I wanted to write from my notebooks, but it is late. I am going to bed. _Sept. 20. Yasn. P. If I live._ _Sept. 20. Y. P._ Let me write even a few words. The boil still bothers me very much. I have no full _liberté d’esprit_. I wrote the Swedish letter to-day, and in the evening translated it into Swedish[227] with the Swede. I am not writing from the notebook, but I will note that which entered my head with special vividness. Our life is so arranged that all our care for ourselves, the use of our reason (our spiritual forces) for the care of ourselves, brings only unhappiness. And yet this egotism is necessary in order to live a separate life. That is His mysterious will. As soon as you live for yourself, you perish; when you live beyond yourself, there is peace and joy both for yourself and for others. _Sept. 20. Y. P. If I live._ _To-day Sept. 22. Y. P._ ... Yesterday I finished the translation with Langlet. To-day I was busy with Art, but it didn’t go at all, and therefore the preceding did not please me. S. arrived to-day. At night I thought of the separation of lust from love, and that ether is a conception outside of the senses. It is now past twelve in the morning. I am waiting for Ilya and Andrusha. I have just now written a letter to the editor of the _Tagblatt Stockholm_, and to Chertkov. _September 23. Y. P. If I live._ _Oct. 2. Y. P._ I am working all the time on Art. The abscess is going away. I should have liked more peace. Yes ... _To-day Oct. 14. Y. P._ ... I am still writing on art. To-day I corrected the 10th chapter. I cleared up the vague parts. I must write out the notebooks; I am afraid I have forgotten much. 1) There is no greater prop for a selfish, peaceful life, than the occupation of art for art’s sake. The despot, the villain, must inevitably love art. (I have jotted down something on this order, but I can’t recall it now.) 2) I imagined clearly to myself how joyous, peaceful, and fully free a life could be, if one gave oneself entirely to God, i.e., in every instance in life to seek only one thing: to do that which He wants--to do that in sickness, in offence, in humiliation, in suffering, in all temptations and in death--which would then be only a change in appointment. Weakness, the non-fulfilment of that which God wants--what happens then? Nothing: There is a return to the consciousness that only in its fulfilment is life. The moments of weakness--they are the intervals between the letters of life, not life. Father, help me.