So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six

years, till my marriage. During that time I went abroad. Life in

Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans

[Footnote: Russians generally make a distinction between Europeans

and Russians. — A.M.] confirmed me yet more in the faith of

striving after perfection in which I believed, for I found the same

faith among them. That faith took with me the common form it

assumes with the majority of educated people of our day. It was

expressed by the word “progress”. It then appeared to me that this

word meant something. I did not as yet understand that, being

tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for

me to live, in my answer, “Live in conformity with progress”, I was

like 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 by

reason but by instinct — I revolted against this superstition so

common in our day, by which people hide from themselves their lack

of understanding of life….So, for instance, during my stay in

Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of

my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from

the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I

understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no

theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify

this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world

had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be

unnecessary 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 is

my heart and I. Another instance of a realization that the

superstitious belief in progress is insufficient as a guide to

life, was my brother’s death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill

while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died

painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he

had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these

questions during his slow and painful dying. But these were only

rare instances of doubt, and I actually continued to live

professing a faith only in progress. “Everything evolves and I

evolve with it: and why it is that I evolve with all things will

be 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 particularly

to 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 to

teach people by literary means. Here also I acted in the name of

progress, but I already regarded progress itself critically. I

said to myself: “In some of its developments progress has

proceeded wrongly, and with primitive peasant children one must

deal in a spirit of perfect freedom, letting them choose what path

of progress they please.” In reality I was ever revolving round

one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach

without knowing what to teach. In the higher spheres of literary

activity I had realized that one could not teach without knowing

what, for I saw that people all taught differently, and by

quarrelling among themselves only succeeded in hiding their

ignorance from one another. But here, with peasant children, I

thought to evade this difficulty by letting them learn what they

liked. It amuses me now when I remember how I shuffled in trying

to 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 not

know what was needful. After spending a year at school work I went

abroad a second time to discover how to teach others while myself

knowing nothing.

And it seemed to me that I had learnt this aborad, and in the

year 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 classes

through a magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well,

but I felt I was not quite sound mentally and that matters could

not long continue in that way. And I should perhaps then have come

to the state of despair I reached fifteen years later had there not

been 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 result

especially of my mental confusion — and so hard was my struggle as

Arbiter, so obscure the results of my activity in the schools, so

repulsive my shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to

one and the same thing: a desire to teach everybody and to hide

the fact that I did not know what to teach), that I fell ill,

mentally rather than physically, threw up everything, and went away

to 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 happy

family life completely diverted me from all search for the general

meaning of life. My whole life was centred at that time in my

family, wife and children, and therefore in care to increase our

means of livelihood. My striving after self-perfection, for which

I had already substituted a striving for perfection in general,

i.e. progress, was now again replaced by the effort simply to

secure 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 immense monetary rewards and

applause for my insignificant work — and I devoted myself to it as

a means of improving my material position and of stifling in my

soul 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’s

family.

So I lived; but five years ago something very strange began to

happen to me. At first I experienced moments of perplexity and

arrest of life, and though I did not know what to do or how to

live; and I felt lost and became dejected. But this passed and I

went on living as before. Then these moments of perplexity began

to recur oftener and oftener, and always in the same form. They

were always expressed by the questions: What is it for? What does

it lead to?

At first it seemed to me that these were aimless and

irrelevant questions. I thought that it was all well known, and

that if I should ever wish to deal with the solution it would not

cost 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 questions

however began to repeat themselves frequently, and to demand

replies more and more insistently; and like drops of ink always

falling on one place they ran together into one black blot.

Then occurred what happens to everyone sickening with a mortal

internal disease. At first trivial signs of indisposition appear

to which the sick man pays no attention; then these signs reappear

more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted period of

suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man can

look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already

become more important to him than anything else in the world — it

is death!

That is what happened to me. I understood that it was no

casual indisposition but something very important, and that if

these questions constantly repeated themselves they would have to

be answered. And I tried to answer them. The questions seemed

such stupid, simple, childish ones; but as soon as I touched them

and tried to solve them I at once became convinced, first, that

they are not childish and stupid but the most important and

profound of life’s questions; and secondly that, occupying myself

with my Samara estate, the education of my son, or the writing of

a book, I had to know why I was doing it. As long as I did not

know why, I could do nothing and could not live. Amid the thoughts

of estate management which greatly occupied me at that time, the

question would suddenly occur: “Well, you will have 6,000

desyatinas [Footnote: The desyatina is about 2.75 acres.—A.M.] of

land in Samara Government and 300 horses, and what then?” … And

I was quite disconcerted and did not know what to think. Or when

considering plans for the education of my children, I would say to

myself: “What for?” Or when considering how the peasants might

become prosperous, I would suddenly say to myself: “But what does

it matter to me?” Or when thinking of the fame my works would

bring me, I would say to myself, “Very well; you will be more

famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or than all

the writers in the world — and what of it?” And I could find no

reply at all. The questions would not wait, they had to be

answered at once, and if I did not answer them it was impossible to

live. But there was no answer.

I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that

I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer

existed, and there was nothing left.