The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies

A. STOCKHAM'S TOKOLOGY

The present book does not belong to the vast number of all kinds of books, from the philosophical and the scientific to the artistic and practical, which, with other words, in other permutations and combinations, say and repeat the old familiar, sickeningly familiar, commonplaces. This book is one of those rare books which do not treat of what everybody talks about and nobody needs, but of what nobody talks about and what is important and necessary for all. It is important for the parents to know how they should act, in order without unnecessary suffering to bring forth uncorrupted and healthy children, and still more important it is for the future children to be born under the best of conditions, as, indeed, it says in one of the mottoes of the book, "To be well-born is the right of every child."

The book is not one of those which are read only that no one may say that he has not read this book, but one of those the reading of which leaves traces, compelling men to change their lives, to mend what is irregular in them, or at least to think of doing so. This book is called Tokology, the science of the bearing of children. There are all kinds of strange sciences, but there is no such science, and yet, after the science of how to live and die, this is the most important science. This book has had enormous success in America, and has greatly influenced American mothers and fathers. In Russia it ought to have an even greater influence. The questions about abstaining from tobacco and all kinds of exciting beverages, beginning with alcohol and ending with tea, the questions about eating without the slaughter of living beings, vegetarianism, the questions about sexual continence in domestic life, and many others, which partly have been solved and partly are being worked out, and possess a vast literature in Europe and in America, have not yet been touched upon by us, and so Mrs. Stockham's book is particularly important for us: it at once transfers the reader into a new world of a living human movement.

In this book every thinking woman – for this book is chiefly intended for women – will find first of all an indication that there is absolutely no need of continuing to live as insipidly as her forefathers lived, but that it is possible to find better paths of life, using for this purpose science, the experience of men, and her own free thought, and, as the first model of such a use she will find in this book many precious counsels and hints, which will make life easier for herself, her husband, and her children.

February 2, 1890.

AMIEL'S DIARY

About a year and a half ago I chanced for the first time to read Amiel's book, Fragments d'un Journal Intime. I was struck by the significance and profundity of its contents, the beauty of the exposition, and, above all, the sincerity of this book. As I read it, I marked down the passages which more particularly startled me. My daughter undertook to translate these passages, and thus were formed the extracts from the Fragments d'un Journal Intime, that is, the extracts from the extracts of Amiel's diary in several volumes not yet printed, which he conducted from day to day for the period of thirty years.

Henri Amiel was born in Geneva in 1821 and was early left an orphan. Having graduated from the higher courses in Geneva, Amiel went abroad and there passed several years at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. Upon returning in 1849 to his home, he at the age of twenty-eight years received in the Geneva Academy a professorship, at first of æsthetics, and later of philosophy, and this he held until his death.

Amiel's whole life was passed in Geneva, where he died in 1881, having in no way risen above the large number of the most ordinary of professors, who, mechanically compiling their lectures from the latest books in their particular specialties, just as mechanically transmit them to their hearers, and from a still greater number of poets without contents, who furnish these quite useless, but still marketable wares to periodicals that are published in tens of thousands of copies.

Amiel did not have the slightest success either in the learned or in the literary field. As he was approaching old age, he wrote of himself as follows:

"What have I been able to extract from those gifts which were bestowed upon me, from the peculiar conditions of my life of half a century? Are all my collected scribblings, my correspondence, these thousands of intimate pages, my lectures, my articles, my verses, my different notes anything but dry leaves? To whom and for what have I ever been of any use? And will my name live a day longer than I myself, and will it have any significance for any one? Insignificant, empty life! Vie nulle."

About Amiel and his diary two well-known French writers, his friend, the well-known critic, E. Scherer, and the philosopher, Caro, have written after his death. Interesting is that sympathetic, but partially patronizing air with which both these authors treat Amiel, when they regret that he was deprived of those qualities which are necessary for the performance of real work. And yet, the real work of these two writers – the critical labours of E. Scherer and the philosophic labours of Caro – will hardly much outlive their authors, while the accidental, not real work of Amiel, his diary, will always remain a live book, necessary for men and influencing them for the good.

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure in which he reveals to us the inner working of his soul, of course, if this work is new, and not previously accomplished. No matter what he may write, a drama, a learned work, a story, a philosophic treatise, a lyric poem, a criticism, a satire, it is only this inner work of his soul which is dear to us, and not the architectural structure in which he, for the most part, and I think, always, distorting them, clothes his thoughts and feelings.

Everything which Amiel poured into a ready mould, his lectures, treatises, poems, was completely dead; but his diary, where, without thinking of the form, he spoke only to himself, full of life, wisdom, instruction, consolation, will for ever remain one of the best books accidentally left to us by such men as Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Epictetus.

Pascal says: "There are but three kinds of people: those who, having found God, serve Him; those who, not having found Him, are busy seeking Him, and those who, not having found Him, none the less do not seek Him.

"The first are sensible and happy, the last are senseless and unhappy, the second are unhappy, but sensible."

I think that the difference established by Pascal between the first and the second, between those who, as he says in another passage, having found God, serve Him with their whole hearts, and those who, not having found Him, seek Him with their whole hearts, is not only not so great as he thought, but does not even exist. I think that those who with their whole hearts and suffering ("en gemissant," as Pascal says) seek God, already serve Him. They serve Him with this, that with these sufferings of their seeking they lay out and open for others the road to God, as Pascal himself did in his thoughts, and as Amiel did all his life in his diary.

Amiel's whole life, as it is presented to us in this diary, is full of this seeking after God, which is suffering with the whole heart. The contemplation of this seeking is the more instructive in that it never ceases to be a seeking, never stops, never passes into the consciousness of the acquisition of truth and into instruction. Amiel says neither to himself nor to others: "I now know the truth, – hear me!" On the contrary, it seems to him, as is proper for him who sincerely seeks the truth, that the more he finds out, the more he has still left to know, and he, without stopping, does everything he can for the purpose of finding out more and more of the truth, and so constantly feels his ignorance. He constantly dwells upon what Christianity and the condition of a Christian ought to be, without for a moment dwelling on the thought that Christianity is precisely what he professes, and that he himself personifies the condition of a Christian. And yet his whole diary is full of expressions of the profoundest Christian understanding and feeling. These expressions act most powerfully on the reader on account of their very unconsciousness and sincerity. He speaks with himself, without thinking that he is heard, without trying to appear sure of what he is not sure, without concealing his suffering and his seeking.

It is as though we were present, without the master's knowledge, at the most secret, profound, impassioned inner work of the soul, which is generally concealed from the view of an outsider.

For this reason it is possible to find many statelier and more eloquent expressions of Amiel's religious feeling, but it is hard to find such as are more intimate and more heart-stirring. Shortly before his death, when he knew that his disease might any day end in strangulation, he wrote:

"When you no longer reflect that you have tens of years, one year, a month free before yourself, when you already count tens of hours, and the future night bears in itself the menace of the unexplored, it is evident that you decline art, science, politics, and are satisfied with conversing with yourself, and that is possible until the very end. This inward conversation is the only thing which is left to him who is sentenced to death and whose execution is delayed. He (this condemned man) concentrates upon himself. He no longer emits rays, but only converses with his soul. He no longer acts, but only contemplates… Like a hare, he returns to his lair to die; and this lair is his conscience, his thought. So long as he can hold a pen and has a moment of solitude, he concentrates himself before this echo of himself and holds converse with God.

"This, by the way, is not a moral investigation, a repentance, a call. It is only the 'amen' of submission.

"My child, give me your heart.

"Renunciation and agreement are less difficult for me than for others, because I want nothing. I should only want not to suffer. Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane asked for the same. Let us do the same that He did. 'Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt,' – and we will wait."

Such he is on the day before his death. He is not less sincere and serious throughout his whole diary, in spite of the elegance, and now and then choiceness of his diction, which became a habit with him. In the course of all the thirty years of his diary he feels that we all so thoroughly forget, that we are all condemned to death and that our execution is only delayed. And it is for this very reason that this book is so sincere, serious, and useful.

1893.

S. T. SEMÉNOV'S PEASANT STORIES

I have long ago formed a rule to judge every artistic production from three sides: (1) from the side of its contents, – in how far that which is revealed by the artist from a new side is important and necessary for men, because every production is a production of art only when it reveals a new side of life; (2) to what extent the form of the production is good, beautiful, and in correspondence with the contents; and (3) in how far the relation of the artist to his subject is sincere, that is, in how far he believes in what he represents. This last quality always seems to me to be the most important one in an artistic production. It gives to an artistic production its force, makes an artistic production infectious, that is, evokes in the hearer and reader those sensations which the artist experiences.

Seménov possesses this quality in the highest degree.

There is a certain story by Flaubert, translated by Turgénev, Julian the Merciful. The last episode of the story, which is intended to be most touching, consists in this, that Julian lies down in the same bed with a leper, whom he warms up with his body. This leper is Christ, who carries Julian off to heaven with Him. All that is told with great mastery, but I always remain very cold during the reading of this story. I feel that the author himself would not have done, and would not even have wished to do so, and I never feel any agitation in reading about this wonderful exploit.

But Seménov describes the simplest story, and it always touches me. A village lad comes to Moscow to find himself a place, and with the influence of a countryman of his, a coachman, who is living with a wealthy merchant, he here gets the position of assistant janitor. This place was formerly occupied by an old man. It was by the advice of his coachman that the merchant sent away the old man and in his place put the young lad. The lad arrives in the evening to begin his work, and in the yard hears the old man's complaints in the servants' room, for having been discharged for no cause whatsoever, only to make room for the young fellow. The lad suddenly feels pity for the old man and is ashamed to have pushed him out. He reflects for a moment, wavers, and finally decides to give up the place, which he needs and which has pleased him so much.

All this is told in such a way that every time when I read it I feel that the author not only would have wished to act similarly in such a case, but would certainly have done so, and his feeling infects me, and I am happy, and it seems to me that I have done something good or would be glad to do something good.

Sincerity is Seménov's chief characteristic. But, besides it, the contents are always significant, – significant, because they deal with the most important class of Russia, the peasantry, which Seménov knows as only a peasant, who himself lives the hard life of a peasant, can know. The contents of his stories are also significant, because in all of them the chief interest is not in the external events, not in the peculiarities of the situations, but in the approximation to and the removal from the ideal of Christian truth, which stands firm and clear in the soul of the author and serves him as a safe measure for the valuation of the worth and importance of human acts.

The form of the stories fully corresponds to the contents: it is serious and simple, and the details are always correct, – there are no false notes. What is particularly good is the figurative language of the persons in the stories, which is frequently quite new, and always artless and strikingly powerful.

March 23, 1894.

THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT

It was, I think, in the year 1881 that Turgénev, during a visit at my house, took a French novel, under the name of Maison Tellier, out of his satchel and gave it to me.

"Read it, if you have a chance," he said, apparently with indifference, just as the year before he had handed me a number of the Russian Wealth, in which there was an article by Garshín, who was making his début. Evidently, as in the case of Garshín, so even now, he was afraid he might influence me in one way or another, and wished to know my uninfluenced opinion.

"He is a young French author," he said; "look at it, – it is not bad; he knows you and esteems you very much," he added, as though to encourage me. "As a man he reminds me of Druzhínin. He is just as excellent a son and friend, un homme d'un commerce sur, as was Druzhínin, and, besides, he has relations with the labouring people, whom he guides and aids. Even in his relations to women he reminds me of Druzhínin."

And Turgénev told me something remarkable and incredible in regard to Maupassant's relations in this respect.

This time, the year 1881, was for me the most ardent time of the inner reconstruction of my whole world-conception, and in this reconstruction the activity which is called artistic, and to which I formerly used to devote all my strength, not only lost for me the significance formerly ascribed to it, but even became distinctly distasteful to me on account of the improper place which it had occupied in my life and which in general it occupies in the concepts of the men of the wealthy classes.

For this reason I was at that time not in the least interested in such productions as the one which Turgénev recommended to me. But, to oblige him, I read the book which he gave me.

Judging from the first story, Maison Tellier, I could not help but see, in spite of the indecent and insignificant subject of the story, that the author possessed what is called talent.

The author was endowed with that particular gift, called talent, which consists in the author's ability to direct, according to his tastes, his intensified, strained attention to this or that subject, in consequence of which the author who is endowed with this ability sees in those subjects, upon which he directs his attention, something new, something which others did not see. Maupassant evidently possessed that gift of seeing in subjects something which others did not see. But, to judge from the small volume which I had read, he was devoid of the chief condition necessary, besides talent, for a truly artistic production. Of the three conditions: (1) a correct, that is, a moral relation of the author to the subject, (2) the clearness of exposition, or the beauty of form, which is the same, and (3) sincerity, that is, an undisguised feeling of love or hatred for what the artist describes, – Maupassant possessed only the last two, and was entirely devoid of the first. He had no correct, that is, no moral relation to the subjects described. From what I had read, I was convinced that Maupassant possessed talent, that is, the gift of attention, which in the objects and phenomena of life revealed to him those qualities which are not visible to other men; he also possessed a beautiful form, that is, he expressed clearly, simply, and beautifully what he wished to say, and also possessed that condition of the worth of an artistic production, without which it does not produce any effect, – sincerity, – that is, he did not simulate love or hatred, but actually loved and hated what he described. But, unfortunately, being devoid of the first, almost the most important condition of the worth of an artistic production, of the correct, moral relation to what he represented, that is, of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, he loved and represented what it was not right to love and represent, and did not love and did not represent what he ought to have loved and represented. Thus the author in this little volume describes with much detail and love how women tempt men and men tempt women, and even some incomprehensible obscenities, which are represented in La Femme de Paul, and he describes the labouring country people, not only with indifference, but even with contempt, as so many animals.

Particularly striking was that lack of distinction between bad and good in the story Une Partie de Campagne, in which, in the form of a most clever and amusing jest, he gives a detailed account of how two gentlemen with bared arms, rowing in a boat, simultaneously tempted, the one an old mother, and the other a young maiden, her daughter.

The author's sympathy is during the whole time obviously to such an extent on the side of the two rascals, that he ignores, or, rather, does not see what the tempted mother, the girl, the father, and the young man, evidently the fiancé of the daughter, must have suffered, and so we not only get a shocking description of a disgusting crime in the form of an amusing jest, but the event itself is described falsely, because only the most insignificant side of the subject, the pleasure afforded to the rascals, is described.

In the same volume there is a story, Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme, which Turgénev recommended to me more particularly, and which more particularly displeased me on account of the author's incorrect relation to the subject. The author apparently sees in all the working people whom he describes nothing but animals, who do not rise above sexual and maternal love, and so the description leaves us with an incomplete, artificial impression.

The insufficient comprehension of the lives and interests of the working classes, and the representation of the men from those classes in the form of half-animals, which are moved only by sensuality, malice, and greed, forms one of the chief and most important defects of the majority of the modern French authors, among them Maupassant, not only in this story, but also in all the other stories, in which he touches on the people and always describes them as coarse, dull animals, whom one can only ridicule. Of course, the French authors must know the conditions of their people better than I know them; but, although I am a Russian and have not lived with the French people, I none the less assert that, in describing their masses, the French authors are wrong, and that the French masses cannot be such as they are described. If there exists a France as we know it, with her truly great men and with those great contributions which these great men have made to science, art, civil polity, and the moral perfection of humanity, those labouring masses, which have held upon their shoulders this France and her great men, do not consist of animals, but of men with great spiritual qualities; and so I do not believe what I am told in novels like La Terre, and in Maupassant's stories, just as I should not believe if I were told of the existence of a beautiful house standing on no foundation. It is very possible that the high qualities of the masses are not such as are described in La petite Fadette and in La Mare au Diable, but these qualities exist, that I know for certain, and the writer who describes the masses, as Maupassant does, by telling sympathetically of the "hanches" and "gorges" of Breton domestics, and with contempt and ridicule the life of the labouring people, commits a great error in an artistic sense, because he describes the subject from only one, the most uninteresting, physical side, and completely overlooks the other, the most important, spiritual side, which forms the essence of the subject.

In general, the reading of the volume which Turgénev gave me left me completely indifferent to the young writer.

I was at that time so disgusted with the stories, Une Partie de Campagne, La Femme de Paul, and L'Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme, that I did not at that time notice the beautiful story, Le Papa de Simon, and the superb story, so far as the description of a night is concerned, Sur l'Eau.