In childhood, youth, the senses (_sens_) are very definite, the limits are firm. The longer you live, the more and more do these limits become wiped out, the senses get dulled--there is established a different attitude towards the world. _Oct. 23. If I live._ _Oct. 26. Y. P._ A very strange thing: It is the third day that I cannot write. Am displeased with everything that I have written. There is something new and very important for _Art_, but I cannot express it clearly in any way. A letter from Vanderveer. It is now morning, will go to the post. _To-day Nov. 10. Y. P._ I have lived through much these two weeks. The work is still the same; I think I have finished it. To-day I have written letters and among them one to Grot to be set up in type. S was here, she left for Moscow from Pirogovo, where we went together. It was good there. Since I have come home, my back has ached and in the evening I have fever. Alexander Petrovich[239] is writing in the house.... To-day I wrote 9 letters. One letter to Khilkov,[240] remained. How terrible, his affair and condition. Mikhail Novikov was here and also a peasant-poet from Kazan. Have been thinking: 1) The condition of people who are befogged by a false religion is just the same as in blindman’s-buff: they tie their eyes, then they take them by their arms, and then they turn them around and finally let them go. The same with everybody. Without this they do not let them go. (For _The Appeal_.) 2) The most usual judgment about Christianity, especially among the new Nietzschean reasoners, is that Christianity is a renunciation of dignity, a weakness, a submissiveness. It is just the contrary. True Christianity demands above everything else the highest consciousness of dignity, a terrible strength and steadfastness. It is just the contrary: The admirers of strength ought to debase themselves before strength. 3) I walked in the village, and looked into the windows. Everywhere there was poverty and ignorance. And I thought of the former slavery. Formerly, the cause was to be seen, the chain which held them was to be seen; but now it is not a chain--in Europe they are hairs, but they are just as many as those which held Gulliver. With us the ropes are still to be seen, well--let us say the twine; and there there are hairs, but they hold so tightly that the giant-people cannot move. There is one salvation: not to lie down, not to fall asleep. The deception is so strong and so adroit that you often see that those very people which it sucks and ruins, defend the vampires with passion and attack those who are against them.... _November 11, Y. P. If I live._ _November 11, Y. P._ Since morning I have been writing _Hadji Murad_--and nothing has come of it. But it is becoming clear in my head and I feel like writing very much. I wrote a letter to Khilkov and to others, but I shall hardly send the one to Khilkov. Maria Alexandrovna was here. My health is entirely good.