Boyhood
Boyhood-4
I sobbed bitterly at these thoughts as I sat on a trunk in that dark
storeroom. Then, suddenly recollecting the shameful punishment which was
awaiting me, I would find myself back again in actuality, and the dreams
had fled. Soon, again, I began to fancy myself far away from the house and
alone in the world. I enter a hussar regiment and go to war. Surrounded by
the foe on every side, I wave my sword, and kill one of them and wound
another—then a third,—then a fourth. At last, exhausted with
loss of blood and fatigue, I fall to the ground and cry, “Victory!” The
general comes to look for me, asking, “Where is our saviour?” whereupon I
am pointed out to him. He embraces me, and, in his turn, exclaims with
tears of joy, “Victory!” I recover and, with my arm in a black sling, go
to walk on the boulevards. I am a general now. I meet the Emperor, who
asks, “Who is this young man who has been wounded?” He is told that it is
the famous hero Nicolas; whereupon he approaches me and says, “My thanks
to you! Whatsoever you may ask for, I will grant it.” To this I bow
respectfully, and, leaning on my sword, reply, “I am happy, most august
Emperor, that I have been able to shed my blood for my country. I would
gladly have died for it. Yet, since you are so generous as to grant any
wish of mine, I venture to ask of you permission to annihilate my enemy,
the foreigner St. Jerome” And then I step fiercely before St. Jerome and
say, “YOU were the cause of all my fortunes! Down now on your knees!”
Unfortunately this recalled to my mind the fact that at any moment the
REAL St. Jerome might be entering with the cane; so that once more I saw
myself, not a general and the saviour of my country, but an unhappy,
pitiful creature.
Then the idea of God occurred to me, and I asked Him boldly why He had
punished me thus, seeing that I had never forgotten to say my prayers,
either morning or evening. Indeed, I can positively declare that it was
during that hour in the store-room that I took the first step towards the
religious doubt which afterwards assailed me during my youth (not that
mere misfortune could arouse me to infidelity and murmuring, but that, at
moments of utter contrition and solitude, the idea of the injustice of
Providence took root in me as readily as bad seed takes root in land well
soaked with rain). Also, I imagined that I was going to die there and
then, and drew vivid pictures of St. Jerome’s astonishment when he entered
the store-room and found a corpse there instead of myself! Likewise,
recollecting what Natalia Savishna had told me of the forty days during
which the souls of the departed must hover around their earthly home, I
imagined myself flying through the rooms of Grandmamma’s house, and seeing
Lubotshka’s bitter tears, and hearing Grandmamma’s lamentations, and
listening to Papa and St. Jerome talking together. “He was a fine boy,”
Papa would say with tears in his eyes. “Yes,” St. Jerome would reply, “but
a sad scapegrace and good-for-nothing.” “But you should respect the dead,”
would expostulate Papa. “YOU were the cause of his death; YOU frightened
him until he could no longer bear the thought of the humiliation which you
were about to inflict upon him. Away from me, criminal!” Upon that St.
Jerome would fall upon his knees and implore forgiveness, and when the
forty days were ended my soul would fly to Heaven, and see there something
wonderfully beautiful, white, and transparent, and know that it was Mamma.
And that something would embrace and caress me. Yet, all at once, I should
feel troubled, and not know her. “If it be you,” I should say to her,
“show yourself more distinctly, so that I may embrace you in return.” And
her voice would answer me, “Do you not feel happy thus?” and I should
reply, “Yes, I do, but you cannot REALLY caress me, and I cannot REALLY
kiss your hand like this.” “But it is not necessary,” she would say.
“There can be happiness here without that,”—and I should feel that
it was so, and we should ascend together, ever higher and higher, until—Suddenly
I feel as though I am being thrown down again, and find myself sitting on
the trunk in the dark store-room (my cheeks wet with tears and my thoughts
in a mist), yet still repeating the words, “Let us ascend together, higher
and higher.” Indeed, it was a long, long while before I could remember
where I was, for at that moment my mind’s eye saw only a dark, dreadful,
illimitable void. I tried to renew the happy, consoling dream which had
been thus interrupted by the return to reality, but, to my surprise, I
found that, as soon as ever I attempted to re-enter former dreams, their
continuation became impossible, while—which astonished me even more—they
no longer gave me pleasure.
XVI. “KEEP ON GRINDING, AND YOU’LL HAVE FLOUR”
I PASSED the night in the store-room, and nothing further happened, except
that on the following morning—a Sunday—I was removed to a
small chamber adjoining the schoolroom, and once more shut up. I began to
hope that my punishment was going to be limited to confinement, and found
my thoughts growing calmer under the influence of a sound, soft sleep, the
clear sunlight playing upon the frost crystals of the windowpanes, and the
familiar noises in the street.
Nevertheless, solitude gradually became intolerable. I wanted to move
about, and to communicate to some one all that was lying upon my heart,
but not a living creature was near me. The position was the more
unpleasant because, willy-nilly, I could hear St. Jerome walking about in
his room, and softly whistling some hackneyed tune. Somehow, I felt
convinced that he was whistling not because he wanted to, but because he
knew it annoyed me.
At two o’clock, he and Woloda departed downstairs, and Nicola brought me
up some luncheon. When I told him what I had done and what was awaiting me
he said:
“Pshaw, sir! Don’t be alarmed. ‘Keep on grinding, and you’ll have flour.’”
Although this expression (which also in later days has more than once
helped me to preserve my firmness of mind) brought me a little comfort,
the fact that I received, not bread and water only, but a whole luncheon,
and even dessert, gave me much to think about. If they had sent me no
dessert, it would have meant that my punishment was to be limited to
confinement; whereas it was now evident that I was looked upon as not yet
punished—that I was only being kept away from the others, as an
evil-doer, until the due time of punishment. While I was still debating
the question, the key of my prison turned, and St. Jerome entered with a
severe, official air.
“Come down and see your Grandmamma,” he said without looking at me.
I should have liked first to have brushed my jacket, since it was covered
with dust, but St. Jerome said that that was quite unnecessary, since I
was in such a deplorable moral condition that my exterior was not worth
considering. As he led me through the salon, Katenka, Lubotshka, and
Woloda looked at me with much the same expression as we were wont to look
at the convicts who on certain days filed past my grandmother’s house.
Likewise, when I approached Grandmamma’s arm-chair to kiss her hand, she
withdrew it, and thrust it under her mantilla.
“Well, my dear,” she began after a long pause, during which she regarded
me from head to foot with the kind of expression which makes one uncertain
where to look or what to do, “I must say that you seem to value my love
very highly, and afford me great consolation.” Then she went on, with an
emphasis on each word, “Monsieur St. Jerome, who, at my request, undertook
your education, says that he can no longer remain in the house. And why?
Simply because of you.” Another pause ensued. Presently she continued in a
tone which clearly showed that her speech had been prepared beforehand, “I
had hoped that you would be grateful for all his care, and for all the
trouble that he has taken with you, that you would have appreciated his
services; but you—you baby, you silly boy!—you actually dare
to raise your hand against him! Very well, very good. I am beginning to
think that you cannot understand kind treatment, but require to be treated
in a very different and humiliating fashion. Go now directly and beg his
pardon,” she added in a stern and peremptory tone as she pointed to St.
Jerome, “Do you hear me?”
I followed the direction of her finger with my eye, but on that member
alighting upon St. Jerome’s coat, I turned my head away, and once more
felt my heart beating violently as I remained where I was.
“What? Did you not hear me when I told you what to do?”
I was trembling all over, but I would not stir.
“Koko,” went on my grandmother, probably divining my inward sufferings,
“Koko,” she repeated in a voice tender rather than harsh, “is this you?”
“Grandmamma, I cannot beg his pardon for—” and I stopped suddenly,
for I felt the next word refuse to come for the tears that were choking
me.
“But I ordered you, I begged of you, to do so. What is the matter with
you?”
“I-I-I will not—I cannot!” I gasped, and the tears, long pent up and
accumulated in my breast, burst forth like a stream which breaks its dikes
and goes flowing madly over the country.
“C’est ainsi que vous obeissez a votre seconde mere, c’est ainsi que vous
reconnaissez ses bontes!” remarked St. Jerome quietly, “A genoux!”
“Good God! If SHE had seen this!” exclaimed Grandmamma, turning from me
and wiping away her tears. “If she had seen this! It may be all for the
best, yet she could never have survived such grief—never!” and
Grandmamma wept more and more. I too wept, but it never occurred to me to
ask for pardon.
“Tranquillisez-vous au nom du ciel, Madame la Comtesse,” said St. Jerome,
but Grandmamma heard him not. She covered her face with her hands, and her
sobs soon passed to hiccups and hysteria. Mimi and Gasha came running in
with frightened faces, salts and spirits were applied, and the whole house
was soon in a ferment.
“You may feel pleased at your work,” said St. Jerome to me as he led me
from the room.
“Good God! What have I done?” I thought to myself. “What a terribly bad
boy I am!”
As soon as St. Jerome, bidding me go into his room, had returned to
Grandmamma, I, all unconscious of what I was doing, ran down the grand
staircase leading to the front door. Whether I intended to drown myself,
or whether merely to run away from home, I do not remember. I only know
that I went blindly on, my face covered with my hands that I might see
nothing.
“Where are you going to?” asked a well-known voice. “I want you, my boy.”
I would have passed on, but Papa caught hold of me, and said sternly:
“Come here, you impudent rascal. How could you dare to do such a thing as
to touch the portfolio in my study?” he went on as he dragged me into his
room. “Oh! you are silent, eh?” and he pulled my ear.
“Yes, I WAS naughty,” I said. “I don’t know myself what came over me
then.”
“So you don’t know what came over you—you don’t know, you don’t
know?” he repeated as he pulled my ear harder and harder. “Will you go and
put your nose where you ought not to again—will you, will you?”
Although my ear was in great pain, I did not cry, but, on the contrary,
felt a sort of morally pleasing sensation. No sooner did he let go of my
ear than I seized his hand and covered it with tears and kisses.
“Please whip me!” I cried, sobbing. “Please hurt me the more and more, for
I am a wretched, bad, miserable boy!”
“Why, what on earth is the matter with you?” he said, giving me a slight
push from him.
“No, I will not go away!” I continued, seizing his coat. “Every one else
hates me—I know that, but do YOU listen to me and protect me, or
else send me away altogether. I cannot live with HIM. He tries to
humiliate me—he tells me to kneel before him, and wants to strike
me. I can’t stand it. I’m not a baby. I can’t stand it—I shall die,
I shall kill myself. HE told Grandmamma that I was naughty, and now she is
ill—she will die through me. It is all his fault. Please let me—W-why
should-he-tor-ment me?”
The tears choked my further speech. I sat down on the sofa, and, with my
head buried on Papa’s knees, sobbed until I thought I should die of grief.
“Come, come! Why are you such a water-pump?” said Papa compassionately, as
he stooped over me.
“He is such a bully! He is murdering me! I shall die! Nobody loves me at
all!” I gasped almost inaudibly, and went into convulsions.
Papa lifted me up, and carried me to my bedroom, where I fell asleep.
When I awoke it was late. Only a solitary candle burned in the room, while
beside the bed there were seated Mimi, Lubotshka, and our doctor. In their
faces I could discern anxiety for my health, so, although I felt so well
after my twelve-hours’ sleep that I could have got up directly, I thought
it best to let them continue thinking that I was unwell.
XVII. HATRED
Yes, it was the real feeling of hatred that was mine now—not the
hatred of which one reads in novels, and in the existence of which I do
not believe—the hatred which finds satisfaction in doing harm to a
fellow-creature, but the hatred which consists of an unconquerable
aversion to a person who may be wholly deserving of your esteem, yet whose
very hair, neck, walk, voice, limbs, movements, and everything else are
disgusting to you, while all the while an incomprehensible force attracts
you towards him, and compels you to follow his slightest acts with anxious
attention.
This was the feeling which I cherished for St. Jerome, who had lived with
us now for a year and a half.
Judging coolly of the man at this time of day, I find that he was a true
Frenchman, but a Frenchman in the better acceptation of the term. He was
fairly well educated, and fulfilled his duties to us conscientiously, but
he had the peculiar features of fickle egotism, boastfulness,
impertinence, and ignorant self-assurance which are common to all his
countrymen, as well as entirely opposed to the Russian character.
All this set me against him, Grandmamma had signified to him her dislike
for corporal punishment, and therefore he dared not beat us, but he
frequently THREATENED us, particularly myself, with the cane, and would
utter the word fouetter as though it were fouatter in an expressive and
detestable way which always gave me the idea that to whip me would afford
him the greatest possible satisfaction.
I was not in the least afraid of the bodily pain, for I had never
experienced it. It was the mere idea that he could beat me that threw me
into such paroxysms of wrath and despair.
True, Karl Ivanitch sometimes (in moments of exasperation) had recourse to
a ruler or to his braces, but that I can look back upon without anger.
Even if he had struck me at the time of which I am now speaking (namely,
when I was fourteen years old), I should have submitted quietly to the
correction, for I loved him, and had known him all my life, and looked
upon him as a member of our family, but St. Jerome was a conceited,
opinionated fellow for whom I felt merely the unwilling respect which I
entertained for all persons older than myself. Karl Ivanitch was a comical
old “Uncle” whom I loved with my whole heart, but who, according to my
childish conception of social distinctions, ranked below us, whereas St.
Jerome was a well-educated, handsome young dandy who was for showing
himself the equal of any one.
Karl Ivanitch had always scolded and punished us coolly, as though he
thought it a necessary, but extremely disagreeable, duty. St. Jerome, on
the contrary, always liked to emphasise his part as JUDGE when correcting
us, and clearly did it as much for his own satisfaction as for our good.
He loved authority. Nevertheless, I always found his grandiloquent French
phrases (which he pronounced with a strong emphasis on all the final
syllables) inexpressibly disgusting, whereas Karl, when angry, had never
said anything beyond, “What a foolish puppet-comedy it is!” or “You boys
are as irritating as Spanish fly!” (which he always called “Spaniard”
fly). St. Jerome, however, had names for us like “mauvais sujet,”
“villain,” “garnement,” and so forth—epithets which greatly offended
my self-respect. When Karl Ivanitch ordered us to kneel in the corner with
our faces to the wall, the punishment consisted merely in the bodily
discomfort of the position, whereas St. Jerome, in such cases, always
assumed a haughty air, made a grandiose gesture with his hand, and
exclaiming in a pseudo-tragic tone, “A genoux, mauvais sujet!” ordered us
to kneel with our faces towards him, and to crave his pardon. His
punishment consisted in humiliation.
However, on the present occasion the punishment never came, nor was the
matter ever referred to again. Yet, I could not forget all that I had gone
through—the shame, the fear, and the hatred of those two days. From
that time forth, St. Jerome appeared to give me up in despair, and took no
further trouble with me, yet I could not bring myself to treat him with
indifference. Every time that our eyes met I felt that my look expressed
only too plainly my dislike, and, though I tried hard to assume a careless
air, he seemed to divine my hypocrisy, until I was forced to blush and
turn away.
In short, it was a terrible trial to me to have anything to do with him.
XVIII. THE MAIDSERVANTS’ ROOM
I BEGAN to feel more and more lonely, until my chief solace lay in
solitary reflection and observation. Of the favourite subject of my
reflections I shall speak in the next chapter. The scene where I indulged
in them was, for preference, the maidservants’ room, where a plot suitable
for a novel was in progress—a plot which touched and engrossed me to
the highest degree. The heroine of the romance was, of course, Masha. She
was in love with Basil, who had known her before she had become a servant
in our house, and who had promised to marry her some day. Unfortunately,
fate, which had separated them five years ago, and afterwards reunited
them in Grandmamma’s abode, next proceeded to interpose an obstacle
between them in the shape of Masha’s uncle, our man Nicola, who would not
hear of his niece marrying that “uneducated and unbearable fellow,” as he
called Basil. One effect of the obstacle had been to make the otherwise
slightly cool and indifferent Basil fall as passionately in love with
Masha as it is possible for a man to be who is only a servant and a
tailor, wears a red shirt, and has his hair pomaded. Although his methods
of expressing his affection were odd (for instance, whenever he met Masha
he always endeavoured to inflict upon her some bodily pain, either by
pinching her, giving her a slap with his open hand, or squeezing her so
hard that she could scarcely breathe), that affection was sincere enough,
and he proved it by the fact that, from the moment when Nicola refused him
his niece’s hand, his grief led him to drinking, and to frequenting
taverns, until he proved so unruly that more than once he had to be sent
to undergo a humiliating chastisement at the police-station.
Nevertheless, these faults of his and their consequences only served to
elevate him in Masha’s eyes, and to increase her love for him. Whenever he
was in the hands of the police, she would sit crying the whole day, and
complain to Gasha of her hard fate (Gasha played an active part in the
affairs of these unfortunate lovers). Then, regardless of her uncle’s
anger and blows, she would stealthily make her way to the police-station,
there to visit and console her swain.
Excuse me, reader, for introducing you to such company. Nevertheless, if
the cords of love and compassion have not wholly snapped in your soul, you
will find, even in that maidservants’ room, something which may cause them
to vibrate again.
So, whether you please to follow me or not, I will return to the alcove on
the staircase whence I was able to observe all that passed in that room.
From my post I could see the stove-couch, with, upon it, an iron, an old
cap-stand with its peg bent crooked, a wash-tub, and a basin. There, too,
was the window, with, in fine disorder before it, a piece of black wax,
some fragments of silk, a half-eaten cucumber, a box of sweets, and so on.
There, too, was the large table at which SHE used to sit in the pink
cotton dress which I admired so much and the blue handkerchief which
always caught my attention so. She would be sewing-though interrupting her
work at intervals to scratch her head a little, to bite the end of her
thread, or to snuff the candle—and I would think to myself: “Why was
she not born a lady—she with her blue eyes, beautiful fair hair, and
magnificent bust? How splendid she would look if she were sitting in a
drawing-room and dressed in a cap with pink ribbons and a silk gown—not
one like Mimi’s, but one like the gown which I saw the other day on the
Tverski Boulevard!” Yes, she would work at the embroidery-frame, and I
would sit and look at her in the mirror, and be ready to do whatsoever she
wanted—to help her on with her mantle or to hand her food. As for
Basil’s drunken face and horrid figure in the scanty coat with the red
shirt showing beneath it, well, in his every gesture, in his every
movement of his back, I seemed always to see signs of the humiliating
chastisements which he had undergone.
“Ah, Basil! AGAIN?” cried Masha on one occasion as she stuck her needle
into the pincushion, but without looking up at the person who was
entering.
“What is the good of a man like HIM?” was Basil’s first remark.
“Yes. If only he would say something DECISIVE! But I am powerless in the
matter—I am all at odds and ends, and through his fault, too.”
“Will you have some tea?” put in Madesha (another servant).
“No, thank you.—But why does he hate me so, that old thief of an
uncle of yours? Why? Is it because of the clothes I wear, or of my height,
or of my walk, or what? Well, damn and confound him!” finished Basil,
snapping his fingers.
“We must be patient,” said Masha, threading her needle.
“You are so—”
“It is my nerves that won’t stand it, that’s all.”
At this moment the door of Grandmamma’s room banged, and Gasha’s angry
voice could be heard as she came up the stairs.
“There!” she muttered with a gesture of her hands. “Try to please people
when even they themselves do not know what they want, and it is a cursed
life—sheer hard labour, and nothing else! If only a certain thing
would happen!—though God forgive me for thinking it!”
“Good evening, Agatha Michaelovna,” said Basil, rising to greet her.
“You here?” she answered brusquely as she stared at him, “That is not very
much to your credit. What do you come here for? Is the maids’ room a
proper place for men?”
“I wanted to see how you were,” said Basil soothingly.
“I shall soon be breathing my last—THAT’S how I am!” cried Gasha,
still greatly incensed.
Basil laughed.
“Oh, there’s nothing to laugh at when I say that I shall soon be dead. But
that’s how it will be, all the same. Just look at the drunkard! Marry her,
would he? The fool! Come, get out of here!” and, with a stamp of her foot
on the floor, Gasha retreated to her own room, and banged the door behind
her until the window rattled again. For a while she could be heard
scolding at everything, flinging dresses and other things about, and
pulling the ears of her favourite cat. Then the door opened again, and
puss, mewing pitifully, was flung forth by the tail.
“I had better come another time for tea,” said Basil in a whisper—“at
some better time for our meeting.”
“No, no!” put in Madesha. “I’ll go and fetch the urn at once.”
“I mean to put an end to things soon,” went on Basil, seating himself
beside Masha as soon as ever Madesha had left the room. “I had much better
go straight to the Countess, and say ‘so-and-so’ or I will throw up my
situation and go off into the world. Oh dear, oh dear!”
“And am I to remain here?”
“Ah, there’s the difficulty—that’s what I feel so badly about, You
have been my sweetheart so long, you see. Ah, dear me!”
“Why don’t you bring me your shirts to wash, Basil?” asked Masha after a
pause, during which she had been inspecting his wrist-bands.
At this moment Grandmamma’s bell rang, and Gasha issued from her room
again.
“What do you want with her, you impudent fellow?” she cried as she pushed
Basil (who had risen at her entrance) before her towards the door. “First
you lead a girl on, and then you want to lead her further still. I suppose
it amuses you to see her tears. There’s the door, now. Off you go! We want
your room, not your company. And what good can you see in him?” she went
on, turning to Masha. “Has not your uncle been walking into you to-day
already? No; she must stick to her promise, forsooth! ‘I will have no one
but Basil,’ Fool that you are!”
“Yes, I WILL have no one but him! I’ll never love any one else! I could
kill myself for him!” poor Masha burst out, the tears suddenly gushing
forth.
For a while I stood watching her as she wiped away those tears. Then I
fell to contemplating Basil attentively, in the hope of finding out what
there was in him that she found so attractive; yet, though I sympathised
with her sincerely in her grief, I could not for the life of me understand
how such a charming creature as I considered her to be could love a man
like him.
“When I become a man,” I thought to myself as I returned to my room,
“Petrovskoe shall be mine, and Basil and Masha my servants. Some day, when
I am sitting in my study and smoking a pipe, Masha will chance to pass the
door on her way to the kitchen with an iron, and I shall say, ‘Masha, come
here,’ and she will enter, and there will be no one else in the room. Then
suddenly Basil too will enter, and, on seeing her, will cry, ‘My
sweetheart is lost to me!’ and Masha will begin to weep, Then I shall say,
‘Basil, I know that you love her, and that she loves you. Here are a
thousand roubles for you. Marry her, and may God grant you both
happiness!’ Then I shall leave them together.”
Among the countless thoughts and fancies which pass, without logic or
sequence, through the mind and the imagination, there are always some
which leave behind them a mark so profound that, without remembering their
exact subject, we can at least recall that something good has passed
through our brain, and try to retain and reproduce its effect. Such was
the mark left upon my consciousness by the idea of sacrificing my feelings
to Masha’s happiness, seeing that she believed that she could attain it
only through a union with Basil.
XIX. BOYHOOD
PERHAPS people will scarcely believe me when I tell them what were the
dearest, most constant, objects of my reflections during my boyhood, so
little did those objects consort with my age and position. Yet, in my
opinion, contrast between a man’s actual position and his moral activity
constitutes the most reliable sign of his genuineness.
During the period when I was leading a solitary and self-centred moral
life, I was much taken up with abstract thoughts on man’s destiny, on a
future life, and on the immortality of the soul, and, with all the ardour
of inexperience, strove to make my youthful intellect solve those
questions—the questions which constitute the highest level of
thought to which the human intellect can tend, but a final decision of
which the human intellect can never succeed in attaining.
I believe the intellect to take the same course of development in the
individual as in the mass, as also that the thoughts which serve as a
basis for philosophical theories are an inseparable part of that
intellect, and that every man must be more or less conscious of those
thoughts before he can know anything of the existence of philosophical
theories. To my own mind those thoughts presented themselves with such
clarity and force that I tried to apply them to life, in the fond belief
that I was the first to have discovered such splendid and invaluable
truths.
Sometimes I would suppose that happiness depends, not upon external causes
themselves, but only upon our relation to them, and that, provided a man
can accustom himself to bearing suffering, he need never be unhappy. To
prove the latter hypothesis, I would (despite the horrible pain) hold out
a Tatistchev’s dictionary at arm’s length for five minutes at a time, or
else go into the store-room and scourge my back with cords until the tears
involuntarily came to my eyes!
Another time, suddenly bethinking me that death might find me at any hour
or any minute, I came to the conclusion that man could only be happy by
using the present to the full and taking no thought for the future.
Indeed, I wondered how people had never found that out before. Acting
under the influence of the new idea, I laid my lesson-books aside for two
or three days, and, reposing on my bed, gave myself up to novel-reading
and the eating of gingerbread-and-honey which I had bought with my last
remaining coins.
Again, standing one day before the blackboard and smearing figures on it
with honey, I was struck with the thought, “Why is symmetry so agreeable
to the eye? What is symmetry? Of course it is an innate sense,” I
continued; “yet what is its basis? Perhaps everything in life is symmetry?
But no. On the contrary, this is life”—and I drew an oblong figure
on the board—“and after life the soul passes to eternity”—here
I drew a line from one end of the oblong figure to the edge of the board.
“Why should there not be a corresponding line on the other side? If there
be an eternity on one side, there must surely be a corresponding one on
the other? That means that we have existed in a previous life, but have
lost the recollection of it.”
This conclusion—which seemed to me at the time both clear and novel,
but the arguments for which it would be difficult for me, at this distance
of time, to piece together—pleased me extremely, so I took a piece
of paper and tried to write it down. But at the first attempt such a rush
of other thoughts came whirling though my brain that I was obliged to jump
up and pace the room. At the window, my attention was arrested by a driver
harnessing a horse to a water-cart, and at once my mind concentrated
itself upon the decision of the question, “Into what animal or human being
will the spirit of that horse pass at death?” Just at that moment, Woloda
passed through the room, and smiled to see me absorbed in speculative
thoughts. His smile at once made me feel that all that I had been thinking
about was utter nonsense.
I have related all this as I recollect it in order to show the reader the
nature of my cogitations. No philosophical theory attracted me so much as
scepticism, which at one period brought me to a state of mind verging upon
insanity. I took the fancy into my head that no one nor anything really
existed in the world except myself—that objects were not objects at
all, but that images of them became manifest only so soon as I turned my
attention upon them, and vanished again directly that I ceased to think
about them. In short, this idea of mine (that real objects do not exist,
but only one’s conception of them) brought me to Schelling’s well-known
theory. There were moments when the influence of this idea led me to such
vagaries as, for instance, turning sharply round, in the hope that by the
suddenness of the movement I should come in contact with the void which I
believed to be existing where I myself purported to be!