This reasoning leads me to an absolutely certain conclusion that music before any other art (decadence in poetry and symbolism and other things in painting) has lost its way and struck an _impasse_. And he who has turned it from the road was that musical genius Beethoven. The principal factors are the authorities and people deprived of æsthetic feeling who judge art. Goethe? Shakespeare?[94] Everything that goes under their names is supposed to be good and on _se bât les flancs_ in order to find something beautiful in the stupid and the unsuccessful, and taste is entirely perverted. And all these great talents--Goethe, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Michael-Angelo--side by side with exquisite things, produced not only mediocre ones, but disgusting ones. The mediocre artists produce a mediocrity as regards value and never anything very bad. But recognised geniuses create either really great works or absolute stuff and nonsense; Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, and others. 3) To place before myself the most complex and confused thing which demands my participation. On all sides it seems there exist insoluble dilemmas; it is bad one way and worse the other. And it is only necessary to carry over the problem from the outer realm into the inner, into one’s own life, to understand that this is only an arena for my inner perfection, that it is a test, a measure of my moral development, an experiment as to how much I can and want to do the work of God, the enlargement of love, and everything resolves itself so easily, simply, joyously. 4) A mistake (sin) is the use of reason, given me to recognise my essence in the love for everything which exists, in acquiring the good for my separate being. As long as man lived without a reasoning consciousness, he fulfilled the will of God in acquiring the good for himself and in struggling for it and there was no sin; but as soon as reason had awakened, then there was sin. 5) The harness-maker, Mikhailo, says to me that he does not believe in a future life, that he thinks that when a man dies, his spirit will leave him and will go away. But I say to him: “Well, go off then with this spirit; then you won’t die.” _May 29, Ysn. Pol. If I live._ It seems to me, _June 6, Ysn. Pol._ The principal thing is that during this time I have advanced in my work,[95] and am advancing. I write on sins and the whole work is clear to the end. Finished Spier--splendid. The economic movement of humanity by three means: the destruction of ownership of land according to Henry George[96]; the inheritance which would give over accumulated wealth to society, if not in the first generation, then in the second; and a similar tax on wealth on an excess of over 1000 rubles income for a family or 200 for each man. To-day the Chertkovs arrived. Galia[97] is very good. The day before yesterday a gendarme came, a spy, who confessed that he was sent after me. It was both pleasant and nasty.[98]