A CONFESSION [3]
simply bent on attaining their covetous aims by means of this
activity of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our
creed.
Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors'
creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively,
and I became convinced that almost all the priests of that
religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of
bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in
my former dissipated and military life; but they were self-
confident and self-satisfied as only those can be who are quite
holy or who do not know what holiness is. These people revolted
me, I became revolting to myself, and I realized that that faith
was a fraud.
But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and
renounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me:
the rank of artist, poet, and teacher. I naively imagined that I
was a poet and artist and could teach everybody without myself
knowing what I was teaching, and I acted accordingly.
From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice:
abnormally developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my
vocation to teach men, without knowing what.
To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of
those men (though there are thousands like them today), is sad and
terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one
experiences in a lunatic asylum.
We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to
speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as
possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And
thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed
and wrote -- teaching others. And without noticing that we knew
nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good
and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at
the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding
and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in
turn, sometimes getting angry with one another -- just as in a
lunatic asylum.
Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their
strength day and night, setting the type and printing millions of
words which the post carried all over Russia, and we still went on
teaching and could in no way find time to teach enough, and were
always angry that sufficient attention was not paid us.
It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our
real innermost concern was to get as much money and praise as
possible. To gain that end we could do nothing except write books
and papers. So we did that. But in order to do such useless work
and to feel assured that we were very important people we required
a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was
devised: "All that exists is reasonable. All that exists
develops. And it all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is
measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are
paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers,
and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." This
theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but
as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a
diametrically opposite thought expressed by another, we ought to
have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid
us money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered
himself justified.
It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic
asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and like all
lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself.
III
So I lived, abandoning myself to this insanity for another six
years, till my marriage. During that time I went abroad. Life in
Europe and my acquaintance with leading and learned Europeans
[Footnote: Russians generally make a distinction between Europeans
and Russians. -- A.M.] confirmed me yet more in