The article by Ertel[50] that the efforts of the liberals are useful, and also the letter by Spielhagen on the same theme,[51] provoke me. But I can not, I must not write. I have no time. The letters from Sopotsko[52] and Zdziekhovsky[53] on the Orthodox Church and on the Catholic, provoke me on the other hand. However, I shall hardly write. But here yesterday I received a letter from Grinevich’s[54] mother on the religious bringing up of children. That I must do. At least I must use all my strength to do this. Very much music--it is useless.... As regards religion, I am very cool at present. Thought during this time (much I have forgotten and have not written down): 1) Oh, not to forget death for a moment, into which at any moment you can fall! If we would only remember that we are not standing upon an even plain (if you think we are standing so, then you are only imagining that those who have gone away have fallen overboard and you yourself are afraid that you will fall overboard), but that we are rolling on, without stopping, running into each other, getting ahead and being got ahead of, yonder behind the curtain which hides from us those who are going away, and will hide us from those who remain. If we remember that always, then, how easy and joyous it is to live and roll together, yonder down the same incline, in the power of God, with Whom we have been and in Whose power we are now and will be afterwards and forever. I have been feeling this very keenly. 2) There is no more convincing proof of the existence of God, than the faculty of the soul by which we can transport ourselves into other beings. Out of this faculty flows both love and reason, but neither one nor the other is in us, but they are outside of us and we only coincide with them. (Unclear.) 3) The power to kill oneself is free play given to people. God did not want slaves in this life, but free workers. If you remain in this life, then it means that its conditions are advantageous to you. If advantageous--then work. If you go away from the conditions here, if you kill yourself, then the same thing will be put before you again there. So there is nowhere to go. It would be good to write the history of what a man lives through in this life who committed suicide in a past life; how, coming up against the same requirements which were placed before him in the other life, he comes to the realisation that he must fulfil them. And in this life he is more intelligent than in the others, remembering the lesson given him.