1) That, which I also thought before and wrote down; that _art_ is an invention, is a temptation for amusement with dolls, with pictures, with songs, with _play_, with stories--and nothing more. But to place art as they do (and they do the same with science), on the same level with the good is a horrible _sacrilège_. The proof that it is not so, is that about truth also (the right) I can say that truth is a good (as God said, great good, _teib_, i.e., good), and about beauty one can say that it is good; but it is impossible to say about good that it is beautiful (at times it is homely), or that it is true (it is always true). There is only one good; good and bad; but truth and beauty are good qualities of certain objects. The other very important thing, is that reason is the only means of manifesting, and freeing love. It seems to me that this is an important thought, omitted in my Declaration of Faith. _To-day November 1. Y. P._ All this time I have felt neither well nor like working. I have written letters only, among the number was one to the Caucasian disciplinary battalion.[137] Yesterday, walking at night on the snow, in the blizzard, I tired my heart and it aches. I think I am going to die very soon. That is why I am writing out the notes. I think I am going to die without fear and without resistance. Just now I sat alone and thought how strange it was that people live alone. People; I thought of Stasov;[138] how is he living now, what is he thinking, feeling. Of Kolichka,[139] too. And so strange and new became the knowledge that they, all of them, people--are living, and I do not live in them; that they are closed to me. _November 2. Y. P. If I live._ _November 2nd. Y. P._ Am alive. Am a little better. Have written on the Declaration of Faith. I think it is true that it is cold because it endeavours to be infallible.[140] A blizzard. Sent off the letters to Schmidt and Chertkov. Did not send the letter to Mme. Kalmikov. To-day I thought about art. It is play. And when it is the play of working, normal people it is good, but when it is the play of corrupted parasites, then it is bad--and here now it has reached to decadence. _November 3. Y. P. If I live._ _To-day November 5. Y. P. Morning._ Yesterday was a terrible day. ... At night I hardly slept and was depressed. I just now found the _prescriptions_[141] in my diary, looked them over and began to feel better; to separate one’s true “self” from that which is offended and vexed, to remember that this is no hindrance, no accidental unpleasantness, but the very work predestined me, and above all to know that if I have a dislike for any one, then as long as there is that dislike in me--then I am the guilty one. And as soon as you know you are guilty, you feel better.