upon myself as a regular man, and had begun to regard myself as a
man exactly like every one else,--only then did my path become clear
before me. Before that time I had not been able to answer the
question: "What is to be done?" because I had stated the question
itself wrongly.

As long as I did not repent, I put the question thus: "What sphere
of activity should I choose, I, the man who has received the
education and the talents which have fallen to my shame? How, in
this fashion, make recompense with that education and those talents,
for what I have taken, and for what I still take, from the people?"
This question was wrong, because it contained a false
representation, to the effect that I was not a man just like them,
but a peculiar man called to serve the people with those talents and
with that education which I had won by the efforts of forty years.

I propounded the query to myself; but, in reality, I had answered it
in advance, in that I had in advance defined the sort of activity
which was agreeable to me, and by which I was called upon to serve
the people. I had, in fact, asked myself: "In what manner could I,
so very fine a writer, who had acquired so much learning and
talents, make use of them for the benefit of the people?"

But the question should have been put as it would have stood for a
learned rabbi who had gone through the course of the Talmud, and had
learned by heart the number of letters in all the holy books, and
all the fine points of his art. The question for me, as for the
rabbi, should stand thus: "What am I, who have spent, owing to the
misfortune of my surroundings, the year's best fitted for study in
the acquisition of grammar, geography, judicial science, poetry,