I am particularly tired of the wallpaper and the pictures, because they purport to give you variety, yet you only need to look at them for two days for them to be worse than a blank wall. This disagreeable feeling on getting home must be due to the fact that I was not designed to be living as a bachelor at the age of twenty-two. How much better it would be if I could ask Prov (who has jumped up, and with a great clatter of his boots, no doubt to show that he has been alert and listening for me for ages, is opening the door): ‘Is the mistress asleep?’ ‘Not at all, sir, she is reading a book.’ How much better it would be: I should clasp her dear head in my hands and hold it for a moment, and look at her and kiss her, and look at her again and kiss her again; and I should not feel at all gloomy about returning home. But as things are, the one question I can ask Prov, to show him I have noticed that he never goes to sleep while I am out, is: ‘Did anyone call?’ ‘No one.’ Whenever this sort of question is put to him Prov invariably answers in a pathetic tone, and every time I feel like saying to him: ‘Oh why do you speak in that pathetic tone of voice? I am delighted that no one has called.’ But I restrain myself: Prov might take offence, and he is a man worthy of some consideration.—
In the evening I usually write my diary, and a journal after the style of Benjamin Franklin, and do my daily accounts. On this particular day I had not spent anything, because there was not even a single half-copeck in my purse, thus there was nothing to write in my account book.—
The diary and the journal are another matter: I really ought to write in them, but it is late, so I put it off until the morrow.—
I have often chanced to hear the remark: ‘He is an empty fellow, he leads an aimless life’; and I too have often used these words and still do, not to echo someone else’s opinion but because I feel in my soul that this is a bad thing, and that one ought to have an
But how do you set about being ‘a whole man, with an aim in living’? To set yourself such an aim is quite impossible.—I have attempted it so many times, and it has never worked out. You must not so much try to invent an aim, as to find one which conforms to your own personal leanings, one which was already in existence, and which you have but to recognize. It seems to me that I have actually found an aim of that kind: the all-round cultivation and development of my abilities. One of the principal and most widely acknowledged means to that end is the keeping of a diary and a
I began to get undressed and thought: ‘Where is this all-round cultivation and development of your abilities, where are your virtues, and is this route really going to lead you to virtue? Where is this journal getting you? It serves you only as an index of your weaknesses, which are unending, and getting more numerous every day; and even if you did succeed in eliminating them you would not attain to virtue by this means. You are merely deceiving yourself, and amusing yourself with all this like a child with a plaything. Could it ever be sufficient for an artist just to know what things not to do, in order to be an artist? Can it be possible negatively, simply by refraining from harmful actions, to achieve anything worthwhile? It is not enough for the peasant farmer to weed his field, he must also plough it and sow it. Make yourself some rules of virtue and follow them.’—All this was said by that part of my mind which specializes in being critical.
I fell to thinking. Can it be enough to destroy the cause of evil, that good may then exist? Good is something positive, not negative. From that it follows clearly and demonstrably that good is positive and evil is negative; evil is capable of destroying, but good is not. There is always some good in our souls, and the soul itself is good; but evil is implanted in us. If there is no evil present, the good will develop. The comparison with the peasant farmer will not do; he has to sow and plough his land, but in his own soul the good is already sown. The artist needs to practise, and he will attain the creation of art, provided he does not adopt negative principles, but he must avoid arbitrariness. For practice in virtue, there is no need of exercises: the exercise is life itself.
