3) ... a general, respectable, clean, correct, with thick eye-brows and important mien (and uncommonly good-natured, but deprived of every moral motive sense) gave me the striking thought, as to how and by what means those most indifferent to social life, to the good of society—as to how just those people rise involuntarily to the position of rulers of people. I see how he will manage institutions upon which a million lives depend, and just because he likes cleanliness, elegance, refined food, dancing, hunting, billiards and every possible kind of amusement, and not having the means to keep himself in those regiments, or institutions, or societies where all this exist, is advanced little by little as a good and harmless man and made a ruler of people. All are like N. and their name is legion.
4) I am reading Aristotle. He says in Politics (Book VII, Chapter VIII): “Dans cette république parfaite, où la vertu des citoyens sera réele, ils s’abstiendront de toute profession méchanique, de toute spéculation mercantile, travaux dégradés (dégradants?)[186] et contraires à la vertu. Ils ne se livreront pas davantage á l’agriculture. Il faut du loisir pour acquérir la vertu” ...[187]
All his æsthetics has for its end ( )[188] virtue. And we with the Christian understanding of the brotherhood of man want to be guided by the ethical and æsthetical conception of the ancients!!
Feb. 25. Nicholskoe. If I live.
February 25. Nicholskoe.
I am alive. I have written a little—not as easily as yesterday. The guests have departed. Went for a walk twice. Am reading Aristotle. To-day I received letters ...
Yesterday, while walking, I prayed and experienced a remarkable sensation which is perhaps similar to that which the mystics excite in themselves by spiritual works; I felt myself to be a spiritual, free being bound by the illusion of the body.
Feb. 26. Nicholskoe. If I live.
Feb. 26, Nicholskoe.