Not living for his own wants, but for God? For what God? And could one say anything more senseless than what he said? He said that one must not live for one’s own wants, that is, that one must not live for what we understand, what we are attracted by, what we desire, but must live for something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one can understand nor even define. What of it? Didn’t I understand those senseless words of Fyodor’s? And understanding them, did I doubt of their truth? Did I think them stupid, obscure, inexact? No, I understood him, and exactly as he understands the words. I understood them more fully and clearly than I understand anything in life, and never in my life have I doubted nor can I doubt about it. And not only I, but everyone, the whole world understands nothing fully but this, and about this only they have no doubt and are always agreed. And I looked out for miracles, complained that I did not see a miracle which would convince me. A material miracle would have persuaded me. And here is a miracle, the sole miracle possible, continually existing, surrounding me on all sides, and I never noticed it! Fyodor says that Kirillov lives for his belly. That’s comprehensible and rational. All of us as rational beings can’t do anything else but live for our belly. And all of a sudden the same Fyodor says that one mustn’t live for one’s belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at a hint I understand him! And I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago and men living now—peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing—we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good. I and all men have only one firm, incontestable, clear knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by the reason—it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects. If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect. And yet I know it, and we all know it. What could be a greater miracle than that? Can I have found the solution of it all? can my sufferings be over? Yes, I must make it clear to myself and understand. What have I discovered? What is it makes me glad? What have I discovered? I have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master. Of old I used to say that in my body, that in the body of this grass and of this beetle (there, she didn’t care for the grass, she’s opened her wings and flown away), there was going on a transformation of matter in accordance with physical, chemical, and physiological laws. And in all of us, as well as in the aspens and the clouds and the misty patches, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from what? into what?—Eternal evolution and struggle.... As though there could be any sort of tendency and struggle in the eternal! And I was astonished that in spite of the utmost effort of thought along that road I could not discover the meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses and yearnings. Now I say that I know the meaning of my life: ‘To live for God, for my soul.’ And this meaning, in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvelous. Such, indeed, is the meaning of everything existing. Yes, pride. And not merely pride of intellect, but dulness of intellect. And most of all, the deceitfulness; yes, the deceitfulness of intellect. The cheating knavishness of intellect, that’s it,


What should I have been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had not had these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have existed for me. I looked for an answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question—it is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere. Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one’s neighbor reason could never discover, because it’s irrational.


That all comes of itself, and there’s nothing interesting or important about it because it has always been so, and always will be so. And it’s all always the same. We’ve no need to think about that, it’s all ready. But we want to invent something of our own, and new. So we thought of putting raspberries in a cup, and cooking them over a candle, and squirting milk straight into each other’s mouths. That’s fun, and something new, and not a bit worse than drinking out of cups. Isn’t it just the same that we do, that I did, searching by the aid of reason for the significance of the forces of nature and the meaning of the life of man? And don’t all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying by the path of thought, which is strange and not natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knows so certainly that he could not live at all without it? Isn’t it distinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher’s theory, that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what everyone knows? Now then, leave the children to themselves to get things alone and make their crockery, get the milk from the cows, and so on. Would they be naughty then? Why, they’d die of hunger! Well, then, leave us with our passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right, without any idea of moral evil. Just try and build up anything without those ideas! We only try to destroy them, because we’re spiritually provided for. Exactly like the children! Whence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I get it? Brought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me, full of them, and living on those blessings, like the children I did not understand them, and destroy, that is try to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me. Yes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church. The church! the church! But can I believe in all the church teaches? The Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence? By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?... The atonement?... But I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has been told to me and all men.


Do I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it. Can this be faith? My God, I thank Thee!


The mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and some gentleman with him.


With my brother there will be none of that aloofness there always used to be between us, there will be no disputes; with Kitty there shall never be quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he may be, I will be friendly and nice; with the servants, with Ivan, it will all be different.


Your honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,


Please don’t touch and don’t teach me!


Uncle Kostya! mamma’s coming, and grandfather, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and someone else,


Who is he?


An awfully terrible person! And he does like this with his arms,


Old or young? Oh, I hope it’s not a tiresome person!


No, whatever I do, I won’t argue and give utterance to my ideas lightly,


She has taken Mitya to Kolok She meant to have him out there because it’s so hot indoors,


She rushes about from place to place with him. I advised her to try putting him in the ice cellar.


She meant to come to the bee-house. She thought you would be there. We are going there,


Well, and what are you doing?


Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land. Well, and what about you? Come for long? We have been expecting you for such a long time.


Only for a fortnight. I’ve a great deal to do in Moscow.


Well, have there been reviews of your book?


No one is interested in that now, and I less than anyone. Just look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall have a shower,


It was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,


I’ve been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have some discussion, we’ll see to that. Have you been reading Spencer?


No, I’ve not finished reading him. But I don’t need him now.


How’s that? that’s interesting. Why so?


I mean that I’m fully convinced that the solution of the problems that interest me I shall never find in him and his like. Now.... But we’ll talk later on. If we’re going to the bee-house, it’s this way, along this little path,


Can it have been only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no trace?


Do you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way here? with Vronsky! He’s going to Servia.


And not alone; he’s taking a squadron out with him at his own expense,


That’s the right thing for him. Are volunteers still going out then?


I should think so! You should have seen what was going on at the station yesterday!


Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy’s sake, do explain to me, Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?


With the Turks,


But who has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?


No one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors’ sufferings and are eager to help them,


But the prince is not speaking of help, but of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the government.


Kostya, mind, that’s a bee! Really, they’ll sting us!


But that’s not a bee, it’s a wasp,


Well now, well, what’s your own theory? Why have not private persons the right to do so?


Oh, my theory’s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can individually take upon himself the responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by a government, which is called upon to do this, and is driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both political science and common sense teach us that in matters of state, and especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their personal individual will.


But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the public asserts its will,


You don’t put the matter in its true light. There is no question here of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian feeling. Our brothers, one with us in religion and in race, are being massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people, feeling is aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities. Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men beating a woman or a child—I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and protect the victim.


But I should not kill them,


Yes, you would kill them.


I don’t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the moment, but I can’t say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there is not, and there cannot be, in the case of the oppression of the Slavonic peoples.


Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is. There are traditions still extant among the people of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the yoke of the ‘unclean sons of Hagar.’ The people have heard of the sufferings of their brethren and have spoken.


Perhaps so, but I don’t see it. I’m one of the people myself, and I don’t feel it.


Here am I too. I’ve been staying abroad and reading the papers, and I must own, up to the time of the Bulgarian atrocities, I couldn’t make out why it was all the Russians were all of a sudden so fond of their Slavonic brethren, while I didn’t feel the slightest affection for them. I was very much upset, thought I was a monster, or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I have been here, my mind’s been set at rest. I see that there are people besides me who’re only interested in Russia, and not in their Slavonic brethren. Here’s Konstantin too.


Personal opinions mean nothing in such a case, it’s not a matter of personal opinions when all Russia—the whole people—has expressed its will.


But excuse me, I don’t see that. The people don’t know anything about it, if you come to that,


Oh, papa!... how can you say that? And last Sunday in church? Please give me a cloth. Why, it’s not possible that all....


But what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had been told to read that. He read it. They didn’t understand a word of it. Then they were told that there was to be a collection for a pious object in church; well, they pulled out their halfpence and gave them, but what for they couldn’t say.


The people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own destinies is always in the people, and at such moments as the present that sense finds utterance,


That’s so, no doubt,


Here, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and thinks nothing. Have you heard about the war, Mihalitch? What they read in the church? What do you think about it? Ought we to fight for the Christians?


What should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our Emperor has thought for us; he thinks for us indeed in all things. It’s clearer for him to see. Shall I bring a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?


I don’t need to ask, we have seen and are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?


It means, to my thinking, that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne’er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere—to Pogatchev’s bands, to Khiva, to Servia....


I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people! And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing their will.


That word ‘people’ is so vague. Parish clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it’s all about. The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will, haven’t the faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people’s will?


Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical computation, of course it’s very difficult to arrive at it. And voting has not been introduced among us and cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will of the people; but there are other ways of reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won’t speak of those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is at an end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over again, all feel the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying them in one direction.


Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing. That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.


Frogs or no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I don’t want to defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual world,


Well, about that unanimity, that’s another thing, one may say. There’s my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him. He’s got a place now on the committee of a commission and something or other, I don’t remember. Only there’s nothing to do in it—why, Dolly, it’s no secret!—and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to you that it’s most necessary. And he’s a truthful man too, but there’s no refusing to believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.


Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the post,


So it is with the unanimity of the press. That’s been explained to me: as soon as there’s war their incomes are doubled. How can they help believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and all that?


I don’t care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,


I would only make one condition. Alphonse Karr said a capital thing before the war with Prussia: ‘You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!’


A nice lot the editors would make!


But they’d run, they’d only be in the way.


Oh, if they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind them,


But that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse my saying so, prince,


I don’t see that it was a joke, that....


Every member of society is called upon to do his own special work. And men of thought are doing their work when they express public opinion. And the single-hearted and full expression of public opinion is the service of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at the same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we have heard the voice of the Russian people, which is ready to rise as one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its oppressed brethren; that is a great step and a proof of strength.


But it’s not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks. The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,


For their soul? That’s a most puzzling expression for a natural science man, do you understand? What sort of thing is the soul? Oh, you know! No, by God, I haven’t the faintest idea!


‘I bring not peace, but a sword,’ says Christ,


That’s so, no doubt,


Ah, my dear fellow, you’re defeated, utterly defeated!


No, I can’t argue with them, they wear impenetrable armor, while I’m naked.


Alive? Unhurt? Thank God! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I can’t think how you can be so reckless!


It wasn’t my fault, really. We were just meaning to go, when he made such a to-do that we had to change him. We were just....


Well, thank God! I don’t know what I’m saying!


Come, look, look! Agafea Mihalovna’s right. He knows us!


Well, I am glad you are beginning to love him. I am so glad! It had begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him.


No; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed.


What! disappointed in him?


Not disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected more. I had expected a rush of new delightful emotion to come as a surprise. And then instead of that—disgust, pity.... And most of all, at there being far more apprehension and pity than pleasure. Today, after that fright during the storm, I understand how I love him.


Were you very much frightened? So was I too, but I feel it more now that it’s over. I’m going to look at the oak. How nice Katavasov is! And what a happy day we’ve had altogether. And you’re so nice with Sergey Ivanovitch, when you care to be.... Well, go back to them. It’s always so hot and steamy here after the bath.


Well, what is it perplexes me? Yes, the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself, and in the recognition of which—I don’t make myself, but whether I will or not—I am made one with other men in one body of believers, which is called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians, the Buddhists—what of them? Can these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of that highest blessing without which life has no meaning? But what am I questioning? I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the different religions of all mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words. Don’t I know that the stars don’t move? But looking at the movements of the stars, I can’t picture to myself the rotation of the earth, and I’m right in saying that the stars move. And could the astronomers have understood and calculated anything, if they had taken into account all the complicated and varied motions of the earth? All the marvelous conclusions they have reached about the distances, weights, movements, and deflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that very motion I see before me now, which has been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and will be always alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my soul. The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility of deciding.


Oh, you haven’t gone in then? What is it? you’re not worried about anything? Kostya! do something for me, go into the corner room and see if they’ve made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can’t very well. See if they’ve put the new wash stand in it.


Very well, I’ll go directly. No, I’d better not speak of it. It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words. This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.