“Not in the least. We could all be of great help to doctors if we would only observe ourselves more closely. Just as people at present, when they feel indisposed, carefully note all the symptoms of their illness, and, in order to decide on a suitable cure, try to determine which of their organs is attacked, even so, some day, people will carefully note their spiritual ailments, and will treat envy, hatred, and malice just as they now treat their liver and kidneys! You are laughing, Irene Pavlovna. But indeed many a new view that seemed strange at first has, after fifty or a hundred years, become generally accepted and positively commonplace. We have, for the time being, forgotten the ancient precept _Know thyself_; if we took it to heart, we could often be our own doctors, for indeed we each have within ourselves an enormous power of self-treatment. Our Christian confessions—the so-called _examens de conscience_ of the Catholics—are nothing but minute observations of ourselves. In former times people took communion, and therefore went to confession, every Sunday. They were obliged, once a week, critically to examine all their actions, and to decide which of them had been sinful (_i.e._, not normal). Beyond this they had to talk these actions over with their spiritual advisers, men chosen for this purpose because they were considered worthy of respect and confidence (_i.e._, because they were normal and healthy). Unfortunately, however, it always happens that customs initiated by master minds for the lasting benefit of humanity, invariably, after a time, fall into the hands of incapable mediocrities, who do not understand the true meaning and object of the ideas in question, and transform them into mechanical poses, from which all sincere natures must turn away. “A careful observation of ourselves would immensely simplify life, and would make many things much clearer to us. You, for instance, Irene Pavlovna, are sincerely convinced that the only reason why you never married is the fact that you did not meet a man who was worthy of you. Actually there was quite another reason. You simply felt a physical disgust at thought of the realisms of marriage—the living with a man as his wife, the bearing of children, the feeding and nursing of these children. This prose sickened you, and as soon as someone was pleasing or sympathetic to you, you hastened to find or invent reasons for not marrying him. You looked for faults in him, exaggerated them, invented them, and did all you could to assure yourself that he was unworthy of you.