I am still not writing anything, but I feel my thoughts revive. The devil still does not leave me. I thought to-day about _The Diary of a Mad Man_.[165] The principal thing is that I have understood my filial relation to God, brotherhood,--and my attitude to the whole world has changed. 1897 _Jan. 5, Moscow._ There is still nothing good to write about myself. I feel no need of working and the devil does not leave me. Have been ill for about 6 days. Began to reread _Resurrection_ and reached up to _his_ decision to marry and threw it away with disgust. It is all untrue, invented, weak. It is hard to repair a spoiled thing. In order to repair it, there is necessary: 1) alternately to describe his feeling and life, and hers,[166] and 2) sympathetically and seriously hers, and critically and with a smile, his. I shall hardly finish it. It is all very spoilt. Yesterday I read Arkhangelsky’s[167] article “Whom to Serve” and was very delighted. Have finished the notebook. And here I am writing from it: 1) My article on ... must be written for the people ... 2) (For _The Notes of a Madman_ or for _The Drama_). Despair because of madness and wretchedness of life. Salvation from this despair in the recognition of God and one’s filiality to Him. The recognition of filiality is the recognition of brotherhood. The recognition of the brotherhood of man and the cruel, brutal, unbrotherly arrangement of life which is justified by people--leads inevitably to a recognition of one’s own insanity or that of the whole world. 3) I read Nakashidze’s[168] letter about the Congress of the Dukhobors, where they discussed social questions. Here is an instance of the possibility of administration without violence. One condition is necessary--no, two conditions: the respect of the youth and of the spiritually weak in general, to the resolutions of the elected elders, the spiritually stronger--the “little old men” as the Dukhobors call them; and the second condition that these “little old men” be rational and loving. At this Congress the question of uniting property (in common), was discussed and the “little old men” were in favour of it, but constantly repeated: “Only let there be no violence, let things be done voluntarily.” Among the people and the Dukhobors this respect and recognition of the necessity of fulfilling the resolutions of the old men exist. And all this without forms; the election of the elders and the methods of agreement. 4) No matter how you grind a crystal, how you dissolve it, compress it, it will mould itself again at the first opportunity into the same form. And so the structure of society will be always the same, no matter to what changes you submit it. The form of a crystal will only then be changed when chemical changes occur in it, inner ones; the same with society. 5) It would be good to write a preface to Spier[169] containing the following: