“And how many such cases do we meet at every step! I remember one of my aunts once told me how she had, in her youth, suffered from over-sensitiveness. She always imagined that everyone was laughing at her, that no one loved her, that she had constant reason to feel offended and insulted. She suffered dreadfully and began to grow positively misanthropical, hating and mistrusting everybody. Happily, chance sent her a clever doctor, who took her in hand, and put her nerves in order. Simultaneously with this improvement, her hysterical sensitiveness disappeared, and now, as soon as she suspects that she is going to have an attack of ‘being offended,’ she sends to the chemist for some bromide, and all is well!”
“You are joking, Sergei Grigorievitch!”
“Not in the least. We could all be of great help to doctors if we would only observe ourselves more closely. Just as people at present, when they feel indisposed, carefully note all the symptoms of their illness, and, in order to decide on a suitable cure, try to determine which of their organs is attacked, even so, some day, people will carefully note their spiritual ailments, and will treat envy, hatred, and malice just as they now treat their liver and kidneys! You are laughing, Irene Pavlovna. But indeed many a new view that seemed strange at first has, after fifty or a hundred years, become generally accepted and positively commonplace. We have, for the time being, forgotten the ancient precept Know thyself; if we took it to heart, we could often be our own doctors, for indeed we each have within ourselves an enormous power of self-treatment. Our Christian confessions—the so-called examens de conscience of the Catholics—are nothing but minute observations of ourselves. In former times people took communion, and therefore went to confession, every Sunday. They were obliged, once a week, critically to examine all their actions, and to decide which of them had been sinful (i.e., not normal). Beyond this they had to talk these actions over with their spiritual advisers, men chosen for this purpose because they were considered worthy of respect and confidence (i.e., because they were normal and healthy). Unfortunately, however, it always happens that customs initiated by master minds for the lasting benefit of humanity, invariably, after a time, fall into the hands of incapable mediocrities, who do not understand the true meaning and object of the ideas in question, and transform them into mechanical poses, from which all sincere natures must turn away.
“A careful observation of ourselves would immensely simplify life, and would make many things much clearer to us. You, for instance, Irene Pavlovna, are sincerely convinced that the only reason why you never married is the fact that you did not meet a man who was worthy of you. Actually there was quite another reason. You simply felt a physical disgust at thought of the realisms of marriage—the living with a man as his wife, the bearing of children, the feeding and nursing of these children. This prose sickened you, and as soon as someone was pleasing or sympathetic to you, you hastened to find or invent reasons for not marrying him. You looked for faults in him, exaggerated them, invented them, and did all you could to assure yourself that he was unworthy of you.
“In addition, marriage would really have meant too sudden a change for you—since, as is the case with all invalids, even the smallest change is a great trial for your nerves. Every trifling decision costs you many nightmares, and is accompanied by palpitation of the heart, tears, and nervous exhaustion. People like you bear every discomfort in their house rather than move into another one, and submit to the tyranny of their servants because they have not the energy to look for new ones. It is curious that such characters arrive, with the greatest ease and promptitude, at theoretical and abstract decisions. For instance, to take a furnished house in the country and move into it for the summer is frightfully difficult, but to emigrate is very easy. One only has to read a charming description of Rome, and—good-bye, Russia! I don’t want you any more! I am going to Italy, and shall become an Italian!”
“What nonsense you are talking, Sergei Grigorievitch! This is all bluff, and you are simply trying to be brilliant! I assure you I have dreamt of marriage all my life. If you only knew what touching scenes of family life I have pictured to myself! This was always my greatest delight!”
“Oh! I quite believe that! We know how to dream beautifully! And in our dreams we are always extraordinarily active! We cross oceans, found colonies, introduce ideal governments, and die as Kings or at least Presidents of Republics! In actual life, however, we groan, we are miserable, and we greatly resent being obliged to bother about going to the Bank, in order to receive the interest of the capital acquired for us by our more energetic ancestors.”
“All this is untrue, and a mockery!”