Much I have not written out. I am in Moscow.... For 70 years I have been lowering and lowering my opinion of women and still it has to be lowered more and more. The woman question! How can there not be a woman question? Only not in this, how women should begin to direct life, but in this, how they should stop ruining it.
All morning I have not been writing and have been thinking two things:
1) We speak of the end of life—although it is true, not the one which we understand, but the one which would be understood by the highest reason. The purpose is just the same as the cause. The cause is looking backward, the purpose is looking forward, but the cause, the conception of the cause (and therefore of an end) appears only then when there is time, i.e., a being is limited in his conceptions by time. And therefore for God, and for man living a Godly life, there is no purpose. There is life in which consciousness grows (?[393]) and that is all.
2) A drop fusing with a great drop, a pool, ceases to be and begins to be.
Almost a month I have not written. Have been severely ill.[394] Had acute pain for one day, then a respite, and weakness. And death became more than natural, almost desirable. And so it has remained now, when I am getting well—that is a new, joyous step.
Finished Resurrection. Not good, uncorrected, hurried; but it has fallen from me and I am no longer interested. Serezha is here, Masha and her husband, Maria Alexandrovna.
I am all right. Have not yet begun to write anything. More than anything I am occupied with ,[395] but I have no desire for anything very much, am resting. Wrote letters.
I am attempting to write out my notes: