Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors'creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively,
and I became convinced that almost all the priests of thatreligion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of
bad, worthlesscharacter, much inferior to those whom I had met inmy former dissipated and military life; but they were self-
confident and self-satisfied as only those can be who are quiteholy or who do not know what holiness is. These people revolted
me, I became revolting to myself, and I realized that that faithwas a fraud.
But strange to say, though I understood this fraud andrenounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me:
the rank of artist, poet, and teacher. I naively imagined that Iwas a poet and artist and could teach everybody without myself
knowing what I was teaching, and I acted accordingly. From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice:
abnormally developed pride and an insaneassurance that it was myvocation to teach men, without knowing what.
To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that ofthose men (though there are thousands like them today), is sad and
terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling oneexperiences in a lunaticasylum.
We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us tospeak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as
possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. Andthousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed
and wrote -- teaching others. And without noticing that we knewnothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good
and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked atthe same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding
and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised inturn, sometimes getting angry with one another -- just as in a
lunaticasylum. Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their
strength day and night, setting the type and printing millions ofwords which the post carried all over Russia, and we still went on
teaching and could in no way find time to teach enough, and werealways angry that sufficient attention was not paid us.
It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Ourreal innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as
possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write booksand papers. So we did that. But in order to do such useless work
and to feel assured that we were very important people we requireda theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was
devised: "All that exists is reasonable. All that existsdevelops. And it all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is
measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we arepaid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers,
and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." Thistheory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but
as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by adiametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to
have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paidus money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered
himself justified. It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic
asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and like alllunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself.
III So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six
years, till my marriage. During that time I went abroad. Life inEurope and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans
[Footnote: Russians generally make a distinction between Europeansand Russians. -- A.M.] confirmed me yet more in the faith of
striving after perfection in which I believed, for I found the samefaith among them. That faith took with me the common form it
assumes with the majority of educated people of our day. It wasexpressed by the word "progress". It then appeared to me that this
word meant something. I did not as yet understand that, beingtormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for
me to live, in my answer, "Live in conformity with progress", I waslike a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves
should reply to what for him is the chief and only question."whither to steer", by saying, "We are being carried somewhere".
I did not then notice this. Only occasionally -- not byreason but by instinct -- I revolted against this superstition so
common in our day, by which people hide from themselves their lackof understanding of life....So, for instance, during my stay in
Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability ofmy superstitiousbelief in progress. When I saw the head part from
the body and how they thumped separately into the box, Iunderstood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no
theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justifythis deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world
had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to beunnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and
evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it ismy heart and I. Another instance of a realization that the
superstitiousbelief in progress is insufficient as a guide tolife, was my brother's death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill
while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and diedpainfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he
had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to thesequestions during his slow and painful dying. But these were only
rare instances of doubt, and I actually continued to liveprofessing a faith only in progress. "Everything evolves and I
evolve with it: and why it is that I evolve with all things willbe known some day." So I ought to have formulated my faith at that
time. On returning from abroad I settled in the country and chanced
to occupy myself with peasant schools. This work was particularlyto my taste because in it I had not to face the falsity which had
become obvious to me and stared me in the face when I tried toteach people by literary means. Here also I acted in the name of
progress, but I already regarded progress itself critically. Isaid to myself: "In some of its developments progress has
proceeded wrongly, and with primitivepeasant children one mustdeal in a spirit of perfect freedom, letting them choose what path
of progress they please." In reality I was ever revolving roundone and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach
without knowing what to teach. In the higher spheres of literaryactivity I had realized that one could not teach without knowing
what, for I saw that people all taught differently, and byquarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their
ignorance from one another. But here, with peasant children, Ithought to evade this difficulty by letting them learn what they
liked. It amuses me now when I remember how I shuffled in tryingto satisfy my desire to teach, while in the depth of my soul I knew
very well that I could not teach anything needful for I did notknow what was needful. After spending a year at school work I went
abroad a second time to discover how to teach others while myselfknowing nothing.
And it seemed to me that I had learnt this aborad, and in theyear of the peasants' emancipation (1861) I returned to Russia
armed with all this wisdom, and having become an Arbiter [Footnote:To keep peace between peasants and owners.--A.M.] I began to teach,
both the uneducated peasants in schools and the educated classesthrough a magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well,
but I felt I was not quite sound mentally and that matters couldnot long continue in that way. And I should perhaps then have come
to the state of despair I reached fifteen years later had there notbeen one side of life still unexplored by me which promised me
happiness: that was my marriage. For a year I busied myself with arbitration work, the schools,
and the magazine; and I became so worn out -- as a resultespecially of my mentalconfusion -- and so hard was my struggle as
Arbiter, so obscure the results of my activity in the schools, sorepulsive my shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to
one and the same thing: a desire to teach everybody and to hidethe fact that I did not know what to teach), that I fell ill,
mentally rather than physically, threw up everything, and went awayto the Bashkirs in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink kumys
[Footnote: A fermented drink prepared from mare's milk.--A. M.],and live a merely animal life.
Returning from there I married. The new conditions of happyfamily life completely diverted me from all search for the general
meaning of life. My whole life was centred at that time in myfamily, wife and children, and therefore in care to increase our
means of livelihood. My striving after self-perfection, for whichI had already substituted a striving for perfection in general,
i.e. progress, was now again replaced by the effort simply tosecure the best possible conditions for myself and my family.
So another fifteen years passed. In spite of the fact that I now regarded authorship as of no
importance -- the temptation of immensemonetary rewards andapplause for my insignificant work -- and I devoted myself to it as
a means of improving my material position and of stifling in mysoul all questions as to the meaning of my own life or life in
general. I wrote: teaching what was for me the only truth, namely,
that one should live so as to have the best for oneself and one'sfamily.
So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began tohappen to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and
arrest of life, and though I did not know what to do or how tolive; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed and I
went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity beganto recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They
were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What doesit lead to?
At first it seemed to me that these were aimless andirrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known, and
that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution it would notcost me much effort; just at present I had no time for it, but when
I wanted to I should be able to find the answer. The questionshowever began to repeat themselves frequently, and to demand
replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink alwaysfalling on one place they ran together into one black blot.
Then occurred what happens to everyonesickening with a mortalinternal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear
to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappearmore and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of
suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man canlook round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already
become more important to him than anything else in the world -- itis death!
That is what happened to me. I understood that it was nocasual indisposition but something very important, and that if
these questions constantlyrepeated themselves they would have tobe answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed
such stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched themand tried to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that