Tolstoi said yesterday about doctors and science generally:
“How trivial and unnecessary are all our sciences! It is true that exact sciences—mathematics and chemistry, although quite unimportant for the improvement of moral life, are at any rate exact and positive. But, although medical science has a great deal of knowledge, that amount is nothing in proportion to what is needed in order actually to know anything. And what is the good of it?”
I replied to Tolstoi that, although in theory it may be so, yet in practice, when some one is ill, one always wants to help them.
To this Tolstoi replied:
“It often happens that if some one is seriously ill, those around him, at the bottom of their hearts, want him to die, in order to be rid of him—he is in their way.”
Tolstoi said to Sophie Andreevna:
“It’s time for us to die,” and he quoted Pushkin’s lines:
“And then our heir in a lucky moment will crush us down with a heavy monument.”
July 5th. Tolstoi went for a walk to-day with myself and P. A. Sergeenko. We passed through the splendid young fir-tree forest on the left of the road to Kozlovka.
Tolstoi said: