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!
What a pitiful spring of moral activity is the human intellect!
My faulty reason could not define the impenetrable. Consequently
it shattered one fruitless conviction after another--convictions
which, happily for my after life, I never lacked the courage to
abandon as soon as they proved inadequate. From all this weary
mental struggle I derived only a certain pliancy of mind, a
weakening of the will, a habit of perpetual moral analysis, and a
diminution both of freshness of sentiment and of clearness of
thought. Usually abstract thinking develops man's capacity for
apprehending the bent of his mind at certain moments and laying
it to heart, but my inclination for abstract thought developed my
consciousness in such a way that often when I began to consider
even the simplest matter, I would lose myself in a labyrinthine
analysis of my own thoughts concerning the matter in question.
That is to say, I no longer thought of the matter itself, but
only of what I was thinking about it. If I had then asked myself,
"Of what am I thinking?" the true answer would have been, "I am
thinking of what I am thinking;" and if I had further asked
myself, "What, then, are the thoughts of which I am thinking?"
I should have had to reply, "They are attempts to think of what
I am thinking concerning my own thoughts"--and so on.
Reason, with me, had to yield to excess of reason. Every
philosophical discovery which I made so flattered my conceit
that I often imagined myself to be a great man discovering new
truths for the benefit of humanity. Consequently, I looked down
with proud dignity upon my fellow-mortals. Yet, strange to
state, no sooner did I come in contact with those fellow-mortals
than I became filled with a stupid shyness of them, and, the
higher I happened to be standing in my own opinion, the less
did I feel capable of making others perceive my consciousness
of my own dignity, since I could not rid myself of a sense of
diffidence concerning even the simplest of my words and acts.
