(a) Remember how many times you have suffered before because in your consciousness you have connected yourself to your passion; lust, greed, desire, vanity, and remember how everything passed away and you have still not found that “self” which suffered then. And so it is now. It is not you who are suffering, but that passion which you wrongly joined to yourself. (b) Again, when you suffer, remember that the suffering is not something disagreeable which you can wish to get rid of, but it is the very work of life, that very task which you have been designated to do. In wanting to get rid of it, you are doing that which a man would do who lifts the plough there where the earth is hard, just where, in fact, it has to be ploughed up. (c) Then remember, at the moment when you suffer, that if there is anger in the feelings you have, the suffering is in you. Replace the anger with love, and the suffering will end. (d) Also this is possible; love towards enemies, which is indeed the one real love. You must struggle for it, struggle with toil, with the consciousness that in it is life. But when you have attained it, what relief! (e) The principal thing is to turn the toy upside down, find your true “self” which is only visible without matches, and then anger will vanish by itself. That “self” is incapable of, cannot, and has no one to be angry with--loving, it can only pity. During these latter days I didn’t feel like writing. I merely wrote letters to every one and sent to Schmidt an addition to the letter about the incompatibility ... with Christianity.[132] I have begun the Declaration of Faith anew. I am going to continue. Went to Pirogovo with Masha. Serezha[133] is very good.... _October 21. Y. P. If I live._ _To-day probably October 23. Y. P._ All these days I have been out of tune with my work. Wrote a letter yesterday to the commander of the disciplinary battalion in Irkutsk about Olkhovik.[134] It is evening now, I am sitting down to write because I feel the special importance and seriousness of the hours of life which are left to me. And I do not know what I have to do, but I feel that there has ripened in me an expression of God’s will which asks to be let out. Have re-read _Hadji Murad_--it isn’t what I want to say. As to _Resurrection_ I can’t even get hold of it. The drama interests me. A splendid article by Carpenter on science.[135] All of us walk near the truth and uncover it from various sides. _October 26. Y. P._ I am still just as indisposed and don’t feel like writing. My head aches. Serezha came yesterday.[136] Wrote a letter to Sonya and to Andrusha. But it seems to me that during this time of doubt, I arrived at two very important conclusions: