty is gone, no power 
 on earth will enable us to look upon her 
 with the same rapture as before. Could 
 even the sincerest, deepest love endure the 
 change ? True, the idealists will hasten 
 to say that love overcomes all things. But 
 idealism needs be prompt, for if she leaves 
 us one single moment in which to see^ 
 we shall see such things as are not easily 
 explained away. That is why idealists stick 
 so tight so logic. In the twinkling of an eye 
 logic will convey us to the remotest con- 
 clusions and forecasts. Reality could never 
 overtake her. Love is eternal, and conse- 
 quently a disfigured face will seem as lovely 
 to us as a fresh one. This is, of course, a 
 lie, but it helps to preserve old tastes and 
 obscures danger. Real danger, however, was 
 never dispelled by words. In spite of 
 Schiller and eternal love, in the long run 
 
 133
 
 vitriol triumphs, and the agreeable young 
 man is forced to abandon his beloved and 
 acknowledge himself a fraud. Light, the 
 source of his life and hope, has now destroyed 
 hope and life for him. He will not return 
 to idealism, and he will hate logic : light, 
 that seemed to him so beautiful, will have 
 become hideous. He will turn to darkness, 
 where logic and its binding conclusions 
 have no power, but where the fancy is 
 free for all her vagaries. Without light we 
 should never have known that vitriol ruins 
 beauty. No science, nor any art can give 
 us what darkness gives. It is true, in our 
 young days when all was new, light brought 
 us great happiness and joy. Let us, there- 
 fore, remember it with gratitude, as a 
 benefactor we no longer need. Do after all 
 let us dispense with gratitude, for it belongs 
 to the calculating, bourgeois virtues. Do 
 ut des. Let us forget light, and gratitude, 
 and the qualms of self-important idealism, 
 let us go bravely to meet the coming night. 
 She promises us great power over reality. 
 Is it worth while to give up our old tastes 
 and lofty convictions ? Love and light 
 have not availed against vitriol. What a 
 horror would have seized us at the thought, 
 once upon a time ! That short phrase 
 
 134
 
 can annul all Schiller. We have shut our 
 eyes and stopped our ears, we have built 
 huge philosophic systems to shield us from 
 this tiny thought. And now — now it seems 
 we have no more feeling for Schiller and 
 the great systems, we have no pity on our 
 past beliefs. We now are seeking for words 
 with which to sing the praises of our former 
 enemy. Night, the dark, deaf, impenetrable 
 night, peopled with horrors — does she not 
 now loom before us, infinitely beautiful ? 
 Does she not draw us with her still, mysteri- 
 ous, fathomless beauty, far more powerfully 
 than noisy, narrow day ? It seems as if, 
 in a short while, man will feel that the same 
 incomprehensible, cherishing power which 
 threw us out into the universe and set us, 
 like plants, to reach to the light, is now 
 gradually transferring us to a new direction, 
 where a new life awaits us with all its stores. 
 Fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt. 
 And perhaps the time is near when the 
 impassioned poet, casting a last look to his 
 past, will boldly and gladly cry : 
 
 Hide thy s elf y sun ! darkness ^ be welcome ! 
 
 135
 
 2 
 
 Psychology at last leads us to conclude 
 that the most generous human impulses 
 spring from a root of egoism. Tolstoy's 
 " love to one's neighbour," for example, 
 proves to be a branch of the old self-love. 
 The same may be said of Kant's idealism, 
 and even of Plato's. Though they glorify 
 the service of the idea, in practice they 
 succeed in getting out of the -vicious circle 
 of egoism no better than the ordinary 
 mortal, who is neither a genius nor a flower 
 of culture. In my eyes this is " almost " 
 an absolute truth. (It is never wrong to 
 add the retractive " almost " ; truth is too 
 much inclined to exaggerate its own import- 
 ance, and one must guard oneself against its 
 despotic authority.) Thus — all men are 
 egoists. Hence follows a great deal. I 
 even think this proposition might provide 
 better grounds for metaphysical conclusions 
 than the doubtful capacity for compassion 
 and love for one's neighbour which has been 
 so tempting to dogma. For some reason 
 men have imagined that love for oneself 
 is more natural and comprehensible than 
 love for another. Why ? Love for others 
 is only a little rarer, less widely diffused 
 than love to oneself. But then hippopotami 
 
 136
 
 and rhinoceros, even in their own tropical 
 regions, are less frequent than horses and 
 mules. Does it follow that they are less 
 natural and transcendental ? Positivism is 
 not incumbent upon blood-thirsty savages. 
 Nay, as we know, many of them are less 
 positive-minded than our learned men. For 
 instance, a future life is to them such an 
 infallible reality that they even enter into 
 contracts, part of which is to be fulfilled 
 in the next world. A German metaphy- 
 sician won't go as far as that. Hence it 
 follows that the way to know the other 
 world is not by any means through love, 
 sympathy, and self-denial, as Schopenhauer 
 taught. On the contrary, it appears as if 
 love for others were only an impediment to 
 metaphysical flights. Love and sympathy 
 chain the eye to the misery of this earth, 
 where such a wide field for active charity 
 opens out. The materialists were mostly 
 very good men — a fact which bothered the 
 historians of philosophy. They preached 
 Matter, believed in nothing, and were ready 
 to perform all kinds of sacrifices for their 
 neighbours. How is this ? It is a case of 
 clearest logical consequence : man loves 
 his neighbour, he sees that heaven is 
 indifferent to misery, therefore he takes upon
 
 himself the role of Providence. Were he 
 indifferent to the sufferings of others, he 
 would easily become an idealist and leave 
 his neighbours to their fate. Love and 
 compassion kill belief, and make a man a 
 positivist and a materialist in his philo- 
 sophical outlook. If he feels the misery of 
 others, he leaves off meditating and wants 
 to act. Man only thinks properly when he 
 realises he has nothing to do, his hands arc 
 tied. That is why any profound thought 
 must arise from despair. Optimism, on 
 the other hand, the readiness to jump hastily 
 from one conclusion to another, may be 
 regarded as an inevitable sign of narrow 
 self-sufficiency, which dreads doubt and is 
 consequently always superficial. If a man 
 offers you a solution of eternal questions, it 
 shows he has not even begun to think about 
 them. He has only " acted." Perhaps it is 
 not necessary to think — who can say how 
 we ought or ought not to live ? And how 
 could we be brought to live " as we ought," 
 when our own nature is and always will be 
 an incalculable mystery. There is no mis- 
 take about it, nobody wants to think. I 
 do not speak here of logical thinking. 
 That, like any other natural function, 
 gives man great pleasure. For this reason 
 
 138
 
 philosophical systems, however complicated, 
 arouse real and permanent interest in the 
 public provided they only require from man 
 the logical exercise of the mind, and nothing 
 else. But to think — really to think — 
 surely this means a relinquishing of logic. 
 It means living a new life. It means a 
 permanent sacrifice of the dearest habits, 
 tastes, attachments, without even the assur- 
 ance that the sacrifice will bring any com- 
 pensation. Artists and philosophers like 
 to imagine the thinker with a stern face, a 
 profound look which penetrates into the 
 unseen, and a noble bearing — an eagle 
 preparing for flight. Not at all. A think- 
 ing man is one who has lost his balance, 
 in the vulgar, not in the tragic sense. 
 Hands raking the air, feet flying, face scared 
 and bewildered, he is a caricature of help- 
 lessness and pitiable perplexity. Look at 
 the aged Turgenev, his Poems in Prose and 
 his letter to Tolstoy. Maupassant thus 
 tells of his meeting with Turgenev : " There 
 entered a giant with a silvery head." Quite 
 so ! The majestic patriarch and master, of 
 course ! The myth of giants with silver 
 locks is firmly established in the heart of 
 man. Then suddenly enters Turgenev in 
 his Prose Poems — pale, pitiful, fluttering 
 
 139
 
 f 
 
 like a bird that has been " winged." Tur- 
 genev, who has taught us everything — how 
 can he be so fluttered and bewildered ? 
 How could he write his letter to Tolstoy ? 
 Did he not know that Tolstoy was finished, 
 the source of his creative activity dried up, 
 that he must seek other activities. Of 
 course he knew — and still he wrote that 
 letter. But it was not for Tolstoy, nor even 
 for Russian literature, which, of course, is 
 not kept going by the death-bed letters and 
 covenants of its giants. In the dreadful 
 moments of the end, Turgenev, in spite of 
 his noble size and silver locks, did not know 
 what to say or where to look for support 
 and consolation. So he turned to literature, 
 to which he had given his life. . . . He 
 yearned that she, whom he had served so 
 long and loyally, should just once help him, 
 save him from the horrible and thrice sense- 
 less nightmare. He stretched out his 
 withered, numbing hands to the printed 
 sheets which still preserve the traces of the 
 soul of a living, suffering man. He addressed 
 his late enemy Tolstoy with the most 
 flattering name : *' Great writer of the 
 Russian land " ; recollected that he was his 
 contemporary, that he himself was a great 
 writer of the Russian land. But this he 
 
 140
 
 did not express aloud. He only said, " I 
 
 can no longer " He praised a strict 
 
 school of literary and general education. 
 To the last he tried to preserve his bearing 
 of a giant with silv.ery locks. And we were 
 gratified. The same persons who are indig- 
 nant at Gogol's correspondence, quote Tur- 
 genev's letter with reverence. The attitude 
 is everything. Turgenev knew how to pose 
 passably well, and this is ascribed to him as 
 his greatest merit. Mundus vult decipi, 
 ergo decipiatur. But Gogol and Turgenev 
 felt substantially the same. Had Turgenev 
 burnt his own manuscripts and talked of 
 himself instead of Tolstoy, before death, 
 he would have been accounted mad. Moral- 
 ists would have reproached him for his 
 display of extreme egoism. . . . And Phil- 
 osophy ? Philosophy seems to be getting rid 
 of certain prejudices. At the moment when 
 men are least likely to play the hypocrite 
 and lie to themselves Turgenev and Gogol 
 placed their personal fate higher than the 
 destinies of Russian literature. Does not 
 this betray a " secret " to us ? Ought we 
 not to see in absolute egoism an inalienable 
 and great, yes, very great quality of human 
 nature 2 Psychology, ignoring the threats 
 of morality, has led us to a new knowledge. 
 
 141
 
 Yet still, in spite of the instances we have 
 given, the mass of people will, as usual, see 
 nothing but malice in every attempt to 
 reveal the human impulses that underlie 
 " lofty " motives. To be merely men seems 
 humiliating to men. So now malice will 
 also be detected in my interpretation of 
 Turgenev's letter, no matter what assurance 
 I offer to the contrary. 
 
 3 
 
 On Method. — A certain naturalist made 
 
 the following experiment : A glass jar was 
 divided into two halves by a perfectly 
 transparent glass partition. On the one 
 side of the partition he placed a pike, on 
 the other a number of small fishes such as 
 form the prey of the pike. The pike did 
 not notice the partition, and hurled itself 
 on its prey, with, of course, the result only 
 of a bruised nose. The same happened 
 many times, and always the same result. 
 At last, seeing all its efforts ended so pain- 
 fully, the pike abandoned the hunt, so that 
 in a few days, when the partition had been 
 removed it continued to swim about among 
 the small fry without daring to attack 
 them. . . . Does not the same happen with 
 us ? Perhaps the limits between " this 
 
 142
 
 world " and " the other world " are also 
 essentially of an experimental origin, neither 
 rooted in the nature of things, as was thought 
 before Kant, or in the nature of our reason, 
 as was thought after Kant. Perhaps indeed 
 a partition does exist, and make vain all 
 attempts to cross over. But perhaps there 
 comes a moment when the partition is 
 removed. In our minds, however, the con- 
 viction is firmly rooted that it is impossible 
 to pass certain limits, and painful to try : 
 a conviction founded on experience. But in 
 this case we should recall the old scepticism 
 of Hume, which idealist philosophy has 
 regarded as mere subtle mind-play, value- 
 less after Kant's critique. The most lasting 
 and varied experience cannot lead to any 
 binding and universal conclusion. Nay, all 
 our a priori, which are so useful for a certain 
 time, become sooner or later extremely 
 harmful. A philosopher should not be 
 afraid of scepticism, but should go on 
 bruising his jaw. Perhaps the failure of 
 metaphysics lies in the caution and timidity 
 of metaphysicians, who seem ostensibly 
 so brave. They have sought for rest — 
 which thev describe as the hiehest boon. 
 Whereas they should have valued more 
 than anything restlessness, aimlessness, even 
 
 143
 
 purposelessness. How can you tell when the 
 partition will be removed ? Perhaps at 
 the very moment when man ceased his 
 painful pursuit, settled all his questions 
 and rested on his laurels, inert, he could 
 with one strong push have swept through 
 the pernicious fence which separated him 
 from the unknowable. There is no need 
 for man to move according to a carefully- 
 considered plan. This is a purely sesthetic 
 demand which need not bind us. Let man 
 senselessly and deliriously knock his head 
 against the wall — if the wall go down at 
 last, will he value his triumph any the Ie?s ? 
 Unfortunately for us the illusion has been 
 established in us that plan and purpose 
 are the best guarantee of' success. What a 
 delusion it is ! The opposite is true,, The 
 best of all that genius has revealed to us 
 has been revealed as the resiJt of fantastic, 
 erratic, apparently ridiculous and useless, but 
 relentlessly ytubbom seeking. Columbus, 
 tired of sitting on the same spot, sailed 
 west to look for India. And genius, in 
 spite of vulgar conception, is a condition of 
 chaos and unutterable restlessness, Not 
 for nothing has genius been counted kin to 
 madness. Genius flings itself hitner and 
 thither because it has not the Sitzfleisch 
 144
 
 necessary for industrious success in medio- 
 crity. We may be sure that earth has 
 seen much more genius than history has 
 recorded ; since genius is acknowledged 
 only when it has been serviceable. When 
 the tossing-about has led to no useful issue 
 — which is the case in the majority of 
 instances — it arouses only a feeling of 
 disgust and abomination in all witnesses. 
 " He can't rest and he can't let others rest." 
 If Lermontov and Dostoevsky had lived in 
 times when there was no demand for books, 
 nobody would have noticed them. Ler- 
 montov*s early death would have passed 
 unregretted. Perhaps some settled and 
 virtuous citizen would have remarked, weary 
 of the young man's eternal and dangerous 
 freaks : " For a dog a dog's death." The 
 same of Gogol, Tolstoy, Poushkin. Now they 
 are praised because they left interesting 
 books. . . . And so we need pay no atten- 
 tion to the cry about the futility and worth- 
 lessness of scepticism, even scepticism pure 
 and unadulterated, scepticism which has 
 no ulterior motive of clearing the way for a 
 new creed. To knock one's head against 
 the wall out of hatred for the wall : to 
 beat against established and obstructive 
 ideas, because one detests them : is it not 
 
 K 145
 
 an attractive proposition ? And then, to 
 see ahead uncertainly and limitless possi- 
 bilities, instead of up-to-date " ideals," is 
 not this too fascinating ? The highest good 
 is rest ! I shall not argue : de gustibus 
 aut nihil aut bene. . . . By the way, isn't 
 it a superb principle ? And this superb 
 principle has been arrived at perfectly by 
 chance, unfortunately not by me, but by 
 one of the comical characters in Tchek- 
 hov's Seagull. He mixed up two Latin 
 proverbs, and the result was a splendid 
 maxim which, in order to become an a 
 priori, awaits only universal acceptance. 
 
 4 
 
 Metaphysicians praise the transcendental, 
 
 and carefully avoid it. Nietzsche hated 
 metaphysics, he praised the earth — bleib 
 nur der Erde treu, meine Bruder — and 
 always lived in the realm of the transcen- 
 dental. Of course the metaphysicians be- 
 have better : this is indisputable. He who 
 would be a teacher must proclaim the meta- 
 physical point of view, and he may become 
 a hero without ever smelling powder. In 
 these anxious days, when positivism seems 
 to fall short, one cannot do better than turn 
 to metaphysics. Then the young man need 
 
 146
 
 not any more envy Alexander the Mace- 
 donian. With the assistance of a few books 
 not only earthly states are conquered, but 
 the whole mysterious universe. Metaphysics 
 is the great art of swerving round dangerous 
 experience. So metaphysicians should be 
 called the positivists far excellence. They 
 do not despise all experience, as they assert, 
 but only the dangerous experiences. They 
 adapt the safest of all methods of self- 
 defence, what the English call protective 
 mimicry. Let us repeat to all students — 
 professors know it already : he who v\ould 
 be a sincere metaphysician must avoid 
 risky experience. Schiller once asked : How 
 can tragedy give delight ? The answer 
 — to put it in our own words — was : If we 
 are to obtain delight from tragedy, it must 
 be seen only upon the stage. — In order to 
 love the transcendental it also should be 
 known only from the stage, or from books 
 of the philosophers. This is called idealism, 
 the nicest word ever invented by philoso- 
 phising men. 
 
 5 
 
 Poetae nascuntur. — Wonderful is man. 
 
 Knowing nothing about it, he asserts the 
 existence of an objective impossibility. Even 
 a little while ago, before the invention of 
 
 H7
 
 the telephone and telegraph, men would 
 
 have declared it impossible for Europe to 
 
 converse with America. Now it is possible. 
 
 We cannot produce poets, therefore we say 
 
 they are born. Certainly we cannot make 
 
 a child a poet by forcing him to study 
 
 literary models, from the most ancient 
 
 to the most modern. Neither will anybody 
 
 hear us in America no matter how loud we 
 
 shout here. To make a poet of a man, 
 
 he must not be developed along ordinary 
 
 lines. Perhaps books should be kept from 
 
 him. Perhaps it is necessary to perform 
 
 some apparently dangerous operation on 
 
 him : fracture his skull or throw him out 
 
 of a fourth-storey window. I will refrain 
 
 from recommending these methods as a 
 
 substitute for paedagogy. But that is not 
 
 the point. Look at the great men, and 
 
 the poets. Except John Stuart Mill and 
 
 a couple of other positivist thinkers, who 
 
 had learned fathers and virtuous mothers, 
 
 none of the great men can boast of, or 
 
 better, complain of, a proper upbringing. 
 
 In their lives nearly always the decisive 
 
 part was played by accident, accident 
 
 which reason would dub meaninglessness, 
 
 if reason ever dared raise its voice against 
 
 obvious success. Something like a broken 
 
 148
 
 skull or a fall from the fourth floor— not 
 metaphorically, but often absolutely literally 
 — has proved the commencement, usually 
 concealed but occasionally avowed, of the 
 activity of genius. But we repeat auto- 
 matically : poetae nascuntur, and are deeply 
 convinced that this extraordinary truth 
 is so lofty it needs no verification. 
 
 6 
 
 " Until Apollo calls him to the sacrifice, 
 ignobly the poet is plunged in the cares 
 of this shoddy world ; silent is his lyre, 
 cold sleeps his soul, of all the petty children 
 of earth most petty it seems is he." Pisaryev, 
 the critic, was exasperated by these verses. 
 Presumably, if they had not belonged to 
 Poushkin, all the critics along with Pisaryev 
 would have condemned them and their 
 author to oblivion. Suspicious verse ! 
 Before Apollo calls to him — the poet is 
 the most insignificant of mortals ! In his 
 free hours, the ordinary man finds some 
 more or less distinguished distraction for 
 himself : he hunts, attends exhibitions of 
 pictures, or the theatre, and finally rests 
 in the bosom of his family. But the poet 
 is incapable of normal existence. Im- 
 mediately he has finished with Apollo, 
 
 149
 
 forgetting all about altars and sacrifices, 
 he proceeds to occupy himself with unworthy 
 objects. Or he abandons himself to the 
 dolce far niente, the customary pastime of 
 all favourites of the Muses. Let us here 
 remark that not only all poets, blit all 
 writers and artists- in general are inclined 
 to lead bad lives. Think what Tolstoy 
 tells us, in Confession and elsewhere, 
 of the best representatives of literature in 
 the fifties. On the whole it is just as 
 Poushkin says in his verses. Whilst he is 
 engaged in composition, an author is a 
 creature of some consequence : apart from 
 this, he is nothing. Why are Apollo 
 and the Muses so remiss ? Why do they 
 draw to themselves wayward or vicious 
 votaries, instead of rewarding virtue ? We 
 dare not suspect the gods, even the de- 
 throned, of bad intentions. Apollo loved 
 virtuous persons — and yet virtuous persons 
 are evidently mediocre and unfit for the 
 sacred offices. If any man is overcome with 
 a great desire to serve the god of song, 
 let him get rid of his virtues at once. Curious 
 that this truth is so completely unknown 
 to men. They think that through virtue 
 they can truly deserve the favour and 
 choice of Apollo. And since industry is 
 
 150
 
 the first virtue, they peg away, morning, 
 noon, and night. Of course, the more they 
 work the less they do. Which really puzzles 
 and annoys them. They even fling aside 
 the sacred arts, and all the labours of a 
 devotee ; they give themselves up to idleness 
 and other bad habits. And sometimes 
 it so happens, that just as a man decides 
 that it is all no good, the Muses suddenly 
 visit him. So it was with Dostoevsky and 
 others. Schiller alone managed to get round 
 Apollo. But perhaps it was only his 
 biographers he got round. Germans are 
 so trustful, so easy to deceive. The 
 biographers saw nothing unusual in Schiller's 
 habit of keeping his feet in cold water 
 whilst he worked. No doubt they felt 
 that if the divine poet had lived in the 
 Sahara, where water is precious as gold, 
 and the inspired cannot take a footbath 
 every day, then the speeches of the Marquis 
 of Pola would have lacked half their noble- 
 ness, at least. And apparently Schiller was 
 not so wonderfully chaste, if he needed 
 such artificial resources in the composition 
 of his fine speeches. In a word, we must 
 believe Poushkin. A poet is, on the one 
 hand, among the elect; on the other hand, 
 he is one of the most insignificant of mortals.
 
 Hence we can draw a very consoling con- 
 clusion : the most insignificant of men are 
 not altogether so worthless as we imagine^ 
 They may not be fit to occupy government 
 positions or professorial chairs, but they 
 are often extremely at home on Parnassus 
 and such high places. Apollo rewards vice, 
 and virtue, as everybody knows, is so 
 satisfied with herself she needs no reward. 
 Then why do the pessimists lament ? 
 Leibnitz was quite right : we live in the 
 best possible of worlds. I would even 
 suggest that we leave out the modification 
 ** possible." 
 
 It is Das Ewig fVeibltche, with Russian 
 writers. Poushkin and Lermontov loved 
 women and were not afraid of them. Poush- 
 kin, who trusted his own nature, was often 
 in love, and always sang his love of the 
 moment. When infatuated with a 
 bacchante, he glorified bacchantes. When 
 he married, he warbled of a modest, nun- 
 like beauty, his wife. A synthesising mind 
 would probably not know what to do with 
 all Poushkin's sorts of love. Nor is Lermon- 
 tov any better. He abused women, but, 
 as Byelinsky observed after meeting him, 
 he loved women more than anything in 
 
 152
 
 the world. And again, not women of one 
 mould only : any and all attractive females : 
 the wild Bella, the lovely Mary, Thamar ; 
 one and all, no matter of what race or 
 condition. Every time Lermontov is in 
 love, he assures us his love is so deep and 
 ardent and even moral, that we cannot 
 judge him without conpunction. Vladimir 
 Soloviov alone was not afraid to condemn 
 him. He brought Poushkin as well as 
 Lermontov to account for their moral 
 irregularities, and he even went so far as 
 to say that it was not he himself who judged 
 them, but Fate, in whose service he acted 
 as public denouncer. Lermontov and Poush- 
 kin, both dying young, had deserved death 
 for their frivolities. But there was nobody 
 else besides Vladimir Soloviov to darken the 
 memories of the two poets. It is true Tolstoy 
 cannot forgive Poushkin's dissolute life, 
 but he does not apply to Fate for a verdict. 
 According to Tolstoy morality can cope 
 even with a Titan like Poushkin. In Tolstoy's 
 view morality grows stronger the harder 
 the job it has to tackle. It pardons the 
 weak offenders without waste of words, 
 but it never forgives pride and self-confi- 
 dence. If Tolstoy's edicts had been executed, 
 all memorials to Poushkin would have 
 
 153
 
 disappeared; chiefly because of the poet's 
 addiction to the eternal female. In such a 
 case Tolstoy is implacable. He admits the 
 the kind of love whose object is the establish- 
 ing of a family, but no more. Don Juan is 
 a hateful transgressor. Think of Levin, and 
 his attitude to prostitutes. He is exasper- 
 ated, indignant, even forgets the need for 
 compassion, and calls them " beasts." In 
 the eternal female Tolstoy sees temptation, 
 seduction, sin, great danger. Therefore it 
 is necessary to keep quite away from the 
 danger. But surely danper is the dragon 
 which guards every treasure on caith. 
 And again, no matter what his precautions, 
 a man will meet his fate sooner or later, 
 and come into conflict with the dragon. 
 Surely this is an axiom. Pous'hkin and 
 Lermontov loved danger, and therefore 
 sought women. They paid a heavy price, 
 but while they lived they lived freely and 
 lightly. If they had cared to peep in the 
 book of destinies, they might have averted 
 or avoided their sad end. But they pre- 
 ferred to trust their star — lucky or unlucky. 
 Tolstoy was the first among us — we cannot 
 speak of Gogol — who began to fear life. 
 He was the first to start open moralising. 
 In so far as public opinion and personal 
 
 IS4
 
 dignity demand it, he did go to meet his 
 dangers : but not a step further. So he 
 avoided women, art, and philosophy. Love 
 per se, that is, love which does not lead to 
 a family, like wisdom per se, which is wisdom 
 that has no utilitarian motive, and like 
 art for art^s sake, seemed to him the worst 
 of temptations, leading to the destruction 
 of the soul. When he plunged too deep 
 in thinking, he was seized with panic. 
 *' It seemed to me I was going mad, so I 
 went away to the Bashkirs for koumiss." 
 Such confessions are common in his works. 
 And surely there is no other way with 
 temptations, than to cut short, at once, 
 before it is too late. Tolstoy preserved 
 himself on account of his inborn instinct 
 for departing betimes from a dangerous 
 situation. Save for this cautious prompting 
 he would probably have ended like Ler- 
 montov or Poushkin. True, he might have 
 gone deeper into nature, and revealed us rare 
 secrets, instead of preaching at us abstinence, 
 humility, simplicity and so on. But such luck 
 fell to the fate of Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky 
 had very muddled relations with morality. 
 He was too racked by disease and circum- 
 stance to get much profit out of the rules 
 of morality. The hygiene of the soul, 
 
 155
 
 like that of the body, is beneficial only 
 to healthy men. To the sick it is simply 
 harmful. The more Dostoevsky engaged 
 himself with high morality, the more in- 
 extricably entangled he became. He wanted 
 to respect the personality in a woman, 
 and only the personality, and so he came 
 to the point where he could not look on 
 any woman, however ugly, with indifference. 
 The elder Karamazov and his affair with 
 Elizabeth Smerdyascha (Stinking Lizzie) — 
 in what other imagination could such a 
 union have been contemplated ? Dostoevsky, 
 of course, reprimands Karamazov, andthanks 
 to the standards of modern criticism, such 
 a reprimand is accounted sufficient to 
 exonerate our author. But there are other 
 standards. If a writer sets out to tell you 
 that no drab could be so loathsome that 
 her ugliness would make you forget she was 
 woman; and if for illustration of this novel 
 idea we are told the history of Fiodov 
 Karamazov with the deformed, repulsive 
 idiot. Stinking Lizzie ; then, in face of 
 such '' imaginative art " it is surely out 
 of place to preserve the usual confidence 
 in that writer. We do not speak of the 
 interest and appreciation of Dostoevsky's 
 tastes and ideas. Not for one moment Vv'ill 
 
 156
 
 I assert that those who with Poushkin 
 and Lermontov can see the Eternal Female 
 only in young and charming women, have 
 any advantage over Dostoevsky. Of course, 
 we are not forbidden to live according to 
 our tastes, and we may, like Tolstoy, call 
 certain women " beasts." But who has 
 given us the right to assert that we arc 
 higher or better than Dostoevsky ? Judging 
 " objectively," all the points go to show that 
 Dostoevsky is better — at any rate he saw 
 further, deeper. He could find an original 
 interest, he could discover das etvig Weihliche 
 where we should see nothing of attraction 
 at all, where Goethe would avert his face. 
 Stinking Lizzie is not a beast, as Levin 
 would say, but a woman who is able, if 
 even for a moment, to arouse a feeling of 
 love in a man. And we thought she was 
 worse than nothing, since she roused in 
 us only disgust. Dostoevsky made a dis- 
 covery, we with our refined feelings missed 
 it. His distorted, abnormal sense showed 
 a greater sensitiveness, in which our high 
 morality was deficient. . . . And the road 
 to the great truth this time, as ever, is 
 through deformity. Idealists will not agree. 
 They are quite justly afraid that one may 
 not reach the truth, but may get stuck in 
 
 157
 
 the mud. Idealists are careful men, and 
 not nearly so stupid as their ideals would 
 lead us to suppose. 
 
 8 
 
 New ideas, even our own, do not quickly 
 conquer our sympathies. We must first 
 get accustomed to them. 
 
 9 
 
 :A point of view. — Every writer, thinker — 
 
 even every educated person thinks it 
 necessary to have a permanent point of 
 view. He climbs up some elevation and 
 never climbs down again all his days. What- 
 ever he sees from this point of view, he 
 believes to be reality, truth, justice, good — 
 and what he does not see he excludes from 
 existence. Man is not much to blame for 
 this. Surely there is no very great joy 
 in moving from point of view to point of 
 view, shifting one's camp from peak to 
 peak. We have no wings, and " a winged 
 thought " is only a nice metaphor — unless, 
 of course, it refers to logical thinking. 
 There to be sure great volatility is usual, 
 a lightness which comes from perfect naivete, 
 if not ignorance. He who really wishes to 
 know something, and not merely to have 
 
 158
 
 a philosophy, does not rely on logic and is 
 not allured by reason. He must clamber 
 from summit to summit, and, if necessary, 
 hibernate in the dales. For a wide horizon 
 leads to illusions, and in order to familiarise 
 oneself with any object, it is essential to 
 go close up to it, touch it, feel it, examine 
 it from top to bottom and on every side. 
 One must be ready, should this be impossible 
 otherwise, to sacrifice the customary position 
 of the body : to wriggle, to He flat, to stand 
 on one's head, in a word, to assume the 
 most unnatural of attitudes. Can there 
 be any question of a permanent point of 
 view ? The more mobility and elasticity 
 a man has, the less he values the ordinary 
 equilibrium of his body ; the oftener he 
 changes his outlook, the more he will take 
 in. If, on the other hand, he imagines that 
 from this or the other pinnacle he has the 
 most comfortable survey of the world and 
 life, leave him alone ; he will never know 
 anything. Nay, he does not want to know, 
 he cares more about his personal convenience 
 than about the quality of his work. No 
 doubt he will attain to fame and success, 
 and thus brilliantly justify his " point of 
 
 view." 
 
 159
 
 10 
 
 Fame. — " A thread from everyone, and 
 the naked will have a shirt." There is no 
 beggar but has his thread of cotton, and he 
 will not grudge it to a naked man — no, 
 nor even to a fully dressed one ; but will 
 bestow it on the first comer. The poor, 
 who want to forget their poverty, are very 
 ready with their threads. Moreover, they 
 prefer to give them to the rich, rather than 
 to a fellow-tramp. To load the rich with 
 benefits, must not one be very rich indeed ? 
 That is why fame is so easily got. An 
 ambitious person asks admiration and respect 
 from the crowd, and is rarely denied. The 
 mob feel that their throats are their own, 
 and their arms are strong. Why not voci- 
 ferate and clap, seeing that you can turn 
 the head not only of a beggar like yourself, 
 but of a future hero, God knows how 
 almighty a person. The humiliated citizen 
 who has hitherto been hauled off to the police 
 station if he shouted, suddenly feels that his 
 throat has acquired a new value. Never 
 before has anyone given a rap for his worth- 
 less opinion, and now seven cities are ready 
 to quarrel for it, as for the right to claim 
 Homer. The citizen is delighted, he shouts 
 at the top of his voice, and is ready to throw 
 
 i6o
 
 all his possessions after his shouts. So the 
 hero is satisfied. The greater the shout, 
 the deeper his belief in himself and his 
 mission. What will a hero not believe ! 
 For he forgets so soon the elements of which 
 his fame and riches are made. Heroes 
 usually are convinced that they set out on 
 their noble career, not to beg shouts from 
 beggars, but to heap blessings on mankind. 
 If they could only call to mind with what 
 beating hearts they awaited their first 
 applause, their first alms, how timidly they 
 curried favour with ragged beggars, perhaps 
 they would speak less assuredly of their 
 own merits. But our memory is fully 
 acquainted with Herbert Spencer and his 
 law of adaptability, and thus many a worthy 
 man goes gaily on in full belief in his own 
 stupendous virtue. 
 
 II 
 In defence of righteousness. — Inexperienced 
 and ingenuous people see in righteousness 
 merely a burden which lofty people have 
 assumed out of respect for law or for some 
 other high and inexplicable reason. But 
 a righteous man has not only duties but 
 rights. True, sometimes, when the law is 
 against him, he has to compromise. Yet 
 how rarely does the law desert him ! No 
 
 L i6i
 
 cruelty matters in him, so long as he does 
 not infringe the statutes. Nay, he will 
 ascribe his cruelty as a merit to himself, 
 since he acts out of no personal considera- 
 tions, but in the name of sacred justice. 
 No matter what he may do, once he is 
 sanctioned he sees in his actions only merit, 
 merit, merit. Modesty forbids him to say 
 too much — but if he were to let go, what a 
 luxurious panegyric he might deliver to 
 himself ! Remembering his works, he praises 
 himself at all times ; not aloud, but in- 
 wardly. The nature of virtue demands it : 
 man must rejoice in his morality and ever 
 keep it in mind. And after that, people 
 declare that it is hard to be righteous. 
 Whatever the other virtues may be, certainly 
 righteousness has its selfish side. As a rule 
 it is decidedly worth while to make con- 
 siderable sacrifices in order later on to enjoy 
 in calm confidence all that surety and those 
 rights bestowed on a man by morality and 
 public approval. Look at a German who 
 has paid his contribution to a society for 
 the assistance of the indigent. Not one 
 stray farthing will he give, not to a poor 
 wretch who is starving before his eyes. And 
 in this he feels right. This is righteousness 
 out and out : pay your tax and enjoy the 
 
 162
 
 privileges of a high-principled man. So 
 righteousness is much in vogue with cul- 
 tured, commercial nations. Russians have 
 not quite got there. They are afraid of 
 the exactions of righteousness, not guessing 
 the enormous advantages derived. A Rus- 
 sian has a permanent relationship with 
 his conscience, which costs him far more 
 than the most moral German, or even 
 Englishman, has to pay for his righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 12 
 
 The best way of getting rid of tedious, 
 played-out truths is to stop paying them the 
 tribute of respect and to treat them with a 
 touch of easy familiarity and derision. To 
 put into brackets, as Dostoevsky did, such 
 words as good, self-sacrifice, progress, and 
 so on, will alone achieve you much more 
 than many brilliant arguments would do. 
 Whilst you still contest a certain truth, you 
 still believe in it, and this even the least 
 penetrating individual will perceive. But 
 if you favour it with no serious attention, 
 and only throw out a scornful remark now 
 and then, the result is different. It is 
 evident you have ceased to be afraid of the 
 old truth, you no longer respect it. And 
 this sets people thinking. 
 
 163
 
 13 . . 
 
 Four zvalls. — Arm-chair philosophy is 
 
 being condemned — rightly. An arm-chair 
 thinker is busy deciding on everything 
 that is taking place in the world : the state 
 of the world market, the existence of a world- 
 soul, wireless telegraphy and the life after 
 death, the cave dweller and thie perfecti- 
 bility of man, and so on and so on. His 
 chief business is so to select his statements 
 that there shall be no internal contradiction ; 
 and this will give an appearance of truth. 
 Such work, which is quite amusing and even 
 interesting, leads at last to very poor results. 
 Surely verisimilitudes of truth are not truth : 
 nor have necessarily anything in common 
 with truth. Again, a man who undertakes 
 to talk of everything probably knows noth- 
 ing. Thus a swan can fly, and walk, and 
 swim. But it flies indifferently, walks badly, 
 and swims poorly. An arm-chair philo- 
 sopher, enclosed by four walls, sees nothing 
 but those four walls, and yet of these pre- 
 cisely he does not choose to speak. If by 
 accident he suddenly realised them and 
 spoke of them his philosophy might acquire 
 an enormous value. This may happen 
 when a study is converted into a prison : 
 the same four walls, but impossible not to 
 
 164
 
 think of them ! Whatever the • prisoner 
 turns his mind to — Homer, the Greek- 
 Persian wars, the future world-peace, the 
 bygone geological cataclysms — still the four 
 walls enclose it all. The calm of the study 
 supplanted by the pathos of imprisonment. 
 The prisoner has no more contact with the 
 world, and no less. But now he no longer 
 slumbers and has grayish dreams called 
 world-conceptions. He is wide awake and 
 strenuously living. His philosophy is worth 
 hearing. But man is not distinguished for 
 his powers of discrimination. He sees soli- 
 tude and four walls, and says : a study. 
 He dreams of the market-place, where there 
 is noise and jostling, physical bustle, and 
 decides that there alone life is to be met. 
 He is wrong as usual. In the market- 
 place, among the crowd, do not men sleep 
 their deadest sleep ? And is not the keenest 
 spiritual activity taking place in seclusion ? 
 
 H 
 The Spartans made their helots drunk as 
 
 an example and warning to their noble 
 
 youths. A good method, no doubt, but 
 
 what are we of the twentieth century to do ? 
 
 Whom shall we make drunk ? We have 
 
 no slaves, so we have instituted a higher 
 
 165
 
 literature. Novels and stories describe 
 drunken, dissolute men, and paint them in 
 such horrid colours that every reader feels 
 all his desire for vice depart from him. 
 Unfortunately only our Russians are either 
 too conscientious or not sufficiently recti- 
 linear in their minds. Instead of showing 
 the drunken helot as an object of repugnance, 
 as the Spartans did, they try to describe 
 vice truthfully. Realism has taken hold. 
 Indeed, why make a fuss ? What does it 
 matter if the writer's description is a little 
 more or less ugly than the event ? Was 
 justice invented that everything, even evil, 
 should be kept intact ? Surely evil must 
 be simply rooted out, banned, placed outside 
 the pale. The Spartans did not stand on 
 ceremony with living men, and yet our 
 novelists are afraid of being unjust to 
 imaginary drunken helots. And, so to 
 speak, out of humane feeling too. . . . How 
 naive one must be to accept such a justifica- 
 tion ! Yet everybody accepts it. Tolstoy 
 alone, towards the end, guessed that humani- 
 tarianism is only a pretext in this case, 
 and that we Russians have described vice 
 not only for the purpose of scaring our 
 readers. In modern masters the word vice 
 arouses not disgust, but insatiable curiosity. 
 
 i66
 
 Perhaps the wicked thing has been per- 
 secuted in vain, like so many other good 
 things. Perhaps it should have been studied, 
 perhaps it held mysteries. . . . On the 
 strength of this " perhaps '* morality was 
 gradually abandoned, and Tolstoy remained 
 almost alone in his indignation. Realism 
 reigns, and a drunken helot arouses envy 
 in timid readers who do not know where to 
 put their trust, whether in the traditional 
 rules or in the appeal of the master. A 
 drunken helot an ideal ! What have we 
 come to ? Were it not better to have stuck 
 to Lycurgus ? Have we not paid too dearly 
 for our progress ? 
 
 Many people think we have paid too 
 dearly — not to mention Tolstoy, who 
 is now no longer taken quite seriously, 
 though still accounted a great man. Any 
 mediocre journalist enjoys greater influence 
 than this master-writer of the Russian land. 
 It is inevitable. Tolstoy insists on think- 
 ing about things which are nobody's concern. 
 He has long since abandoned this world — > 
 and does he continue to exist in any other ? 
 Difficult question ! " Tolstoy writes books 
 and letters, therefore he exists." This 
 inference, once so convincing, now has 
 hardly any effect on us : particularly if we 
 
 167
 
 take into account wKat it is that Tolstoy 
 writes. In several of his last letters he 
 expresses opinions which surely have no 
 meaning for an ordinary man. They can be 
 summed up in a few words. Tolstoy pro- 
 fesses an extreme egoism, sollipsism, solus- 
 ipse-ism. That is, in his old age, after 
 infinite attempts to love his neighbour, he 
 comes to the conclusion that not only is it 
 impossible to love one's neighbour, but 
 tha: there is no neighbour, that in all the 
 world Tolstoy alone exists, that there is even 
 no world, but only Tolstoy : a view so 
 obviously absurd, that it is not worth 
 refuting. By the way, there is also no 
 possibility of refuting it, unless you admit 
 that logical inferences are non-binding. 
 Sollipsism dogged Tolstoy already in early 
 youth, but at that time he did not know 
 what to do with the impertinent, oppres- 
 sive idea, so he ignored it. Finally, he 
 came to it. The older a man becomes, the 
 more he learns how to make use of imper- 
 tinent ideas. Fairly recently Tolstoy could 
 pronounce such a dictum : '* Christ taught 
 men not to do stupid things." Who but 
 Tolstoy could have ventured on such an 
 interpretation of the gospels ? Why have 
 we all held — all of us but Tolstoy — that these 
 
 i68
 
 words contained the greatest blasphemy on 
 Christ and His teaching ? But it was 
 Tolstoy's last desperate attempt to save 
 himself from sollipsism, without at the same 
 time flying in the face of logic : even Christ 
 appeared among men only to teach them 
 common sense. Whence follows that " mad " 
 thoughts may be rejected with an easy 
 conscience, and the advantage, as usual, 
 remains with the wholesome, reasonable, 
 sensible thoughts. There is room for good 
 and for reason. Good is self-understood; 
 it need not be explained. If only good 
 existed in the world, there would exist no 
 questions, neither simple nor ultimate. This 
 is why youth never questions. What indeed 
 should it question : the song of the night- 
 ingale, the morning of May, happy laughter, 
 all the predicates of youth ? Do these 
 need interpretation ? On the contrary, any 
 explanation is reduced to these The proper 
 questions arise only on contact with evil. A 
 hawk struck a nightingale, flowers withered, 
 Boreas froze laughing youth — and in terror 
 our questions arose. '^ That is evil. The 
 ancients were right. Not in vain is our 
 earth called a vale of tears and sorrow." 
 And once questions are started, it is im- 
 possible and unseemly to hurry the answers, 
 
 169
 
 still less anticipate the questions. Tfie 
 nightingale is dead and will sing no longer, 
 the listener is frozen to death and can hear 
 no more songs. The situation is so palp- 
 ably absurd that only with the intention of 
 getting rid of the question at any cost wull 
 one strive for a sensible answer. The 
 answer must be absurd — if you don't want 
 it, don't question. But if you must question, 
 then be ready beforehand to reconcile 
 yourself with something like sollipsism or 
 modern realism. Thought is in a dilemma, 
 and dare not take the leap to get out. 
 We laugh at philosophy, and, as long 
 as possible, avoid evil. But nearly all 
 men feel the intolerable cramp of such a 
 situation, and each at his risk ventui:es to 
 swim to shore on some more or less witty 
 theory. A few courageous ones speak the 
 truth — but they are neither understood nor 
 respected. When a man's words show the 
 depth of the pain through which he has 
 passed, he is not, indeed, condemned, but 
 the world begins to talk of his tragic state 
 of soul, and to take on a mournful look 
 fitting to the occasion. Others more scrupu- 
 lous feel that phrases and mournful looks 
 are unfitting, yet they cannot dwell at 
 length on the tragedies of outsiders, so they 
 
 170
 
 take on an exaggeratedly stern bearing, as 
 if to say, " We feel deeply, but we do not 
 wish to show our feeling." They really 
 feel nothing, only want to make others 
 beheve how sensitive and modest they are. 
 At times this leads to curious results, even 
 in writers of the first order of renown. Thus 
 Anatole France, the inventor of that most 
 charming smile which is intended to con- 
 vince men that he feels everything and under- 
 stands everything, but does not cry out, 
 because that would not be fitting, in one of 
 his novels takes upon himself the noble role 
 of advocate of the victims of a crime, against 
 the criminal. *"' Our time," he says, " out 
 of pity to the criminal forgets the sufferings 
 of his victim." This, I repeat, is one of 
 the most curious misrepresentations of 
 modern endeavour. It is true we in Russia 
 talk a good deal about compassion, particu- 
 larly to criminals, and Anatole France is 
 by no means the only man who thinks that 
 our distinguishing characteristic is extreme 
 sensitiveness and tender-heartedness. But 
 as a matter of fact the modern man who 
 thinks for himself is not drawn to the crim- 
 inal by a sense of compassion, which would 
 incontestably be better applied to the victim, 
 but by curiosity, or if you like, inquisitive-
 
 ness. For thousands of years man has 
 sought to solve the great mystery of Hfe 
 through a God-conception — with theodicy 
 and metaphysical theories as a result, both 
 of which deny the possibility of a mystery. 
 Theodicy has long ago wearied us. The 
 mechanistic theories, which contend that 
 there is nothing special in life, that its appear- 
 ance and disappearance depend on the 
 same laws as those of the conservation of 
 energy and the indestructibility of matter, 
 these look more plausible at first sight, but 
 people do not take to them. And no 
 theory can survive men's reluctance to 
 believe in it. In a word, good has not 
 justified the expectations placed on it. 
 Reason has done no better. So overwrought 
 mankind has turned from its old idols and 
 enthroned madness and evil. The smiling 
 Anatole argues, and proves — proves excel- 
 lently. But who does not know what his 
 proofs amount to ? — and who wants them ? 
 It may be our children will take fright at 
 the task we have undertaken, will call us 
 " squandering parents," and will set them- 
 selves again to heaping up treasures, spiritual 
 and material. Again they will believe in 
 ideals, progress, and such like. For my 
 own part, I have hardly any doubt of it. 
 
 172
 
 Solllpsism and the cult of groundlessness are 
 not lasting, and, most of all, they are not 
 to be handed down. The final triumph, in 
 life as in old comedies, rests with goodness 
 and common sense. History has known 
 many epochs like ours, and gone through 
 with them. Degeneration follows on the 
 heels of immoderate curiosity, and sweeps 
 away all refined and exaggerately well- 
 informed individuals. Men of genius have 
 no posterity — or their children are idiots. 
 Not for nothing is nature so majestically 
 serene : she has hidden her secrets well 
 enough. Which is not surprising, consid- 
 ering how unscrupulous she is. No despot, 
 not the greatest villain on earth, has ever 
 wielded power with the cruelty and heart- 
 lessness of nature. The least violation of 
 her laws — and the severest punishment 
 follows. Disease, deformity, madness, death 
 — what has not our common mother con- 
 trived to keep us in subjection .? True, 
 certain optimists think that nature does not 
 punish us, but educates us. So Tolstoy 
 sees it. " Death and sufferings, like ani- 
 mated scarecrows, boo at man and drive 
 him into the one way of life open to him : 
 for life is subject to its own law of reason." 
 Not a bad method of upbringing. Exactly 
 
 m
 
 like using wolves and bears. Unfortunate 
 man, bolting from one booing monster, 
 is not always able in time to dodge into 
 the one correct way, and dashes straight 
 into the maw of another beast of prey. 
 Then what ? And this often happens. With- 
 out disparagement of the optimists, we may 
 say that sooner or later it happens to every 
 man. After which no more running. You 
 won't tear yourself out of the claws of 
 madness or disease. Only one thing is 
 left : in spite of traditions, theodicy, 
 wiseacres, and most of all in spite of oneself, 
 to go on praising mother nature and her 
 great goodness. Let future generations re- 
 ject us, let history stigmatise our names, 
 as the names of traitors to the human cause 
 — still we will compose hymns to deformity, 
 destruction, madness, chaos, darkness. And 
 after that — let the grass grow. 
 
 ^5 
 
 Astrology and alchemy lived their day 
 and died a natural death. But they left a 
 posterity — chemistry inventing dyes, and 
 astronomy accumulating formulae. So it is. 
 Geniuses beget idiots : especially when the 
 mothers are very virtuous, as in this case, 
 
 174
 
 when their virtue is extraordinary. For the 
 mothers are pubHc utility and morality. 
 The alchemists wasted their time seeking 
 the philosopher's stone ; the astrologers, 
 swindled people telling fortunes by the 
 stars. Wedded to utility these two fathers 
 have begotten the chemists and astronomers. 
 . . . Nobody will dispute the genealogy. 
 Perhaps even none will dispute that; from 
 idiotic children one may, with a measure of 
 probability, infer genius in the parents. 
 There are certain indications that this is 
 so — though of course one may not go beyond 
 supposition. But supposition is enough. 
 There are more arguments in store. For 
 instance — our day is so convinced of the 
 absolute nonsense and uselessness of alchemy 
 and astrology that no one dreams of 
 verifying the conviction. We know there 
 were many charlatans and liars amongst 
 alchemists and astrologers. But what does 
 this prove ? In every department there 
 are the same mediocre creatures who specu- 
 late on human credulity. However positive 
 our science of medicine is, there are many 
 fraudulent doctors who rob their patients. 
 The alchemists and astrologers were, in all 
 probability, the most remarkable men of 
 their time. I will go further : in spite of 
 
 175
 
 dye-stuffs and formulae, even In our nine- 
 teenth century, which was so famous for 
 its inventions and discoveries, the most 
 eminent, talented men still sought the 
 philosopher's stone and forecast the destinies 
 of man. And those among them who were 
 possessed of a poetic gift won universal 
 attention. In the old days, consensu 
 sapientium, a poet was allowed all kinds of 
 liberties : he might speak of fate, miracles, 
 spirits, the life beyond — indeed of anything, 
 provided he was interesting. That was 
 enough. The nineteenth century paid its 
 tribute to restlessness. Never were there 
 so many disturbing, throbbing writers as 
 during the epoch of telephones and tele- 
 graphs. It was held indecent to speak 
 in plain language of the vexed and troubled 
 aspirations of the human spirit. Those 
 guilty of the indecency were even dosed with 
 bromides and treated with shower-baths and 
 concentrated foods. But all this is external, 
 it belongs to a history of " fashions " and 
 cannot interest us here. The point is that 
 alchemy and astrology did not die, they only 
 shammed death and left the stage for a time. 
 Now, apparently, they are tired of seclusion 
 and are coming forward again, having 
 pushed their unsuccessful children into the 
 
 176
 
 background. Well, so be it. A la honne 
 he lire / . . . 
 
 i6 
 Man comes to the pass where all experi- 
 ence seems exhausted. Wherever he go, 
 whatever he see, all is old and wearyingly 
 familiar. Most people explain this by say- 
 ing that they really knov/ everything, and 
 that from what they have experienced 
 they can infer all experience. This phase 
 of the exhaustion of life usually comes 
 to a man between thirty-five and forty 
 — the best period, according to Karamzin. 
 Not seeing anything new, the individual 
 assumes he is completely matured and 
 has the right to judge of everything. 
 Knowing what has been he can forecast 
 what will be. But Karamzin was mistaken 
 about the best period, and the " mature " 
 people are mistaken about the " nothing 
 new can happen." The fact of spiritual 
 stagnation should not be made the ground 
 for judging all life's possibilities from known 
 possibilities. On the contrary, such stag- 
 nation should prove that however rich and 
 multifarious the past may have been, it has 
 not exhausted a tittle of the whole possi- 
 biHties. From that which has been it is 
 impossible to infer what will be. Moreover, 
 
 •M 177
 
 it is unnecessary — except, perhaps, to give 
 us a sense of our full maturity and let us 
 enjoy all the charms of the best period of 
 life, so eloquently described by Karamzin. 
 The temptation is not overwhelming. So 
 that, if man is under the necessity of endur- 
 ing a period of arrest and stagnation, and 
 until such time as life re-starts is doomed to 
 meditation, would it not be better to use this 
 meditating interregnum for a directly oppo- 
 site purpose from the one indicated : that 
 is to say, for the purpose of finding in our 
 past signs which tell us that the future has 
 every right to be anything whatsoever, 
 like or utterly unlike the past. Such signs, 
 given a good will to find them, may be seen 
 in plenty. At times one comes to the 
 conclusion that the natural connection of 
 phenomena, as hitherto observed, is not at 
 all inevitable for the future, and that 
 miracles which so far have seemed impossible, 
 may come to seem possible, even natural, 
 far more natural than that loathsome law 
 of sequence, the law of the regularity of 
 phenomena. We are bored stiff with regu- 
 larity and sequence — confess it, you also, 
 you men of science. At the mere thought 
 that, however we may think, we can get 
 no further than the acknowledgment of 
 
 178
 
 the old regularity, an invincible disgust 
 to any kind of mental work overcomes us. 
 To discover another law — still another — 
 when already we have far more than we 
 can do with ! Surely if there is any will- 
 to-think left in us, it is estabHshed in the 
 supposition that the mind cannot and must 
 not have any bounds, any limits ; and 
 that the theory of knowledge, which is 
 based on the history of knowledge and on a 
 few very doubtful assumptions, is only a 
 piece of property belonging to a certain 
 caste, and has nothing to do with us others 
 — und die Natur zuletzt sich doch ergrunde. 
 What a mad impatience seizes us at times 
 when w^e realise that we shall never fathom 
 the great mystery ! Every individual in 
 the world must have felt at one time the 
 mad desire to unriddle the universe. Even 
 the stodgy philosophers who invented the 
 theory of knowledge have at times made 
 surreptitious sorties, hoping to open a path 
 to the unknown, in spite of their own fat, 
 senseless books that demonstrate the advan- 
 tages of scientific knowledge. Man either 
 lives in continuous experience, or he frees 
 himself from conclusions imposed by limited 
 experience. All the rest is the devil. From 
 the devil come the blandishments with 
 
 179
 
 which Karamzin charmed himself and his 
 readers. ... Or is it the contrary r Who 
 will answer ! Once again, as usual, at the 
 end of a pathetic speech one is left with a 
 conjecture. Let every man please himself. 
 But what about those who would like to 
 live according to Karamzin, but cannot ? 
 I cannot speak for them. Schiller recom- 
 mended hope. Will it do ? To be frank, 
 hardly. He who has once lost his peace of 
 mind will never find it again. 
 
 Ever since Kant succeeded in convincing 
 the learned that the world of phenomena is 
 quite other than the world of true reality, 
 and that even our own existence is not our 
 real existence, but only the visible mani- 
 festation of a mysterious, unknown sub- 
 stance (substantia) — philosophy has been 
 stuck in a new rut, and cannot move a single 
 millimetre out of the track laid out by the 
 great Konigsbergian. Backward or forward 
 it can go, but necessarily in the Kantian 
 rut. For how can you get out of the 
 counterposing of the phenomenon against 
 the thing-in-itself ? This proposition, this 
 counterposing seems inalterable, so there 
 is nothing left but to stick your head in the 
 
 180
 
 heavy draught-collar of the theory of know- 
 ledge. Which most philosophers do, even 
 with a glad smile, which inevitably rouses 
 a suspicion that they have got what they 
 wanted, and their " metaphysical need " 
 was nothing more than a need for a harness. 
 Otherwise they would have kicked at the 
 sight of the collar. Surely the contra- 
 position between the world of phenomena 
 and the thing-in-itself is an invention of 
 the reasoning mind, as is the theory of 
 knowledge deduced from this contraposing. 
 Therefore the freedom-loving spirit could 
 reject it in the very beginning — and basta I 
 With the devil one must be very cautious. 
 We know quite well that if he only gets hold 
 of the tip of your ear he will carry off your 
 whole body. So it is with Reason. Grant 
 it one single assumption, admit but one 
 proposition — and finita la commedia. You 
 are in the toils. Metaphysics cannot exist 
 side-by-side with reason. Everything meta- 
 physical is absurd, everything reasonable 
 is — positive. So we come upon a dilemma. 
 The fundamental predicate of metaphysics 
 is absurdity : and yet surely many positive 
 assertions can- lay legitimate claim to that 
 self-same, highly-respectable predicate. 
 What then ? Is there means of distin- 
 
 i8i
 
 guishing a metaphysical absurdity from a 
 perfectly ordinary one ? May one have 
 recourse to criteria ? Will not the very 
 criterion prove a pitfall wherein cunning 
 reason will catch the poor man who was 
 rushing out to freedom ? There can be no 
 two answers to this question. All services 
 rendered by reason must be paid for sooner 
 or later at the exorbitant price of self- 
 renunciation. Whether you accept the assist- 
 ance in the noble form of the theory of 
 knowledge, or merely as a humble criterion, 
 at last you will be driven forth into the 
 streets of positivism. This happens all the 
 time to young, inexperienced minds. They 
 break the bridle and dash forward into space, 
 to find themselves rushing into the same old 
 Rome, whither, as we know, all roads lead : 
 or, to use more lofty language, rushing into 
 the stable whither also all roads lead. The 
 only way to guard against positivism — 
 granting, of course, that positivism no 
 longer attracts your sympathies — is to cease 
 to fear any absurdities, whether rational 
 or metaphysical, and systematically to reject 
 all the services of reason. Such behaviour 
 has been known in philosophy ; and I make 
 bold to recommend it. Credo quia absurduvL 
 comes from the Middle Ages. Modern 
 
 182
 
 instances are Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. 
 
 Both present noble examples of indifference 
 
 to logic and common-sense : particularly 
 
 Schopenhauer, who, a Kantian, even in 
 
 the name of Kant made such daring sallies 
 
 against reason, driving her into confusion 
 
 and shame. That astounding Kantian even 
 
 went so far, in the master's name still, as 
 
 to attempt the overthrow of the space and 
 
 time notions. He admitted clairvoyance — 
 
 and to this day the learned are bothered 
 
 whether to class that admission among the 
 
 metaphysical or the ordinary absurdities. 
 
 Really, I can't advise them, A very clever 
 
 man insists on an enormous absurdity, so I 
 
 am satisfied. Schopenhauer's whole cam- 
 
 .paign against intellect is very comforting. 
 
 It is evident that, though he set out from 
 
 the Kantian stable, he soon got sick of 
 
 hauling along down the cart-ruts, and having 
 
 broken the shafts, he trotted jauntily into 
 
 a jungle of irreconcilable contradictions, 
 
 without reflecting in the least where he was 
 
 making for. The primate of will over 
 
 reason; and music as the expression of our 
 
 deepest essence ; are not these assertions 
 
 sufficient to show us how dexterously he 
 
 wriggled out from the harness of synthetic 
 
 judgments a priori which Kant had placed 
 
 183
 
 upon every thinker. There Is indeed much 
 more music than logic in the philosophy 
 of Schopenhauer. Not for nothing is he 
 excluded from the universities. But of 
 course one may speak of him in the open ; 
 not of his ideas, naturally, but of his 
 music. The European market is glutted 
 with ideas. How neat and nicely-finished 
 and logically well-turned-out those ideas 
 are. Schopenhauer had no such goods. 
 But what lively and splendid contradictions 
 he boldly spreads on his stall, often even 
 without suspicion that he ought to hide 
 them from the police. Schopenhauer cries 
 and laughs and gets furious or glad, without 
 ever realising that this is forbidden to a 
 philosopher. " Do not speak, but sing," 
 said Zarathustra, and Schopenhauer really 
 fulfilled the command in great measure. 
 Philosophy may be music — though it doesn't 
 follow that music may be called philosophy. 
 When a man has done his work, and gives 
 himself up to looking and listening and 
 pleasantly accepting everything, hiding noth- 
 ing from himself, then he begins to " philo- 
 sophise." What good are abstract formulae 
 to him ? Why should he ask himself, 
 before he begins to think : " What can I 
 think about, what are the limits of 
 
 184
 
 thought ? " He will think, and those who 
 like can do the summing up and the build- 
 ing of theories of knowledge. What is the 
 earthly use of talking about beauty ? 
 Beautiful things must be created. Not 
 one single aesthetic theory has so far been 
 able to guess what direction the artists' 
 mind will next take, or what are the limits 
 to his creative activity. The same with 
 the theory of knowledge. It may arrest 
 the work of a man of learning, if he be him- 
 self afraid that he is going too far, but it is 
 powerless to pre-determine human thought. 
 Even Kant's counterposing of things-in- 
 themselves to the world of phenomena 
 cannot finally clip the wings of human 
 curiosity. There will come a time when this 
 unshakeable foundation of positivism will 
 be shaken. All gnosiological disputes as to 
 what thought can or cannot achieve will 
 seem to our posterity just as amusing as the 
 disputes of the schoolmen seem to us. 
 *' Why did they argue about the nature of 
 truth, when they might have gone out and 
 looked for truth itself ? " the future histor- 
 ians will ask. Let us have an answer ready 
 for them. Our contemporaries do not want 
 to go out and seek, so they make a great 
 deal of talk about a theory of knowledge. 
 
 185
 
 i8 
 
 " Trust not thyself, young dreamer." — 
 However sincerely you may long for truth, 
 whatever sufferings and horrors you may 
 have surpassed, do not believe your own 
 self, young dreamer. What you are looking 
 for, you won't find. At the utmost, if 
 you have a gift for writing you will bring 
 out a nice original book. Even — do not be 
 offended — you may be satisfied with such a 
 result. In Nietzsche's letters relating to 
 the year 1888, the year when Brandes dis- 
 covered him, you will find a sad confirma- 
 tion of the above. Had not Nietzsche 
 struggled, sought, suffered ? — and behold, 
 towards the end of his life, when it would 
 have seemed that all mundane rewards 
 had become trivial to him, he threw himself 
 with rapture on the tidings of first fame, and 
 rushed to share his joy with all his friends, 
 far and near. He does not tire of telling 
 in dozens of letters and in varying forms the 
 story of how Brandes first began his lectures 
 on him, Nietzsche, how the audience con- 
 sisted of three hundred people, and he even 
 quotes Brandes' placard announcement in 
 the original Danish. Fame just threw him 
 a smile, and forgotten are all the horrible 
 experiences of former days. The loneliness, 
 
 186
 
 the desertedness, the cave in the mountain, 
 the man into whose mouth the serpent 
 dimbed — all forgotten, every thought turned 
 to the ordinary, easily-comprehensible good. 
 Such is man. 
 
 Mit gier'ger Hand nach Schdtzen grdbt 
 Und froh ist zcenn er Regenzvurmer findet. 
 
 When a man is young he writes because 
 it seems to him he has discovered a new 
 almighty truth which he must make haste 
 to impart to forlorn mankind. Later, be- 
 coming more modest, he begins to doubt 
 his truths : and then he writes to convince 
 himself. A few more years go by, and he 
 knows he was mistaken all round, so there 
 is no need to convince himself. Neverthe- 
 less he continues to write, because he is not 
 fit for any other work, and to be accounted 
 a " superfluous " man is so horrible. 
 
 20 
 
 A very original man is often a banal writer, 
 and vice versa. We tend so often to write 
 not about what is going on in us, but of 
 our pia desideria. Thus restless, sleepless 
 men sing the glory of sleep and rest, which 
 
 187
 
 have long been sung to death. x\nd those 
 who sleep ten hours on end and are always 
 up to the mark must perforce dream about 
 adventures and storms and dangers, and 
 even extol everything problematical. 
 
 21 
 
 When one reads the books of long-dead 
 men, a strange sensation comes over one. 
 These men who lived two hundred, three 
 hundred, three thousand years ago are so 
 far off now from this writing which they 
 have left on earth. Yet we look for eternal 
 truths in their works. 
 
 22 
 
 The truth which I have the right to 
 announce so solemnly to-day, even to the 
 first among men, will probably be a stale old 
 lie on my lips to-morrow. So I will deprive 
 myself of the right of calling such a truth 
 my own. Probably I shall deprive no 
 one but myself : others will go on loving 
 and praising the self-same truth, living 
 with it. 
 
 23 
 
 A writer who cannot lie with inspiration — 
 and that is a great art, which few may 
 accomplish — loves to make an exhibition 
 
 188
 
 of honesty and frankness. Nothing else Is 
 left him to do. 
 
 24 
 
 The source of originality. — A man who 
 
 has lost all hope of rooting out of himself a 
 certain radical defect of character, or even 
 of hiding the flaw from others, turns round 
 and tries to find in his defect a certain merit. 
 If he succeeds in convincing his acquaint- 
 ances, he achieves a double gain : first, 
 he quiets his conscience, and then he acquires 
 a reputation for being original. 
 
 .25 
 
 Men begin to strive towards great ends 
 when they feel they cannot cope with the 
 little tasks of life. They often have their 
 measure of success. 
 
 26 
 
 A belch interrupts the loftiest meditation. 
 You may draw a conclusion if you like : 
 if you don't like, you needn't. 
 
 27 . 
 
 A woman of conviction. — We forgive a 
 
 man his " convictions," however unwillingly. 
 It goes without saying that we balk at 
 any individual who believes in his own 
 
 189
 
 infallibility, but one must' reconcile oneself 
 with necessity. It is ugly and preposterous 
 to have corns on one's hands, but still, J 
 they can't be avoided in this unparadisal 
 earth of sweat and labour. But why see 
 an ideal in callosities ? In practical life, 
 particularly in the social political life to j 
 which we are doomed, convictions are a I 
 necessity. Unity is strength, and unity ' 
 is possible only among people who think 
 alike. Again, a deep conviction is in itself 
 a strong force, far more powerful than the 
 most logical argumentation. Sometimes one 
 has only to pronounce in a full, round, 
 vibrating chest voice, such as is peculiar to 
 people of conviction, some trifling sentence, 
 and an audience hitherto unconvinced is 
 carried away. Truth is often dumb, 
 particularly a new truth, which is most 
 shy of people, and which has a feeble, 
 hoarse voice. But in certain situations 
 that which will influence the crowd is 
 more important than that which is genuine 
 truth. Convictions are necessary to a public 
 man : but he who is too clever to believe 
 in himself entirely, and is not enough of 
 an actor to look as if he believed, he had 
 best give up public work altogether. At 
 the same time he will realise that lack of 
 
 190
 
 convictions is not profitable, and will look 
 with more indulgence on such as are bound 
 to keep themselves well supplied. Yet 
 all the more will he dislike those men who 
 without any necessity disfigure themselves 
 with the coarse tattoo marks. And 
 particularly he will object to such women. 
 What can be more intolerable than a woman 
 of conviction. She lives in a family, without 
 having to grind for her daily bread — why 
 disfigure herself ? Why wilfully rub her 
 hands into corns, when she might keep 
 them clean and pretty ! Women, moreover, 
 usually pick up their convictions ready- 
 made from the man who interests them 
 most at the moment. And never do they 
 do this so vigorously as when the man 
 himself seems incapable of paving the way 
 to his ideas ! They are full of feeling for 
 him; they rush to the last extremities of 
 resource. Will not their feeble little fists 
 help him ? It may be touching, but in the 
 end it is intolerable. So it is much pleasanter 
 to meet a woman who believes in her 
 husband and does not consider it necessary 
 to help him. She can then dispense with 
 convictions. 
 
 191
 
 28 
 
 Emancipation of women. — The one and 
 only way of mastering an enemy is to learn 
 the use of his weapons. Starting from this, 
 modern woman, weary of being the slave 
 of man, tries to learn all his tricks. Hard 
 is slavery, wonderful is freedom ! Slavery 
 at last is so unendurable that a human being 
 will sacrifice everything for freedom. Of 
 what use are his virtues to a prisoner 
 languishing in prison ? He has one aim, one 
 object — to get out of prison, and he values 
 only such qualities in himself as will assist 
 his escape. If it is necessary to break an 
 iron grating by physical force, then strong 
 muscles will seem to the prisoner the most 
 desirable of all things. If cunning will 
 help him, cunning is the finest thing on 
 earth. Something the same happens with 
 woman. She became convinced that man 
 owed his priority chiefly to education and 
 a trained mind, so she threw herself on 
 books and universities. Learning that 
 promises freedom is light, everything else 
 darkness. Of course, it is a delusion, but 
 you could never convince her of it, for that 
 Vv'ould mean the collapse of her best hopes 
 of freedom. So that in the end woman will 
 be as v/ell-informed ashman, she will furnish 
 
 192
 
 herself with broad views and unshakeable 
 convictions, with a philosophy also — and 
 in the end she may even learn to think 
 logically. Then, probably, the many mis- 
 understandings between the sexes will cease. 
 But heavens, how tedious it will be ! Men 
 will argue, women will argue, children will 
 probably be born fully instructed, under- 
 standing everything. With what pain will 
 the men of the future view our women, 
 capricious, frivolous, uninformed creatures, 
 understanding nothing and desiring to under- 
 stand nothing. A whole half of the human 
 race neither would nor could have any 
 understanding ! But the hope lies there. 
 Maybe we can do without understanding. 
 Perhaps a logical mind is not an attribute, 
 but a curse. In the struggle for existence, 
 however, and the survival of the fittest, 
 not a few of the best human qualities have 
 perished. Obviously woman's illogicality 
 is also destined to disappear. It is a thou- 
 sand pities. 
 
 All kinds of literature are good, except 
 the tedious, said Voltaire. We may en- 
 large the idea. All men and all activities 
 are good, except the tedious. Whatever 
 your failings and your vices, if you are 
 
 N 193
 
 only amusing or interesting all is forgiven 
 you. Accordingly, frankness and natural- 
 ness are quite rightly considered doubtful 
 virtues. If people say that frankness and 
 naturalness arc virtues, always take it 
 cum grano salts. Sometimes it is per- 
 missible and even opportune to fire off 
 truth of all sorts. Sometimes one may 
 stretch oneself like a log across the road. 
 But God forbid that such sincere practices 
 should be raised into a principle. To out 
 with the truth at all times, always to reveal 
 oneself entirely, besides being impossible 
 to accomplish, never having been accom- 
 plished even in the confessions of the greatest 
 men, is moreover a far more risky business 
 than it seems. I can confidently assert 
 that if any man tried to tell the whole truth 
 about himself, not metaphorically, for every 
 metaphor is a covering ornament, but in 
 plain bare words, that man would ruin 
 himself for ever, for he would lose all interest 
 in the eyes of his neighbours, and even 
 in his own eyes. Each of us bears in his 
 soul a heavy wound, and knows it, yet 
 carries himself, must carry himself as if 
 he were aware of nothing, while all around 
 keep up the pretence. Remember Ler- 
 montov : 
 
 194
 
 Look ! around, you, playfully 
 
 The crowd, moves on the usual road. 
 
 Scarce a mark of trouble on the festive faces. 
 
 Not one indecent tear ! 
 
 And yet is barely one amongst them 
 
 Bui is crushed by heavy torture. 
 
 Or has gathered the wrinkles of young age 
 
 Save from crime or loss. 
 
 These words are horribly true — and the 
 really horrible should be concealed, it 
 frightens one off. I admit, Byron and 
 Lermontov could make it alluring. But 
 all that is alluring depends on vagueness, 
 remoteness. Any monster may be beautiful 
 in the distance. And no man can be interest- 
 ing unless he keep a certain distance between 
 himself and people. Women do not under- 
 stand this. If they like a man, they try 
 to come utterly near to him, and are sur- 
 prised that he does not meet their frankness 
 with frankness, and admit them to his holy 
 of holies. But in the innermost sanctuary 
 the only beauty is inaccessibility. As a rule 
 it is not a sanctuary but a lair where the 
 wounded beast in man has run to lick his 
 wounds. And shaH this be done in public ? 
 People generally, and women particularly, 
 ought to be given something positive. In 
 
 195
 
 books one may still sing the praise of wounds, 
 hopelessness, and despair — whatever you 
 like, for books are still literature, a conven- 
 tionality. But to strip one's anguish in the 
 open market, to confess an incurable disease 
 to others, this is to kill one's soul, not to 
 relieve it. All, even the best men, have 
 some aversion for you. Perhaps in the 
 interest of order and decorum they will 
 grant you a not-too-important place in 
 their philosophy of life. For in a philosophy 
 of life, as in a cemetery, a place is prepared 
 for each and all, and everyone is welcome. 
 There also are enclosures where rubbish 
 is dumped to rot. But for those who have 
 as yet no desire to be fitted into a world- 
 philosophy, I would advise them to keep 
 their tongue between their teeth, or like 
 Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, take to literature. 
 To a writer, in books and only in books, 
 all is permitted provided he has talent. 
 But in actual living even a writer must not 
 let loose too much, lest people should guess 
 that in his books he is telling the truth. 
 
 30 
 Poushkin asserts that the poet himself 
 can and must be the judge of his own work. 
 " Are you content, exacting artist ? Con- 
 
 196
 
 tent, then let the mob revile." It is need- 
 less to argue against this, for how could 
 you prove that the supreme verdict belongs 
 not to the poet himself, but to public opinion? 
 Nor, for that matter, can we prove Poushkin 
 right. We must agree or disagree, as we 
 like. But we cannot reject the evidence. 
 Whether you like it or not, Poushkin was 
 evidently satisfied with his own work, and 
 did not need his reader's sanction. Happy 
 man ! And it seems to me he owed his 
 happiness exclusively to his inability to 
 pass beyond certain limits. I doubt if 
 all poets would agree to repeat Poushkin's 
 verse quoted above. I decidedly refuse 
 to believe that Shakespeare, for instance, 
 after finishing Hamlet or King Lear could 
 have said to himself : " I, who judge my 
 work more strictly than any other can judge, 
 am satisfied." I do not think he can even 
 have thought for a moment of the merits 
 of his works, Hamlet or Ki7ig Lear. To 
 Shakespeare, after Hamlet, the word " satis- 
 fied " must have lost all its meaning, and 
 if he used it, it was only by force of habit, 
 as we sometimes call to a dead person. His 
 own works must have seemed to him imper- 
 fect, mean, pitiful, like the sob of a child 
 or the moaning of a sick man. He gave 
 
 197
 
 them to the theatre, and most probably was 
 surprised that they had any success. Per- 
 haps he was glad that his tears were of 
 some use, if only for amusing and instructing 
 people. And probably in this sense the 
 verdict of the crowd was dearer to him than 
 his own verdict. He could not help accusing 
 his own offspring — thank heaven, other 
 people acquitted it. True, they acquitted 
 it because they did not understand, or 
 understood imperfectly, but this did not 
 matter. " Use every man after his desert, 
 and who should 'scape a whipping ? " asked 
 Hamlet. Shakespeare knew that a strict 
 tribunal would reject his works : for they 
 contain so many terrible questions, and not 
 one perfect answer. Could anyone be 
 " satisfied " at that rate ? Perhaps with 
 Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or even 
 Richard III. — but after Hamlet a man may 
 find rest only in his grave. To speak the 
 whole truth, I doubt if Poushkin himself 
 maintained the view we have quoted till 
 the end of his days, or even if he spoke all 
 he felt when he wrote the poem in 1830. 
 Possibly he felt how little a poet can be 
 satisfied with his work, but pride prevented 
 his admitting it, and he tried to console 
 himself with his superiority over the crowd. 
 
 198
 
 Which is undeniably a right thing to do. 
 Insults — and Poushkin had to endure many 
 — are answered with contempt ; and woe 
 to the poor wretch who feels impelled to 
 justify his contempt by his own merits, 
 according to the stern voice of conscience. 
 Such niceness is dangerous and unnecessary. 
 If a man would preserve his strength and 
 his confidence he must give up magnanimity, 
 he must learn to despise people, and even if 
 he cannot despise them he must have the 
 air of one who would not give a pin's head 
 for anybody. He must appear always con- 
 tent. . . . Poushkin was a clever man and 
 a deep nature. 
 
 Metaphysics against their zcill. — It often 
 occurs to us that evil is not altogether so 
 unnecessary, after all. Diseases, humilia- 
 tions, miseries, deformity, failure, and all 
 the rest of those plants which flourish with 
 such truly tropical luxuriance on our planet, 
 are probably essential to man. Poets sing 
 plentifully of sorrow. 
 
 " Nous sommes les apprentis, la douleur 
 est notre mattre,^^ said de Musset. On this 
 subject everybody can bring forth a quota- 
 tion, not only from the philosophers, who 
 are a cold, heartless tribe, but from tender, 
 
 199
 
 gentle, or sentimental poets. Doubtless 
 one knows many instances where suffering 
 has profited a man. True also, one knows 
 many cases of the direct opposite. And these 
 are all cases of profound, earnest, outrageous, 
 incredibly outrageous suffering. Look at 
 Tchekhov's men and women — plainly drawn 
 from life, or at any rate, exceedingly life- 
 like. Uncle Vanya, an old man of fifty, 
 cries beside himself all over the stage, 
 " My life is done for, my life is done for," 
 and senselessly shoots at a harmless pro- 
 fessor. The hero in A Tedious Story^as 
 a quiet, happy man engaged in work of 
 real importance, when suddenly a horrible 
 disease stole upon him, not killing him, but 
 taking him between its loathsome jaws. 
 But what for ? Then Tchekhov's girls and 
 women ! They are mostly young, innocent, 
 fascinating. And always there lies in wait 
 for them round every corner a meaningless, 
 rude, ugly misery which murders even the 
 most modest hopes. They sob bitterly, but 
 fate takes no notice. How explain such 
 horrors ? Tchekhov is silent. He does not 
 weep himself — he left off long ago, and 
 besides it is a humiliating thing for a grown- 
 up person to do. Setting one's teeth, it is 
 necessary either to keep silent or — to explain. 
 
 200
 
 Well, metaphysicsundertakes the explanation. 
 Where common sense stops, metaphysics 
 must take another stride. " We have seen," 
 it says, ^' many instances where at first 
 glance suffering seemed absurd and needless, 
 but where later on a profound significance 
 was revealed. Thus it may be that what 
 we cannot explain may find its explanation 
 in time. ' Life is lost,' cries Uncle Vanya, 
 * Life is done for,' repeat the voices of 
 girls innocently perishing — yet nothing is 
 lost. The very horror which a drowning 
 man experiences goes to show that the 
 drowning is nothing final. It is only the 
 beginning of greater events. The less a 
 man has fulfilled in experience, the more 
 in him remains of unsatisfied passion and 
 desire, the greater are the grounds for think- 
 ing that his essence cannot be destroyed, 
 but must manifest itself somehow or other 
 in the universe. Voluntary asceticism and 
 self-denial, such common human phenomena, 
 help to solve the riddle. Nobody compels 
 a man, he imposes suffering and abstinence 
 on himself. It is an incomprehensible in- 
 stinct, but still an instinct which, rooted in 
 the depths of our nature, prompts us to a 
 decision repugnant to reason : renounce 
 life, save yourself. The majority of men 
 
 201
 
 do not hear or do not heed the prompting. 
 And then nature, which cannot rely on our 
 sensibility, has recourse to violence. She 
 shows glimpses of Paradise to us in our 
 youth, awakens hopes and impossible desires, 
 and at the moment of our supreme expecta- 
 tion she shows us the hollowness of our hope. 
 Nearly every life can be summed up in a 
 few words : man was shown heaven — and 
 thrown into the mud. We are all ascetics 
 — voluntary or involuntary. Here on earth 
 dreams and hopes are only awakened, not 
 fulfilled. And he who has endured most 
 suffering, most privation, will awaken in 
 the afterwards most keenly alive." Such 
 long speeches metaphysics whispers to us. 
 And we repeat them, often leaving out the 
 " it may be." Sometimes we believe them, 
 and forge our philosophies from them. 
 Even we go so far as to assert that had we 
 the power we would change nothing, abso- 
 lutely nothing in the world. And yet, if 
 by some miracle such power came into our 
 hands, how triumphantly we would send 
 to the devil all philosophies and lofty world- 
 conceptions, all ideals and metaphysics, 
 and plainly and simply, without reflection, 
 abolish sufferings, deformities, failures, all 
 those things to which we attach such a high 
 
 202
 
 educational value, abolish them from the 
 face of the earth. We are fed up, oh, how 
 fed up we are with carrying on our studies. 
 But it can't be helped. Faute de mieux, 
 let us keep on inventing systems, thinking 
 them out. But let us agree not to be cross 
 with those who don't want to have anything 
 to do with our systems. Really, they have 
 a perfect right. 
 
 32 
 Old age must be respected — so all say, 
 even the old. And the young willingly 
 meet the demand. But in such spontaneous, 
 even often emphatic respect, is there not 
 something insulting to old age. Every 
 young man, by his voluntary deference, 
 seems to say : " And still the rising star 
 shines brighter than the setting." And 
 the old, accepting the respect, are well 
 aware that they can count on nothing more. 
 The young are attentive and respectful to 
 the old only upon the express condition 
 that the latter shall behave like old people, 
 and stand aside from life. Let a real man 
 try to follow Faust's example, and what a 
 shindy there will be ! The old, being as a 
 rule helpless, are compelled to bow to public 
 opinion and behave as if their only interests 
 
 203
 
 were the interests of righteousness, good 
 name, and such-like Platonic attributes. 
 Only a few go against the convention, 
 and these are monsters and degenerates. 
 We do not wish old men to have desires, 
 so that life is arranged as if old men 
 desired nothing. This, of course, is no 
 great matter : even the young are compelled 
 to be satisfied with less than nothing, in our 
 system. We are not out to meddle with 
 human rights. Our point is that science 
 and philosophy take enforced appearances 
 for reality. Grey hair is supposed to be a 
 sure sign of victory over the passions. 
 Hence, seeing that we must all come to 
 grey hairs, therefore the ultimate business 
 of man is to overcome the passions. . . . On 
 this granite foundation whole systems of 
 philosophy are built. It is not worth while 
 quarrelling with a custom — let us continue 
 to pay respect to old age. But let us look 
 in other directions for philosophic bases. 
 It is time to open a free road to the passions 
 even in the province of metaphysics. 
 
 33 
 Dostoevsky — advocatus diaboh. — Dos- 
 
 toevsky, like Nietzsche, disliked Protest- 
 antism, and tried every means of degrading 
 
 204
 
 it in the eyes of the world. As normally 
 he was not over scrupulous, it is probable 
 he never took the trouble to acquaint him- 
 self with Luther's teaching. His flair did 
 not deceive him : the Protestant religion 
 and morality was most unsuitable to him 
 and his kind. But does this mean that it 
 was to be calumniated, and judged, as 
 Dostoevsky judged it, merely by the etymo- 
 logical meaning of a word ? Protestant — a 
 protester, one who only protests and has no 
 positive content. A child's text-book of 
 history will show the absurdity of the defini- 
 tion. Protestantism is, on the whole, the 
 most positive, assertive creed of all the 
 Christian religions. It certainly protested 
 against Catholicism, but against the de- 
 structive tendencies in the latter, and in the 
 name of positive ideals. Catholicism relied 
 too much on its power and its spell, and 
 most of all on the infallibility of its dogmas 
 to which it offered millions of victims. To 
 maim and mutilate a man ad majorem 
 gloriam Dei was considered a perfectly 
 proper thing in the Middle Ages, the period 
 of bloom for Catholicism. At the risk of 
 appearing paradoxical, I venture to assert 
 that ideas have been invented only for the 
 purpose of giving the right to mutilate 
 
 205
 
 people. The Middle Ages nourished a myster- 
 ious, incomprehensible hatred for everything 
 normal, self-satisfied, complete. A young, 
 healthy, handsome man, at peace with 
 himself, aroused suspicion and hostility in 
 a believing Catholic. His very appearance 
 offended religion and confuted dogma. It 
 was not necessary to examine him. Even 
 though he went to church, and gave no 
 sign of doubt, either in deed or word, yet 
 he must be a heretic, to be converted at all 
 cost. And we know the Catholic cost: 
 privation, asceticism, mortification of 
 the flesh. The most normal person, kept 
 on a monastic regime, will lose his spiritual 
 balance, and all those virtues which belong 
 to a healthy spirit and a healthy body. This 
 was all Catholicism needed. It tried to 
 obtain from people the extreme endeavour 
 of their whole being. Ordinary, natural 
 love, which found its satisfaction — this was 
 sinful. Monks and priests were condemned 
 to celibacy — hence monstrous and abnormal 
 passions developed. Poverty was preached, 
 and the most unheard-of greed appeared 
 in the world, the more secret the stronger 
 it became. Humility was essential — and 
 out of bare-footed monks sprang despots 
 who had no limits to their ambitions. 
 
 206
 
 Luther was the last man to understand the 
 meaning and value of the tasks which 
 CathoHcism had set itself. What he saw 
 in Rome was not the accidental outcome 
 of this or the other historical circumstance, 
 but a result of the age-long effort of genera- 
 tions that had striven to attribute to life 
 as alarming and dangerous a nature as 
 possible. The sincere, direct, rustic German 
 monk was too simple-minded to make out 
 what was going on in Rome. He thought 
 there existed one truth, and that the essence 
 of Catholicism lay in what seemed to him 
 an exemplary, virtuous life. He went direct 
 to his aim ? What meaning can monastic- 
 ism have ? Why deprive a priest of family 
 happiness ? How accept the licentiousness 
 of the pope's capital ? The common sense 
 of the normal German revolted against the 
 absurdity of such a state of things — and 
 Luther neither could nor would see any good 
 where common sense was utterly forgotten. 
 The violent oscillation of life resulting from 
 the continuous quick passage from asceticism 
 and blind faith to unbelief and freedom of 
 the passions aroused a mystic horror in the 
 honest monk and released the enormous 
 powers in him necessary to start the great 
 struggle. How could he help protesting ? 
 
 207
 
 And who was the denier, Luther, or the 
 Rome which passed on from the keeping 
 of the Divine Word to the arbitrary ordain- 
 ing of all the mysteries of life ? Luther 
 might have forgiven the monks had they 
 confined themselves to sophistries. But 
 mediaeval monks had nothing in common 
 with our philosophers. They did not look 
 for world-conceptions in books, and logical 
 tournaments amused them only moderately. 
 They threw themselves into the deeps of 
 life, they experimented on themselves and 
 their neighbours. They passed from morti- 
 fication to licentious bacchanalia. They 
 feared nothing, spared nothing. In a word, 
 the Rome against which Luther arose had 
 undertaken to build Babylon again, not 
 with stones, but with human souls. Luther, 
 horrified, withdrew, and with him half 
 Europe was withdrawn. That is his positive 
 merit. And Dostoevsky attacked Luther- 
 anism, and pitied the old Catholicism and the 
 breathless heights to which its " spiritual " 
 children had risen. Wholesome morality 
 and its support is not enough for Dostoevsky. 
 All this is not " positive," it is only " pro- 
 test." Whether I am believed or not, I 
 will repeat that Vladimir Soloviov, who 
 held that Dostoevsky was a prophet, is 
 
 208
 
 wrong, and that N. K. Mikhailovsky, who 
 calls him a cruel talent and a grubber after 
 buried treasure, is right. Dostoevsky 
 grubs after buried treasure — no doubt about 
 that. And, therefore, it would be more 
 becoming in the younger generation that 
 still marches under the flag of pious idealism 
 if, instead of choosing him as a spiritual 
 leader, they avoided the old sorcerer, in 
 whom only those gifted with great short- 
 sightedness or lack of experience in life could 
 fail to see the dangerous man. 
 
 .34 
 It is boring and difficult to convince people, 
 
 and after all, not necessary. It would be 
 
 much better if every individual kept his 
 
 own opinions. Unfortunately, it cannot be. 
 
 Whether you like it or not, you have to 
 
 admit the law of gravitation. Some people 
 
 find it necessary to admit the origin of 
 
 man from the monkey. In the empirical 
 
 realm, however humiliating it may be, 
 
 there are certain real, binding, universal 
 
 truths against which no rebellion will avail. 
 
 With what pleasure would we declare to a 
 
 representative of science that fire does not 
 
 burn, that rattlesnakes are not poisonous, 
 
 that a fall from a high tower is perfectly 
 
 209
 
 agreeable, etc., etc., supposing he were 
 obliged to prove to us the contrary. Un- 
 luckily the scientific person is free from the 
 burden of proof : nature proves, and thor- 
 oughly. If nature, like metaphysics, set 
 out to compel us through syllogisms or 
 sermons to believe in her, how little she 
 would get out of us. She is much more 
 sagacious. Morality and logic she has left 
 to Hegel and Spinoza, for herself she has 
 taken a cudgel. Now then, try to argue 
 against this ! You will give in against your 
 will. The cleverest of all the metaphysi- 
 cians, Catholic inquisitors, imitated nature. 
 They rarely tried the word, and trusted to 
 the fire of faggots rather than of the heart. 
 Had they only had more power, it would 
 not be possible to find two people in the 
 whole world disbelieving in the infallibility 
 of the Pope. Metaphysical ideas, dreamily 
 expecting to conquer tlie world by reasoned 
 exposition, will never attain dominion. 
 If they are bent on success, let them try 
 more effective methods of convincing. 
 
 35 
 Evolution. — In recent years we see more 
 
 and more change in the philosophies of 
 
 writers and even of non-literary people. 
 
 210
 
 The old men are beside themselves — such 
 shiftiness seems indecent. After all, con- 
 victions are not gloves. But the young 
 carelessly pass on from one idea to another. 
 Irresolute men are somewhat timid, and 
 although they abandon their former con- 
 victions they do not declare the change 
 openly. Others, however, plainly announce, 
 as if it were nothing, how far they now are 
 from the beliefs they held six months ago. 
 One even publishes whole volumes relating 
 how he passed on from one philosophy to 
 another, and then to a third. People see 
 nothing alarming in that kind of *' evolu- 
 tion." They believe it is in the ordering 
 of things. But not so at all ! The readiness 
 to leave off one set of convictions in order 
 to assume another set shows complete 
 indifference to convictions altogether. Not 
 for nothing do the old sound the alarm. 
 But to us who have fought so long against 
 all kinds of constancy, the levity of the 
 young is a pleasant sight. They will don 
 materialism, positivism, Kantianism, spirit- 
 ualism, and so on, one after the other, till 
 they realise that all theories, ideas and ideals 
 are as of little consequence as the hoop- 
 skirts and crinolines of our grandmothers. 
 Then they will begin to live without ideals 
 
 211
 
 and pre-arranged purposes, without fore- 
 sight, relying on chance and their own ready- 
 wit. This way, too, must be tried. Perhaps 
 we shall do better by it. . . . Anyhow, it will 
 be more fun. 
 
 Strength of zvill. — Weakness and paralysis 
 of the will, a very dangerous disease in 
 our times, and in most other times, consists 
 not in the absolute loss of desire, such as 
 takes place in the very old, but in the loss 
 of the capacity to translate desire into deed. 
 A diseased will is "often met in violently 
 passionate men, so that the proverb — " Say 
 I will not, not I cannot " — does not always 
 hold good. Man often would, but cannot. 
 And then the force of desire instead of 
 moving to outward creation, works inwardly. 
 This is justly considered the most dangerous 
 effect of the weakening of the will. For 
 inward working is destructive working. 
 Man does not only, to put it scientifically, 
 fail to adapt nature to his needs, but he 
 loses his own power of adaptability to 
 outward circumstances. The most ordinary 
 doctor, or even anybody, decides that he 
 has before him a pathological case which 
 must be treated with care. The patient is 
 
 212
 
 of the same opinion, whilst he still hopes. 
 But when the treatment has had no resuhs, 
 the doctor draws back and speaks of the 
 inadequacy of his science. Then what is 
 the patient to retire upon ? It is disgusting 
 to speak of an incurable disease. So he 
 begins to think, think, think — all the time 
 about things of which nobody thinks. 
 He is gradually forgotten, and gradually 
 he forgets everything — but first of all, that 
 widespread truth which asserts that no 
 judgments are valid save those that are 
 accepted and universal. Not that he disputes 
 the truth : he forgets it, and there is none 
 to remind him. To him all his judgments 
 seem valid and important. Of course he 
 cannot advance the principle : let all men 
 turn from the external world into themselves. 
 But why advance a principle at all ? One 
 can simply say : I am indifferent to the 
 destinies of the external world. I do not 
 want to move mountains or turn rivers 
 aside or rearrange the map of Europe. 
 I don't even want to go to the tobacconist 
 to buy cigarettes. I don't want to do 
 anything. I want to think that my inaction 
 is the most important thing on earth, that 
 any " disease " is better than health, and 
 so on and so on without end. To what 
 
 213
 
 thoughts will not a man abandoned by 
 medicine and doctors sink down ! His 
 judgments are not binding on us, that is 
 as clear as day. But are they uninteresting ? 
 And is that paralysis, that weakness of 
 will, a disease only f 
 
 37 
 
 Death and metaphysics. — A superficial 
 
 observer knows that the best things in life 
 are hard to attain. Some psychologists 
 even consider that the chief beauty of the 
 highest things consists in their unattain- 
 ability. This is surely not true — yet there 
 is a grain in it. The roads to good things 
 are dangerous to travel. Is it because nature 
 is so much poorer than we imagine, so she 
 must lock up her blessings, or is there some 
 greater meaning in it, that we have not 
 guessed ? For the fact is, the more alluring 
 an end we have in view, the more risks and 
 horrors we must undertake to get there. 
 May we not also make a contrary suggestion : 
 that behind every danger something good 
 is hidden, and that therefore danger serves 
 as an indication, a mark to guide us onwards, 
 not as a warning, as we are taught tc 
 believe. To decide this would be to decide 
 that bcliind death, the greatest of dangers
 
 must lie the most promising things. It is 
 as well not to speculate further. We had 
 best stop lest we quarrel even with meta- 
 physics. Traditional metaphysics has 
 always been able to illumine our temporal 
 existence with the reflected beams of 
 eternity. Let us follow the example. Let 
 us make no attempt to know the absolute. 
 If you have discovered a comforting hypo- 
 thesis, even in the upper transcendental 
 air, drag it quickly to earth where labouring 
 men forever await even an imaginary relief 
 from their lot. We must make use of 
 everything, even of death, to serve the ends 
 of this life of ours. 
 
 7he future. — A clever, reasonable boy, 
 accustomed to trust his common sense, read 
 in a book for children a description of a 
 shipwreck which occurred just as the pas- 
 sengers were eating their sweets at dessert. 
 He was astonished to learn that everyone, 
 women and children as well, who could 
 give no assistance whatever in saving the 
 ship, left their dessert and rushed on deck 
 with wailing and tears. Why wail, why 
 rush about, why be stupidly agitated ? 
 The crew knew their business and would do 
 
 215
 
 all that could be done. If you are going 
 to perish, perish you will, no matter how 
 you scream. It seemed to the boy that if 
 he had been on the ship he would just 
 have gone on eating his sweets to the last 
 moment. Justice should be done to this 
 judicious and irreproachable opinion. There 
 remained only a few minutes to live — would 
 it not have been better to enjoy them ? 
 The logic is perfect, worthy of Aristotle. 
 And it was found impossible to prove to the 
 boy that he would have left his sweets, 
 even his favourite sweets, under the same 
 circumstances, and rushed and screamed 
 with the rest. Hence a moral — do not 
 decide about the future. To-day common 
 sense is uppermost, and sweets are your 
 highest law. But to-morrow you will get 
 rid of normality and sense, you will link 
 on with nonsense and absurdity, and prob- 
 ably you will even get a taste for bitters. 
 What do you think .? 
 
 39 
 A priori synthetic judgments. — Kant, as 
 we know, found in mathematics and the 
 natural sciences a priori synthetic judg- 
 ments. Was he right or wrong ? Are the 
 judgments he indicated a priori or a 
 
 216
 
 posteriori ? Anyhow, one thing is certain : 
 they are not accepted as absolutely, but only 
 as relatively indisputable. In metaphysics, 
 where the only curious and important 
 truths are hidden, the case is different. 
 Kant was compelled to admit that just 
 where metaphysics begin the capacity of 
 our human reason to judge a priori ends. 
 But since we cannot dispense with meta- 
 physical judgments, he proposed to substi- 
 tute for them postulates. At the same time 
 he admitted the optimistic presupposition 
 that in the domain of the transcendental 
 we shall find all that we miss in the world of 
 phenomena. So that, because he could 
 not invent a truly scientific metaphysics, 
 he contrived to present us with a non- 
 scientific sort. Which is to say, after many 
 round-about journeys he brings his readers 
 along the opposite way right back to the 
 very spot from which he led them off. 
 Surely non-scientific metaphysics existed 
 before Kant : the mediaeval philosophers 
 had plenty of phantasies and speculations, 
 all supported by " moral " proofs. If Kant 
 wanted to reform metaphysics, he should 
 have got rid of its favourite method of 
 obtaining truths through inferential " con- 
 clusions." Men are greedy, they want to 
 
 217
 
 learn mucli, and get their knowledge cheap. 
 So they think that every truth they have 
 paid for with experience and loss of energy 
 entitles them to a few more truths gratis : 
 or, in philosophic language, a priori, by 
 deduction. They are not ashamed to specu- 
 late with a gift that has been given them. 
 Instead of looking, listening, touching, 
 seeking, they want to infer and conclude. 
 Certainly if they could wring any secret out 
 of nature, no matter by what means, cunning, 
 impudence, fraud, we would forgive them 
 — conquerors are not judged. But nothing 
 comes of their " conclusions " save meta- 
 physical systems and empty prattle. It is 
 surely time to give up conclusions, and get 
 truth a -posteriori^ as did Shakspeare, Goethe, 
 Dostoevsky; that is, every time you want 
 to know anything, go and look and find out. 
 And if one is lazy, or horrified at a new 
 experiment, let him train himself to look 
 on ultimate questions with indifference, as 
 the positivists do. But moral, ontological 
 and such like arguments ! — really, it is 
 disgusting to talk about them. Every 
 new experiment is interesting; but our 
 conclusions, /.<?., synthetic judgments ^^non, 
 are mostly pompous lies, not worth the scrap 
 of paper on which they are recorded. 
 
 218
 
 40 
 
 General rules. — People go to philosophers 
 for general principles. And since philo- 
 sophers are human, they are kept busy 
 supplying the market with general principles. 
 But what sense is there in them ? None 
 at all. Nature demands individual creative 
 activity from us. Men won't understand 
 this, so they wait forever for the ultimate 
 truths from philosophy, which they will 
 never get. Why should not every grown-up 
 person be a cremator, live in his own way at 
 his ovvu risk and have his own experience ? 
 Children and raw youths must go in leading 
 strings. But adult people who want to 
 feel the reins should be despised. They are 
 cowards, and slothful : afraid to try, they 
 eternally go to the wise for advice. And 
 the wise do not hesitate to take the re- 
 sponsibility for the lives of others. They 
 invent general rules, as if they had access 
 to the sources of knowledge. What foolery ! 
 The wise are no wiser than the stupid — they 
 have otdy more conceit and effrontery. 
 Every intelligent man laughs in his soul at 
 *' bookish " views. And are not books the 
 work of the wise ? They are often extremely 
 interesting — but only in so far as they do not 
 contain general rules. Woe to him who 
 
 219
 
 would build up his life according to Hegel, 
 Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Schiller, or Dos- 
 toevsky. He must read them, but he must 
 have sense, a mind of his own to live with. 
 Those who have tried to live according to 
 theories from books have found this out. 
 At the best, their efforts produced banality. 
 There is no alternative. Whether man 
 likes or not he will at last have to realise 
 that cliches are worthless, and that he 
 must live from himself. There are no all- 
 binding, universal judgments — let us manage 
 with non-binding, non-universal ones. Only 
 professors will suffer for it. . . . 
 
 Metaphysical consolations. — Metaphysics 
 mercilessly persecutes all eudaemonistic doc- 
 trines, seeing in them a sort of laesio 
 majestatis of human dignity. Our dignity 
 forbids us to place human happiness in the 
 highest goal. Suppose it is so ? But why 
 then invent consolations, even metaphysical 
 ones ? Why give to such a " pure " ideal 
 concept as metaphysics such a coarse 
 " sensual " partner as consolation ? — sen- 
 sual in the Kantian meaning of the word. 
 Metaphysics had much better associate 
 herself with proud disconsolation. Consola- 
 
 220
 
 tion brings calm and ease, even quiet 
 gratification to the soul. But surely, if 
 metaphysics condescend to accept any assist- 
 ance whatever, she must scorn all earthly 
 gratifications, leave them to wingless positiv- 
 ism and materialism. What are joys and 
 pains to metaphysics ? — she is one thing, 
 they another. Yet all of a sudden meta- 
 physicians begin to shout about consola- 
 tions. Evidently there is a misunderstand- 
 ing here, and a big one. The more you 
 pierce to the ultimate ends of the " infinite " 
 metaphysical problems, the more finite they 
 reveal themselves. Metaphysicians only 
 look out for some new boon — I nearly said 
 pleasure. Voltaire said that if there was no 
 God, then He should be invented. We 
 explain these words by the great French- 
 man's extreme positivism. But the form 
 only is positive, the content is purely 
 metaphysical. All that a metaphysician 
 wants to do is to convince himself that God 
 exists. No matter whether he is mistaken 
 or not, he has found a consolation. It is 
 impossible for him to see that his belief in 
 a certain fact does not make that fact 
 veritable. The whole question is whether 
 there does exist a supreme, conscious First 
 Cause, or whether we are slaves to the laws 
 
 221
 
 of dead necessity. But what does the 
 metaphysician care about this real question ! 
 Having declared himself the avowed enemy 
 of eudaemonism, he next seeks consolation, 
 nothing but consolation. To doubt his 
 right to be consoled drives him to fury and 
 madness. He is prepared to support his 
 convictions by every means — ranging from 
 righteous indignation to fists. It is obvi- 
 ously futile to try to enlighten such a 
 creature. Once a man cares nothing for 
 God, and seeks only to make the best of his 
 life, you will not tear away his attention 
 from the immediate moment. But perhaps 
 there is a God, and neither Voltaire nor the 
 metaphysicians have any need to invent 
 Him. The metaphysicians never saw that 
 an avowed disbelief in God does not prove 
 the non-existence of God, but just the 
 opposite ; it is a surer sign of faith than 
 ever belief is. Unfortunate metaphysicians ! 
 They might have found their greatest conso- 
 lation here, and fists and moral indignation 
 and other forms of chastisement to which 
 they have been driven might have been 
 spared us 
 
 222
 
 42 
 
 Practical advice- — People who read much 
 must ahvays keep it in mind that life 
 is one thing, literature another. Not that 
 authors invariably lie. I declare that there 
 are writers who rarely and most reluctantly 
 lie. But one must know how to read,, and 
 that isn't easy. Out of a hundred book- 
 readers ninety-nine have no idea what they 
 are reading about. It is a common belief, 
 for example, that any writer who sings of 
 suffering must be ready at all times to open 
 his arms to the ^ weary and heavy-laden. 
 This is what his readers feel when they read 
 his books. Then when they approach him 
 with their woes, and find that he runs away 
 without looking back at them, they are 
 filled with indignation and talk of the dis- 
 crepancy between word and deed. Whereas 
 the tact is, the singer has more than 
 enough woes of his own, and he sings them 
 because he can't get rid of them. Uuccello 
 canta nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di 
 rabbia, says the Italian proverb: "The 
 bird sings in the cage, not from joy but 
 from rage." It is impossible to love sufferers, 
 particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever 
 says otherwise is a deliberate liar. " Come 
 unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy 
 
 223
 
 laden, and I will give you rest." But you 
 remember what the Jews said about Him: 
 " He speaks as one having authority ! " 
 And if Jesus had been unable, or had not 
 possessed the fight, to answer this sceptical 
 taunt, He would have had to renounce His 
 words. We common mortals have neither 
 divine powers nor divine rights, we can 
 only love our neighbours whilst they still 
 have hope, and any pretence of going beyond 
 this is empty swagger. Ask him who sings 
 of suffering for nothing but his songs. 
 Rather think of alleviating his burden than 
 of requiring alleviation from liim. Surely 
 not for ever should we ask any poet to sob 
 and look upon tears. I will end with another 
 Italian saying : Nan e un si iriste cane che 
 nan meni la coda. ..." No dog so wretched 
 but he wags his tail sometimes." 
 
 43 
 If a patient fulfils all the orders of a 
 
 sensible doctor, we say he behaves wisely. 
 
 If he wantonly neglects his treatment, 
 
 we say he acts stupidly. If a healthy 
 
 person wished to inoculate himself with 
 
 some dangerous disease — say phthisis — we 
 
 should say he was mad, and forcibly restrain 
 
 him. To such an extent are we convinced 
 
 224
 
 that disease is evil, healtli good. Well — 
 on what is our conviction based f At a 
 glance the question seems absurd. But 
 then at a glance people would absolutely 
 refuse to doubt the fixity of the earth, at a 
 glance an ordinary person would giggle 
 if he was shown the problem of the relation 
 between the real world and the ideal. 
 Who knows what would seem amenable 
 to discussion to the ordinary person .? The 
 philosopher has no right to appeal to the 
 ordinary person. The philosopher must 
 doubt and doubt and doubt, and question 
 when nobody questions, and risk making 
 a laughing-stock of himself. If common 
 sense were enough to settle all problems, 
 we should have known everything long 
 age. So that — why do we value health 
 more than sickness ? Or even further — 
 which is better, health or sickness. If 
 we will drop the utilitarian point of view — 
 and all are agreed that this has no place 
 in philosophy — then we shall see at once 
 that we have no grounds whatever for 
 preferring health and sickness. We have 
 invented neither the one nor the other. We 
 found them both in the world along with 
 us. Why then do we, who know so little 
 about it, take upon ourselves to judge 
 
 p 225
 
 wHch are nature's successes, which her 
 failures ? Health is agreeable — sickness 
 disagreeable. But this consideration is un- 
 worthy of a philosopher : otherwise why 
 be a philosopher, why distinguish oneself 
 from the herd ? The philosopher invented 
 morality, which has at its disposal various 
 pure ideas that have no relation to empirical 
 Hf e. Then let us go further. Reason should 
 have a supply of pure ideas also. Let 
 Reason judge in her own independent way, 
 without conforming to conventional ideas. 
 When she has no other resort, let her 
 proceed by the method of negation : every- 
 thing that common sense asserts, I, Reason, 
 declare to be false. So — common sense 
 says sickness is bad, reason therefore asserts 
 that sickness is the highest boon. Such 
 Reason we should call autonomous, law- 
 unto-itself. Like a real monarch, it is 
 guided only by its own will. Let all con- 
 siderations point in favour of health. Reason 
 must remain inexorable and keep her stand 
 till we are all brought to obedience. She 
 must praise suffering, deformity, failure, 
 hopelessness. At every step she must fight 
 commonsense and utilitarianism, until man- 
 kind is brought under. Is she afraid of 
 rebellion ? Must she in the last issue, like 
 
 2X6
 
 morality, adapt herself to the inclinations 
 of the mob ? 
 
 44 
 Experience and Science. — As we are well 
 
 aware, science does not, nay cannot, admit 
 experience in all its extent. She throws 
 overboard an enormous quantity of 
 individual facts, regarding them as the 
 ballast of our human vessel. She takes note 
 only of such phenomena as alternate con- 
 stantly and with a certain regularity. Best 
 of all she likes those phenomena which can 
 be artificially provoked, when, so to speak, 
 experiment is possible. She explains the 
 rotation of the earth and succession of 
 the seasons since a regular recurrence is 
 observable, and she demonstrates thunder 
 and lightning with a spark from an electric 
 machine. In a word, in so far as a regular 
 alternation of phenomena is observable, 
 so far extends the realm of science. But 
 what about those individual phenomena 
 which do not recur, and which cannot be 
 artificially provoked ? If all men were 
 blind, and one for a moment recovered 
 his sight and opened his eyes on God's 
 world, science would reject his evidence. 
 Yet the evidence of one seeing man is worth 
 that of a million blind. Sudden enlighten- 
 
 227
 
 ments are possible in our life — even if they 
 endure only for a few seconds. Must they 
 be passed over in silence because they are 
 not normal and cannot be provoked ? — 
 or treated poetically, as beautiful fictions ? 
 Science insists on it. She declares that 
 no judgments are true except such as can 
 be verified by all and everyone. She exceeds 
 her bounds. Experience is wider than 
 scientific experiment, and individual 
 phenomena mean much more to us than 
 the constantly recurrent. 
 
 Science is useful — but she need not pretend 
 to truth. She cannot know what truth is, 
 she can only accumulate universal laws. 
 Whereas there are, and always have been, 
 non-scientific ways of searching for truth, 
 ways which lead, if not to the innermost 
 secrets, yet to the threshold. These roads, 
 however, we have let fall into ruin whilst 
 we followed our modern methodologies, 
 so now we dare not even think of them. 
 What gives us the right to assert that 
 astrologers, alchemists, diviners, and sorcerers 
 who passed the long nights alone with their 
 thoughts, wasted their time in vain 1 As 
 for the philosopher's stone, that was merely 
 a plausible excuse invented to satisfy the 
 uninitiated. Could an alchemist dare to 
 
 228
 
 confess openly that all his efforts were 
 towards no useful or utilitarian end ? He 
 had to guard against importunate curiosity 
 and impertinent authority in outsiders. 
 So he lied, now frightening, now alluring 
 the mob through its cupidity. But certainly 
 he had his own important work to do : 
 and it had only one fault, that it was purely 
 personal to him. And about personal 
 matters it is considered correct to keep 
 silent. . . . Astonishing fact ! As a rule 
 a man hesitates over trifles. But it does 
 sometimes occur that a moment arrives 
 when he is filled with unheard-of courage 
 and resolution in his judgments. He is 
 ready to stand up for his opinions against 
 all the world, dead or living. Whence 
 such sudden surety, what does it mean ? 
 Rationally we can discover no foundation 
 for it. If a lover has got into his head that 
 his beloved is the fairest woman on earth, 
 worth the whole of life to him ; if one who 
 has been insulted feels that his offender 
 is the basest wretch, deserving torture and 
 death ; if a would-be Columbus persuades 
 himself that America is the only goal for 
 his ambition — who will convince such men 
 that their opinions, shared by none but 
 themselves, are false or unjustifiable ? And 
 
 229
 
 for whose sake will they renounce their 
 tenets ? For the sake of objective truth ? 
 that is, for the pleasure of the assurance 
 that all men after them will repeat their 
 judgment for truth ? They don't care. 
 Let Don Quixote run broadcast with drawn 
 sword, proving the beauty of Dulcinea 
 or the impending horror of windmills. As 
 a matter of fact, he and the German philoso- 
 phers with him have a vague idea, a kind 
 of presentiment, that their giants are but 
 mill-sails, and that their ideal on the whole 
 is but a common girl driving swine to pasture. 
 To defy such deadly doubt they take to 
 the sword or to argument, and do not rest 
 until they have succeeded in stopping 
 the mouth of everybody. When from all 
 lips they hear the praise of Dulcinea they 
 say : yes, she is beautiful, and she never 
 drove pigs. When the world beholds their 
 windmilhng exploits with amazement they 
 are filled with triumph ; sheep are not 
 sheep, mills are not mills, as you might 
 imagine ; they are knights and cyclops. 
 This is called a proven, all-binding, universal 
 truth. The support of the mob is a necessary 
 condition of the existence of modern 
 philosophy and its knights of the woful 
 countenance. Scientific philosophy wearies 
 230
 
 for a new Cervantes who will put a stop to 
 its paving the way to truth by dint of 
 argument. All opinions have a right to 
 exist, and if we speak of privilege, then 
 preference should be given to such as arc 
 most run down to-day ; namely, to such 
 opinions as cannot be verified and which 
 are, for that selfsame reason, universal. 
 Once, long ago " man invented speech in 
 order to express his real relation to the 
 universe." So he may be heard, even though 
 the relation he wishes to express be unique, 
 not to verified by any other individual. 
 To attempt to verify it by observations 
 and experiments is strictly forbidden. If 
 the habit of " objective verification " has 
 destroyed your native receptivity to such 
 an extent that your eyes and ears are gone, 
 and you must rely only on the evidence of 
 instruments or objects not subject to your 
 will, then, of course, nothing is left you 
 but to stick to the belief that science is 
 perfect knowledge. But if your eyes live 
 and your ear is sensitive — throw away 
 instruments and apparatuses, forget 
 methodology and scientific Don-Quixotism, 
 and try to trust yourself What harm 
 is there in not having universal judgments 
 or truths ? How will it hurt you to see 
 
 231
 
 sheep as sheep ? It is a step forward. You 
 will learn not to see with everybody's 
 eyes, but to see as none other sees. You 
 will learn not to meditate, but to conjure 
 up and call forth with words alien to all 
 but yourself an unknown beauty and an 
 unheard-of power. Not for nothing, I 
 repeat, did astrologers and alchemists scorn 
 the experimental method — which, by the 
 way, far from being anything new or 
 particularly modern, is as old as the hills. 
 Animals experiment, though they do not 
 compose treatises on inductive logic or 
 pride themselves on their reasoning powers. 
 A cow who has burnt her mouth in her 
 trough will come up cautiously next time 
 to feed. Every experimenter is the same — 
 only he systematises. But animals can 
 often trust to instinct when experience 
 is lacking. And have we humans got 
 sufficient experience ? Can experience give 
 us what. we want most ? If so, let science 
 and craftsmanship serve our everyday need, 
 let even philosophy, also eager to serve, 
 go on finding universal truths. But beyond 
 craft, science, and philosophy there is another 
 region of knowledge. Through all the ages 
 men, each one at his own risk, have sought 
 to penetrate into this region. Shall we, 
 
 232
 
 men of the twentieth century, voluntarily 
 renounce our supreme powers and rights, 
 and because public opinion demands it, 
 occupy ourselves exclusively with discover- 
 ing useful information ? Or, in order not 
 to appear mean or poverty-stricken in our 
 own eyes, shall we accept in place of the 
 philosopher's stone our modern metaphysics, 
 which muffles her dread of actuality in 
 postulates, absolutes, and such-like appar- 
 ently transcendental paraphernalia ? 
 
 45 
 
 ^he Russian Spirit. — It will easily be 
 admitted that the distinguishing qualities 
 of Russian literature, and of Russian art 
 in general, are simplicity, truthfulness, and 
 complete lack of rhetorical ornament. 
 Whether it be to our credit or to our discredit 
 is not for me to judge, but one thing seems 
 certain : that our simplicity and , truthful- 
 ness are due to our relatively scanty culture. 
 Whilst European thinkers have for centuries 
 been beating their brains over insoluble 
 problems, we have only just begun to try 
 our powers. We have no failures behind 
 us. The fathers of the profoundest Russian 
 writers were either landowners, dividing 
 
 ^ :> :>
 
 their time between extravagant amusement 
 and State service, or peasants whose drudgery- 
 left them no time for idle curiosity. Such 
 being the case, how can we know whether 
 human knowledge has any limits ? And if 
 we don't know, it seems to us it is only 
 because we haven't tried to find out. Other 
 people's experience is not ours. We are 
 not bmmd by their conclusions. Indeed, 
 what do we know of the experience of others, 
 save what we gather, very vaguely and 
 fragmentarily and unreliably, from books ? 
 It is natural for us to believe the best, 
 till the contrary is proved to us. Any 
 attempt to deprive us of our belief meets 
 with the most energetic resistance. 
 
 The most sceptical Russian hides a hope 
 at the bottom of his soul. Hence our 
 fearlessness of the truth, realistic truth which 
 so stunned European critics. Realism was 
 invented in the West, established there as 
 a theory. But in the West, to counteract 
 it, were invented numberless other palli- 
 ating theories whose business it was to 
 soften down the disconsolate conclusions of 
 Realism. There in Europe they have the 
 etre supreme, the deus sive natura, Hegel's 
 absolute, Kant's postulates, English utili- 
 tarianism, progress, humanitarianism, 
 
 234
 
 hundreds of philosophic and sociologicar 
 theories in which even extreme realists can 
 so cleverly dish up what they call life, that 
 life, or realism, ceases to be life or reality 
 altogether. 
 
 The Westerner is self-reliant. He knows 
 that if he doesn't help himself nobody will 
 help him. So he directs all his thoughts to 
 making the best of his opportunities. A 
 limited time is granted him. If he can't 
 get to the end of his song within the time- 
 limit, the song must remain unsung. Fate 
 will not give him one minute's grace for 
 the unbeaten bars. Therefore as an experi- 
 enced musician he adapts himself superbly. 
 Not a second is wasted. The tempo must 
 not drag for an instant, or he is lost. The 
 ternpo is everything, and it exacts facility 
 and quickness of movement. During a few 
 short beats the artist must produce many 
 notes, and produce them so as to leave the 
 impression that he was not hurried, that he 
 had all the time in the world at his disposal. 
 Moreover, each note must be complete, 
 accomplished, have its fulness and its value. 
 Native talent alone will not suffice for this. 
 Experience is necessary, tradition, training, 
 and inherited instinct. Carpe diem — the 
 European has been living up to the motto for 
 
 235
 
 two thousand years. But if we Russians 
 are convinced of anything, it is that we have 
 time enough and to spare. To. count days, 
 much less hours and minutes — find me 
 the Russian who could demean himself to 
 such a bourgeois occupation. We look 
 round, we stretch ourselves, we rub our 
 eyes, we want first of all to decide what we 
 shall do, and how we shall do it, before we 
 can begin to live in earnest. We don't 
 choose to decide anyhow, nor at second- 
 hand, from fragments of other people's 
 information. It must be from our own 
 experience, with our own brains, that we 
 judge. We admit no traditions. In no 
 literature has there been such a determined 
 struggle with tradition as in ours. We have 
 wanted to re-examine everything, re-state 
 everything. I won't deny that our courage 
 is drawn from our quite uncultured confidence 
 in our own powers. Byelinsky, a half- 
 baked undergraduate, deriving his know- 
 ledge of European philosophy at third 
 hand, began a quarrel with the universe 
 over the long-forgotten victims of Philip 
 II. and the Inquisition. In that quarrel 
 is the sense and essence of all creative 
 Russian literature. Dostoevsky, towards 
 his end, raised the same storm and the same 
 
 236
 
 question over the little tear of an unfor- 
 tunate child. 
 
 A Russian believes he can do anything, 
 hence he is afraid of nothing. He paints 
 life in the gloomiest colours — and were you 
 to ask him : How can you accept such a 
 life ? how can you reconcile yourself with 
 such horrors of reality as have been described 
 by all your writers, from Poushkin to 
 Tchekhov ? he would answer in the words of 
 Dmitri Karamazov : / do not accept life. 
 This answer seems at first sight absurd. 
 Since life is here, impossible not to accept 
 it. But there is a sub-meaning in the reply, 
 a lingering belief in the possibility of a 
 final triumph over " evil." In the strength 
 of this belief the Russian goes forth to meet 
 his enemy — he does not hide from him. 
 Our sectarians immolate themselves. Tol- 
 stoyans and votaries . of the various sects 
 that crop up so plentifully in Russia go in 
 among the people, they go, God knows to 
 what lengths, destroying their own lives 
 and the lives of others. Writers do not 
 lag behind sectarians. They, too, refuse 
 to be prudent, to count the cost or the hours. 
 Minutes, seconds, time-beats, all this is 
 so insignificant as to be invisible to the naked 
 eye. We wish to draw with a generous 
 
 237
 
 hand from fathomless eternity, and all that 
 is limited we leave to European bourgeoisie. 
 With few exceptions Russian writers really 
 despise the pettiness of the West. Even 
 those who have admired Europe most have 
 done so because they failed most completely 
 to understand her. They did not want to 
 understand her. That is why we have 
 always taken over European ideas in such 
 fantastic forms. Take the sixties for 
 example. With its loud ideas of sobriety 
 and modest outlook, it was a most drunken 
 period. Those who awaited the New Mes- 
 siah and the Second Advent read Darwin 
 and dissected frogs. It is the same to-da}-. 
 We allow ourselves the greatest luxury that 
 man can dream of — sincerity, truthfulness 
 — as if we were spiritual Croesuses, as if we 
 had plenty of everything, could afford to 
 let everything be seen, ashamed of nothing. 
 But even Croesuses, the greatest sove- 
 reigns of the world, did not consider they 
 had the right to tell the truth at all times. 
 Even kings have to pretend — think of 
 diplomacy. Whereas, we think we may speak 
 the truth, and the truth only, that any lie 
 which obscures our true substance is a 
 crime ; since our true substance is the 
 world's finest treasure, its finest reality. . . . 
 
 238
 
 Tell this to a European, and it will seem a 
 joke to him, even if he can grasp it at all. 
 A European uses all his powers of intellect 
 and talent, all his knowledge and his art 
 for the purpose of concealing his real self 
 and all that really affects him : — for that 
 the natural is ugly and repulsive, no one in 
 Europe will dispute for a moment. Not 
 only the fine arts, but science and philosophy 
 in Europe tell lies instinctively, by lying 
 they justify their existence. First and last, 
 a European student presents you with a 
 finished theoty. Well, and what does all 
 the " finish " and the completeness signify ? 
 It merely means that none of our western 
 neighbours will end his speech before the 
 last reassuring word is said ; he will never 
 let nature have the last word ; so he rounds 
 off his synthesis. With him, ornament 
 and rhetoric is a sine qua non of creative 
 utterance, the only remedy against all ills. 
 In philosophy reigns theodicy, in science, 
 the law of sequence. Even Kant could 
 not avoid declamation, even with him the 
 last word is '* moral necessity." Thus there 
 lies before us the choice between the artistic 
 and accomplished lie of old, cultured Europe, 
 a lie which is the outcome of a thousand 
 years of hard and bitter effort, and the 
 
 239
 
 artless, sincere simplicity of young, uncul- 
 tured Russia. 
 
 They are nearer the end, we are nearer 
 the beginning. And which is nearer the truth ? 
 And can there be a question of voluntary, 
 free choice ? Probably neither the old age 
 of Europe nor the youth of Russia can give 
 us the truth we seek. But does such a thing 
 as ultimate' truth exist ? Is not the very 
 conception of truth, the very assumption 
 of the possibility of truth, merely an outcome 
 of our limited experience, a fruit of limita- 
 tion ? We decide a -priori that one thing 
 must be possible, another impossible, and 
 from our arbitrary assumptions we proceed 
 to deduce the body of truth. Each one 
 judges in his own way, according to his 
 powers and the conditions of his existence. 
 The timid, scared man worries after order, 
 that will give him a day of peace and quiet, 
 youth dreams of beauty and brilliance, old 
 age doesn't want to think of anything, 
 having lost the faculty for hope. And so it 
 goes on, ad infinitum. And this is called 
 truth, truths ! Every man thinks that his 
 own experience covers the whole range of 
 life. And, therefore, the only men who turn 
 out to be at all in the right are empiricists 
 and positivists. There can be no question 
 
 24c
 
 of truth once we tear ourselves away from 
 the actual conditions of life. 
 
 Our confident truthfulness, like European 
 rhetoric, turns out to be " beyond truth 
 and falsehood." The young East and the 
 old West alike suffer from the restrictions 
 imposed by truth — but the former ignores 
 the restrictions, whilst the latter adapts 
 itself to them. After all, it comes to pretty 
 much the same in the end. Is not clever 
 rhetoric as delightful as truthfulness ? Each 
 is equally life. Only we find unendurable 
 a rhetoric which poses as truth, and a truth- 
 fulness which would appear cultured. Such 
 a masquerade would try to make us believe 
 that truth, which is only limitedness, has 
 a real objective existence. Which is offen- 
 sive. Until the contrary is proved, we 
 need to think that only one assertion has 
 or can have any objective reality : that 
 nothing on earth is impossible. Every time 
 somebodv wants to force us to admit that 
 there are other, more limited and limiting 
 truths, we must resist with every means 
 we can lay hands on. We do not hesitate 
 even to make use of morality and logic, 
 both of which we have abused so often. 
 But why not use them ! 
 
 When a man is at his last resources, 
 
 241
 
 he does not care what weapons he picks 
 up. 
 
 Nur fur Schwtndelfreie. — To be proper, 
 I ought to finish with a moral. I ought 
 to say to the reader that in spite of all I 
 have said, or perhaps because of all I have 
 said — for in conclusions, as you are aware, 
 *' in spite of " is always interchangeable 
 with " because of," particularly if the con- 
 clusion be drawn from many scattered data 
 — well then, because of all I have said, 
 hope is not lost. Every destruction leads 
 to construction, sweet rest follows labour, 
 dawn follows the darkest hour, and so on 
 and so on and so on — all the banalities with 
 which a writer reconciles his reader. But 
 it is never too late for reconciliation, and 
 it is often too early. So why not postpone 
 the moral for a few years — even a few dozen 
 years, God granting us the length of life ? 
 Why make the inevitable *' conclusion " 
 at the end of every book ? I am almost 
 certain that sooner or later I can promise 
 the reader all his heart desires. But not 
 yet. He may, of course, dispense with my 
 consolations. What do promises matter, 
 anyhow ? especially when neither reader nor 
 writer can fulfil them. But if there is no 
 
 242
 
 escape, if a writer is finally obliged to admit 
 in everybody's hearing that the secret 
 desires of poor mankind may yet be realised, 
 let us at least give the wretched writer a 
 respite, let him postpone his confession 
 till old age — usque ad infinitum. . . . Mean- 
 while our motto " Nur fur Schwindelfreie^ 
 There are in the Alps narrow, precipitous 
 paths where only mountaineers may go, 
 who feel no giddiness. Giddy-free ! " Only 
 for the giddy-free," it says on the notice- 
 board. He who is subject to giddiness 
 takes a broad, safe road, or sits away below 
 and admires the snowy summits. Is it 
 inevitably necessary to mount up ? Beyond 
 the snow-line are no fat pastures nor gold- 
 fields. They say that up there is to be 
 found the clue to the eternal mystery — 
 but they say so many things. We can't 
 believe everything. He who is tired of 
 the valleys, loves climbing, and is not afraid 
 to look down a precipice, and, most of all, 
 has nothing left in life but the " meta- 
 physical craving," he will certainly climb 
 to the summits without asking what 
 awaits him there. He does not fear, he 
 longs for giddiness. But he will hardly 
 call people after him : he doesn't want just 
 anybody for a companion. In such a case 
 
 243
 
 companions are not wanted at all, much 
 less those tender-footed ones who are used 
 to every convenience, roads, street lamps, 
 guide-posts, careful maps which mark every 
 change in the road ahead. They will not 
 help, only hinder. They will prove super- 
 fluous, heavy ballast, which may not be 
 thrown overboard. Fuss over them, console 
 them, promise them ! Who would be 
 bothered ? Is it not better to go one's way 
 alone, and not only to refrain fyom enticing 
 others to follow, but frighten them off as 
 much as possible, exaggerate every danger 
 and difficulty ? In order that conscience 
 may not prick too hard — we who love high 
 altitudes love a quiet conscience — let us 
 find a justification for their inactivity. Let 
 us tell them they are the best, the worthiest 
 of people, really the salt of the earth. 
 Let us pay them every possible mark of 
 respect. But since they are subject to 
 giddiness, they had better stay down. The 
 upper Alpine ways, as any guide will tell 
 you, are nur fiir Schwindelfreie.
 
 (fiS?^"^
 
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