To-day, Feb. 20, Nicholskoe. Seven o’clock in the evening.
I still feel just as badly; constipation and heart-burn. I fell asleep in the morning. Then, not trying to work, I took a walk. Extreme weakness. My soul is calm, only it is a bore that I am unable to work. The house is full of people.
... Yesterday I wrote many letters.
I walked and thought:
There is no greater cause for error and confusion of ideas, the most unexpected ones, and inexplicable in any other way, than the recognition of authorities, i.e., the infallible truthfulness or beauty of certain persons, of books or of works of art. M. Arnold[182] was a thousand times right when he said that the business of criticism lies in detaching the good from the bad, from all that has been written and done, and mainly the bad from that which is recognised as splendid, and the good from that which is recognised as bad, or is not recognised at all. The most striking instance of this error and its terrible consequences, holding back for ages the forward movement of Christian mankind, is the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the Gospels. How many of the most unexpected and remarkable absurdities, sometimes necessary for its own justification, sometimes not necessary for anything, are said and written in the text of the Holy Scriptures.... The same thing happens in the Greek Tragedies, in Vergil, Shakespeare, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Raphael and in the new authorities.
Perhaps I omitted the 21st. To-day, perhaps the 22nd. February, Saturday. Nicholskoe.
Yesterday I did not work. I read through the first draft on art—pretty good. I went for Yushkova’s[183] dress. It was a nice trip. In the evening they spoke about Art and then I heard the brothers Konius[184] who arrived....
To-day I am a little better in my health, I went on skiis and felt weak at heart and uneasy when I went far. It is evening now. I feel like writing letters.
I thought for The Appeal when I looked at the numberless sons of N. in their overcoats: He is bringing them up, “making” men of the world of them. What for?