difference between the time when I used to be thrashed and when they gave
up thrashing me was tremendous.... But Tolstoy's philosophy touched me
profoundly and took possession of me for six or seven years, and what
affected me was not its general propositions, with which I was familiar
beforehand, but Tolstoy's manner of expressing it, his reasonableness, and
probably a sort of hypnotism. Now something in me protests, reason and
justice tell me that in the electricity and heat of love for man there is
something greater than chastity and abstinence from meat. War is an evil
and legal justice is an evil; but it does not follow from that that I ought
to wear bark shoes and sleep on the stove with the labourer, and so on, and
so on. But that is not the point, it is not a matter of _pro and con_;
the thing is that in one way or another Tolstoy has passed for me, he is
not in my soul, and he has departed from me, saying: "I leave this your
house empty." I am untenanted. I am sick of theorizing of all sorts, and
such bounders as Max Nordau I read with positive disgust. Patients in a
fever do not want food, but they do want something, and that vague craving
they express as "longing for something sour." I, too, want something sour,
and that's not a mere chance feeling, for I notice the same mood in others
around me. It is just as if they had all been in love, had fallen out of
love, and now were looking for some new distraction. It is very possible
and very likely that the Russians will pass through another period of
enthusiasm for the natural sciences, and that the materialistic movement
will be fashionable. Natural science is performing miracles now. And it may
act upon people like Mamay, and dominate them by its mass and grandeur. All
that is in the hands of God, however. And theorizing about it makes one's
head go round.