"When the yellowing corn-fields sway and are moved, and the fresh forest utters sound to the breeze ... then I see happiness on earth, and God in heaven." It may be so, to the poet; but it may be quite different. Sometimes the corn-field waves, the woods make noise in the wind, the stream whispers its best tales: and still man cannot perceive happiness, nor forget the lesson taught in childhood, that the blue heavens are only an optical illusion. But if the sky and the boundless fields do not convince, is it possible that the arguments of Kant and the commentations of his dozens of talentless followers can do anything?
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The greatest temptation.—In Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor lurks a dreadful idea. Who can be sure, he says—metaphorically, of course—that when the crucified Christ uttered His cry: "Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?" He did not call to mind the temptation of Satan, who for one word had offered Him dominion over the world? And, if Jesus recollected this offer, how can we be sure that He did not repent not having taken it?... One had better not be told about such temptations.
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From the "Future Opinions concerning contemporary Europe."—"Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries presented a strange picture. After Luther, Christianity degenerated into morality, and all the threads connecting man with God were cut. Together with the rationalisation of religion, all life took on a fiat, rational character. Knights were replaced by a standing army, recruited on the principle of compulsory military service for all, and existing chiefly for the purpose of parades and official needs. Alchemy, which had been trying to find the philosopher's stone, was replaced by chemistry, which tried to discover the best means for cheap preparation of cheap commodities. Astrology, which had sought in the stars the destinies of men, was replaced by astronomy, which foretold the eclipses of the sun and the appearing of comets. Even the dress of the people became strangely colourless; not only men, but women also wore uniform, monochromatic clothes. Most remarkable of all, that epoch did not notice its own insignificance, but was even proud of itself. It seemed to the man of that day that never before had the common treasury of spiritual riches been so well replenished. We, of course, may smile at their naïveté, but if one of their own number had allowed himself to express an opinion disdainful of the bases of the contemporary culture he would have been declared immoral, or put away in a mad-house: a terrible punishment, very common in that coarse period, though now it is very difficult even to imagine what such a proceeding implied. But in those days, to be known as immoral, or to find oneself in a mad-house, was worse than to die. One of the famous poets of the nineteenth century, Alexander Poushkin, said: 'God forbid that I should go mad. Rather let me be a starving beggar.' In those times people, on the whole, were compelled to tell lies and play the hypocrite, so that not infrequently the brightest minds, who saw through the shams of their epoch, yet pretended to believe in science and morality, only in order to escape the persecution of public opinion."
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Writers of tragedies on Shakespeare's model.—To obtain a spark, one must strike with all one's might with an iron upon a stone. Whereupon there is a loud noise, which many are inclined to believe more important than the little spark. Similarly, writers having shouted very loudly, are deeply assured that they have fulfilled their sacred mission, and are amazed that all do not share their raptures, that some even stop their ears and run away.
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Metamorphoses.—Sense and folly are not at all native qualities in a man. In a crisis, a stupid man becomes clever. We need not go far for an example. What a gaping simpleton Dostoevsky looks in his Injured and Insulted, not to mention Poor Folk. But in Letters from the Underworld and the rest of his books he is the shrewdest and cleverest of writers. The same may be said of Nietzsche, Tolstoy, or Shakespeare. In his Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche seems just like the ordinary honest, rather simple, blue-eyed provincial German student, and in Zarathustra he reminds one of Machiavelli. Poor Shakespeare got himself into a row for his Brutus—but no man could deny the great mind in Hamlet. The best instance of all, however, is Tolstoy. Right up to to-day, whenever he likes he can be cleverer than the cleverest. Yet at times he is a schoolboy. This is the most interesting and enviable trait in him.
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