9) One can by personal experience verify the truth, that God, a
part of Whom is my own _self_, is love, and by the experimental way
convince one’s self of this truth. As soon as love is violated, life
ends. There is no desire to do anything, everything is depressing,
and on the contrary, as soon as love is restored, as soon as you
have made peace with those whom you quarrelled, forgiven, received
forgiveness--then you wish to live, to act, everything seems easy
and possible.
10) It would be good to express even in approximate numbers and then
graphically, that quantity of labour, of working days, which rich
people use up in their lives. Approximately more or less, this could
be expressed by money. If I spend 10 roubles a day, that means that
20 men are working constantly for me. (Unclear, not what I want
to say.)
11) They generally say: “That is very deep, and therefore not to be
fully understood.” This is untrue. On the contrary. Everything that
is deep is clear to transparency. Just as water is murky on top,
but the deeper it is, the more transparent.
12) One small part of people, about 20 per cent., is insane by
itself, possessed by a mania of egoism, which reaches to the point of
concentration of all spiritual strengths on oneself; another, the
greater part, almost 80 per cent., is hypnotised by the scientific,
by the artistic ... and principally ... hypnotism, and also does not
make use of its reason. Therefore progress in the world is always
attained by the insane possessed by the same kind of insanity by
which the majority is possessed.
13) I experience the feeling of peace, of satisfaction, when I am
ill, when there takes place in me the destruction of the limits of
my personality. As soon as I get well I experience the opposite:
restlessness, dissatisfaction. Are these not obvious signs that
the destruction of the limits of personality in this world, is the
entrance of life into new limits?
I have finished.
_December 19. Moscow. If I live._
_To-day December 20. Moscow._
My health is not good. My spiritual condition is good, ready
for death. In the evenings there are many people. I tire. In
number 51,[399] _Resurrection_ did not appear and I was sorry. This
is bad.
I thought out a philosophic definition of life. To-day I thought
well about _The Coupon_.[400] Perhaps I shall write it out.
_Notes_
NOTES TO THE TEXT
BY V. G. CHERTKOV
[1] With the words, “I continue,” Tolstoi begins a new note-book of
the Journal; this note-book presupposes another which the editors
have only in separate fragments. The previous note-book ended with
the following note:
“October 8, 1895, Y. P.
“(I am beginning an entry to-day with just what I finished two
days ago.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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