All Things are Possible - Lev Shestov

Four walls.—Arm-chair philosophy is being condemned—rightly. An arm-chair thinker is busy deciding on everything that is taking place in the world: the state of the world market, the existence of a world-soul, wireless telegraphy and the life after death, the cave dweller and the perfectibility of man, and so on and so on. His chief business is so to select his statements that there shall be no internal contradiction; and this will give an appearance of truth. Such work, which is quite amusing and even interesting, leads at last to very poor results. Surely verisimilitudes of truth are not truth: nor have necessarily anything in common with truth. Again, a man who undertakes to talk of everything probably knows nothing. Thus a swan can fly, and walk, and swim. But it flies indifferently, walks badly, and swims poorly. An arm-chair philosopher, enclosed by four walls, sees nothing but those four walls, and yet of these precisely he does not choose to speak. If by accident he suddenly realised them and spoke of them his philosophy might acquire an enormous value. This may happen when a study is converted into a prison: the same four walls, but impossible not to think of them! Whatever the prisoner turns his mind to—Homer, the Greek-Persian wars, the future world-peace, the bygone geological cataclysms—still the four walls enclose it all. The calm of the study supplanted by the pathos of imprisonment. The prisoner has no more contact with the world, and no less. But now he no longer slumbers and has grayish dreams called world-conceptions. He is wide awake and strenuously living. His philosophy is worth hearing. But man is not distinguished for his powers of discrimination. He sees solitude and four walls, and says: a study. He dreams of the market-place, where there is noise and jostling, physical bustle, and decides that there alone life is to be met. He is wrong as usual. In the market-place, among the crowd, do not men sleep their deadest sleep? And is not the keenest spiritual activity taking place in seclusion?

The Spartans made their helots drunk as an example and warning to their noble youths. A good method, no doubt, but what are we of the twentieth century to do? Whom shall we make drunk? We have no slaves, so we have instituted a higher literature. Novels and stories describe drunken, dissolute men, and paint them in such horrid colours that every reader feels all his desire for vice depart from him. Unfortunately only our Russians are either too conscientious or not sufficiently rectilinear in their minds. Instead of showing the drunken helot as an object of repugnance, as the Spartans did, they try to describe vice truthfully. Realism has taken hold. Indeed, why make a fuss? What does it matter if the writer's description is a little more or less ugly than the event? Was justice invented that everything, even evil, should be kept intact? Surely evil must be simply rooted out, banned, placed outside the pale. The Spartans did not stand on ceremony with living men, and yet our novelists are afraid of being unjust to imaginary drunken helots. And, so to speak, out of humane feeling too.... How naive one must be to accept such a justification! Yet everybody accepts it. Tolstoy alone, towards the end, guessed that humanitarianism is only a pretext in this case, and that we Russians have described vice not only for the purpose of scaring our readers. In modern masters the word vice arouses not disgust, but insatiable curiosity. Perhaps the wicked thing has been persecuted in vain, like so many other good things. Perhaps it should have been studied, perhaps it held mysteries.... On the strength of this "perhaps" morality was gradually abandoned, and Tolstoy remained almost alone in his indignation. Realism reigns, and a drunken helot arouses envy in timid readers who do not know where to put their trust, whether in the traditional rules or in the appeal of the master. A drunken helot an ideal! What have we come to? Were it not better to have stuck to Lycurgus? Have we not paid too dearly for our progress?

Many people think we have paid too dearly—not to mention Tolstoy, who is now no longer taken quite seriously, though still accounted a great man. Any mediocre journalist enjoys greater influence than this master-writer of the Russian land. It is inevitable. Tolstoy insists on thinking about things which are nobody's concern. He has long since abandoned this world—and does he continue to exist in any other? Difficult question! "Tolstoy writes books and letters, therefore he exists." This inference, once so convincing, now has hardly any effect on us: particularly if we take into account what it is that Tolstoy writes. In several of his last letters he expresses opinions which surely have no meaning for an ordinary man. They can be summed up in a few words. Tolstoy professes an extreme egoism, sollipsism, solus-ipse-ism. That is, in his old age, after infinite attempts to love his neighbour, he comes to the conclusion that not only is it impossible to love one's neighbour, but that there is no neighbour, that in all the world Tolstoy alone exists, that there is even no world, but only Tolstoy: a view so obviously absurd, that it is not worth refuting. By the way, there is also no possibility of refuting it, unless you admit that logical inferences are non-binding. Sollipsism dogged Tolstoy already in early youth, but at that time he did not know what to do with the impertinent, oppressive idea, so he ignored it. Finally, he came to it. The older a man becomes, the more he learns how to make use of impertinent ideas. Fairly recently Tolstoy could pronounce such a dictum: "Christ taught men not to do stupid things." Who but Tolstoy could have ventured on such an interpretation of the gospels? Why have we all held—all of us but Tolstoy—that these words contained the greatest blasphemy on Christ and His teaching? But it was Tolstoy's last desperate attempt to save himself from sollipsism, without at the same time flying in the face of logic: even Christ appeared among men only to teach them common sense. Whence follows that "mad" thoughts may be rejected with an easy conscience, and the advantage, as usual, remains with the wholesome, reasonable, sensible thoughts. There is room for good and for reason. Good is self-understood; it need not be explained. If only good existed in the world, there would exist no questions, neither simple nor ultimate. This is why youth never questions. What indeed should it question: the song of the nightingale, the morning of May, happy laughter, all the predicates of youth? Do these need interpretation? On the contrary, any explanation is reduced to these The proper questions arise only on contact with evil. A hawk struck a nightingale, flowers withered, Boreas froze laughing youth—and in terror our questions arose. "That is evil. The ancients were right. Not in vain is our earth called a vale of tears and sorrow." And once questions are started, it is impossible and unseemly to hurry the answers, still less anticipate the questions. The nightingale is dead and will sing no longer, the listener is frozen to death and can hear no more songs. The situation is so palpably absurd that only with the intention of getting rid of the question at any cost will one strive for a sensible answer. The answer must be absurd—if you don't want it, don't question. But if you must question, then be ready beforehand to reconcile yourself with something like sollipsism or modern realism. Thought is in a dilemma, and dare not take the leap to get out. We laugh at philosophy, and, as long as possible, avoid evil. But nearly all men feel the intolerable cramp of such a situation, and each at his risk ventures to swim to shore on some more or less witty theory. A few courageous ones speak the truth—but they are neither understood nor respected. When a man's words show the depth of the pain through which he has passed, he is not, indeed, condemned, but the world begins to talk of his tragic state of soul, and to take on a mournful look fitting to the occasion. Others more scrupulous feel that phrases and mournful looks are unfitting, yet they cannot dwell at length on the tragedies of outsiders, so they take on an exaggeratedly stern bearing, as if to say, "We feel deeply, but we do not wish to show our feeling." They really feel nothing, only want to make others believe how sensitive and modest they are. At times this leads to curious results, even in writers of the first order of renown. Thus Anatole France, the inventor of that most charming smile which is intended to convince men that he feels everything and understands everything, but does not cry out, because that would not be fitting, in one of his novels takes upon himself the noble rôle of advocate of the victims of a crime, against the criminal. "Our time," he says, "out of pity to the criminal forgets the sufferings of his victim." This, I repeat, is one of the most curious misrepresentations of modern endeavour. It is true we in Russia talk a good deal about compassion, particularly to criminals, and Anatole France is by no means the only man who thinks that our distinguishing characteristic is extreme sensitiveness and tender-heartedness. But as a matter of fact the modern man who thinks for himself is not drawn to the criminal by a sense of compassion, which would incontestably be better applied to the victim, but by curiosity, or if you like, inquisitiveness. For thousands of years man has sought to solve the great mystery of life through a God-conception—with theodicy and metaphysical theories as a result, both of which deny the possibility of a mystery. Theodicy has long ago wearied us. The mechanistic theories, which contend that there is nothing special in life, that its appearance and disappearance depend on the same laws as those of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter, these look more plausible at first sight, but people do not take to them. And no theory can survive men's reluctance to believe in it. In a word, good has not justified the expectations placed on it. Reason has done no better. So overwrought mankind has turned from its old idols and enthroned madness and evil. The smiling Anatole argues, and proves—proves excellently. But who does not know what his proofs amount to?—and who wants them? It may be our children will take fright at the task we have undertaken, will call us "squandering parents," and will set themselves again to heaping up treasures, spiritual and material. Again they will believe in ideals, progress, and such like. For my own part, I have hardly any doubt of it. Sollipsism and the cult of groundlessness are not lasting, and, most of all, they are not to be handed down. The final triumph, in life as in old comedies, rests with goodness and common sense. History has known many epochs like ours, and gone through with them. Degeneration follows on the heels of immoderate curiosity, and sweeps away all refined and exaggerately well-informed individuals. Men of genius have no posterity—or their children are idiots. Not for nothing is nature so majestically serene: she has hidden her secrets well enough. Which is not surprising, considering how unscrupulous she is. No despot, not the greatest villain on earth, has ever wielded power with the cruelty and heartlessness of nature. The least violation of her laws—and the severest punishment follows. Disease, deformity, madness, death -what has not our common mother contrived to keep us in subjection? True, certain optimists think that nature does not punish us, but educates us. So Tolstoy sees it. "Death and sufferings, like animated scarecrows, boo at man and drive him into the one way of life open to him: for life is subject to its own law of reason." Not a bad method of upbringing. Exactly like using wolves and bears. Unfortunate man, bolting from one booing monster, is not always able in time to dodge into the one correct way, and dashes straight into the maw of another beast of prey. Then what? And this often happens. Without disparagement of the optimists, we may say that sooner or later it happens to every man. After which no more running. You won't tear yourself out of the claws of madness or disease. Only one thing is left: in spite of traditions, theodicy, wiseacres, and most of all in spite of oneself, to go on praising mother nature and her great goodness. Let future generations reject us, let history stigmatise our names, as the names of traitors to the human cause—still we will compose hymns to deformity, destruction, madness, chaos, darkness. And after that—let the grass grow.

Astrology and alchemy lived their day and died a natural death. But they left a posterity—chemistry inventing dyes, and astronomy accumulating formulae. So it is. Geniuses beget idiots: especially when the mothers are very virtuous, as in this case, when their virtue is extraordinary. For the mothers are public utility and morality. The alchemists wasted their time seeking the philosopher's stone; the astrologers, swindled people telling fortunes by the stars. Wedded to utility these two fathers have begotten the chemists and astronomers. ... Nobody will dispute the genealogy. Perhaps even none will dispute that, from idiotic children one may, with a measure of probability, infer genius in the parents. There are certain indications that this is so—though of course one may not go beyond supposition. But supposition is enough. There are more arguments in store. For instance—our day is so convinced of the absolute nonsense and uselessness of alchemy and astrology that no one dreams of verifying the conviction. We know there were many charlatans and liars amongst alchemists and astrologers. But what does this prove? In every department there are the same mediocre creatures who speculate on human credulity. However positive our science of medicine is, there are many fraudulent doctors who rob their patients. The alchemists and astrologers were, in all probability, the most remarkable men of their time. I will go further: in spite of dye-stuffs and formulae, even in our nineteenth century, which was so famous for its inventions and discoveries, the most eminent, talented men still sought the philosopher's stone and forecast the destinies of man. And those among them who were possessed of a poetic gift won universal attention. In the old days, consensu sapientium, a poet was allowed all kinds of liberties: he might speak of fate, miracles, spirits, the life beyond—indeed of anything, provided he was interesting. That was enough. The nineteenth century paid its tribute to restlessness. Never were there so many disturbing, throbbing writers as during the epoch of telephones and telegraphs. It was held indecent to speak in plain language of the vexed and troubled aspirations of the human spirit. Those guilty of the indecency were even dosed with bromides and treated with shower-baths and concentrated foods. But all this is external, it belongs to a history of "fashions" and cannot interest us here. The point is that alchemy and astrology did not die, they only shammed death and left the stage for a time. Now, apparently, they are tired of seclusion and are coming forward again, having pushed their unsuccessful children into the background. Well, so be it. A la bonne heure!...

Man comes to the pass where all experience seems exhausted. Wherever he go, whatever he see, all is old and wearyingly familiar. Most people explain this by saying that they really know everything, and that from what they have experienced they can infer all experience. This phase of the exhaustion of life usually comes to a man between thirty-five and forty—the best period, according to Karamzin. Not seeing anything new, the individual assumes he is completely matured and has the right to judge of everything. Knowing what has been he can forecast what will be. But Karamzin was mistaken about the best period, and the "mature" people are mistaken about the "nothing new can happen." The fact of spiritual stagnation should not be made the ground for judging all life's possibilities from known possibilities. On the contrary, such stagnation should prove that however rich and multifarious the past may have been, it has not exhausted a tittle of the whole possibilities. From that which has been it is impossible to infer what will be. Moreover, it is unnecessary—except, perhaps, to give us a sense of our full maturity and let us enjoy all the charms of the best period of life, so eloquently described by Karamzin. The temptation is not overwhelming. So that, if man is under the necessity of enduring a period of arrest and stagnation, and until such time as life re-starts is doomed to meditation, would it not be better to use this meditating interregnum for a directly opposite purpose from the one indicated: that is to say, for the purpose of finding in our past signs which tell us that the future has every right to be anything whatsoever, like or utterly unlike the past. Such signs, given a good will to find them, may be seen in plenty. At times one comes to the conclusion that the natural connection of phenomena, as hitherto observed, is not at all inevitable for the future, and that miracles which so far have seemed impossible, may come to seem possible, even natural, far more natural than that loathsome law of sequence, the law of the regularity of phenomena. We are bored stiff with regularity and sequence—confess it, you also, you men of science. At the mere thought that, however we may think, we can get no further than the acknowledgment of the old regularity, an invincible disgust to any kind of mental work overcomes us. To discover another law—still another—when already we have far more than we can do with! Surely if there is any will-to-think left in us, it is established in the supposition that the mind cannot and must not have any bounds, any limits; and that the theory of knowledge, which is based on the history of knowledge and on a few very doubtful assumptions, is only a piece of property belonging to a certain caste, and has nothing to do with us others—und die Natur zuletzt sich doch ergründe. What a mad impatience seizes us at times when we realise that we shall never fathom the great mystery! Every individual in the world must have felt at one time the mad desire to unriddle the universe. Even the stodgy philosophers who invented the theory of knowledge have at times made surreptitious sorties, hoping to open a path to the unknown, in spite of their own fat, senseless books that demonstrate the advantages of scientific knowledge. Man either lives in continuous experience, or he frees himself from conclusions imposed by limited experience. All the rest is the devil. From the devil come the blandishments with which Karamzin charmed himself and his readers.... Or is it the contrary? Who will answer! Once again, as usual, at the end of a pathetic speech one is left with a conjecture. Let every man please himself. But what about those who would like to live according to Karamzin, but cannot? I cannot speak for them. Schiller recommended hope. Will it do? To be frank, hardly. He who has once lost his peace of mind will never find it again.