I have suffered much during these days and it seems I have advanced towards peace, towards the good--towards God. Am reading much on art. It is becoming clear. I am not even sitting down to write. Masha went away. The Chertkovs came. To-day I wrote the appendix to _The Appeal_.[160] _Dec. 15. Moscow._ Now 2 o’clock in the morning. Have done nothing. My stomach ached. Am calm; have no desire to write. ... I have made some notes. I don’t write out everything. Something struck me forcibly--it is my clear consciousness of the weight of the oppressiveness from my personality, from the fact that I am I. This gives me joy because it means that I understood, that I recognised as myself, at least partly, a “self” that was not personal. _December 16, Moscow. If I live._ _To-day December 19 or 20._ Five days have passed and I feel the oppressiveness, the weight of my body and therefore the consciousness of the existence of that which is not the body has strengthened terribly. I want to throw off this weight, free myself from these chains and nevertheless I feel them. I am sick of my body. All this time I have not worked at all and I feel heavy melancholy. I am fighting against it by seeking in my life a task which is beyond this life. There is only one such: an approach to the perfection of God, to love. Yesterday it became so clear to me that life here is nothing else than a manifestation in these forms of the greatest perfection of God. “To live an age and unto the night”--that is in terms of time. To live for a universal life and for this one--that is in terms of space. I have done nothing during this time and am unable to. I am living badly. I have noted a few trifles on Art: 1) They bring as a proof that art is good, the fact that it produces a great impression on you. Yes, but who are you? On the decadents, their works produce a great impression on them. You say that they are spoilt. But Beethoven, who does not produce an impression on the working man, produces such an impression on you, only because you are spoilt. Who then is right? What music is beyond question as to its value? That kind which produces as impression on a decadent and on you and on the working man; simple, understandable, popular music. 2) What relief all would feel who are locked up in a concert-room listening to Beethoven’s last works, if a jig or a cherdash or something similar would be played for them.