Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/27

 hended all that lying faith and renounced it, I did not renounce the rank which I was given by those men,—that of artist, poet, teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet, an artist, and that I could teach others, not knowing myself what I was teaching. That was what I did.

From my association with these people I carried away a new vice,—a morbidly developed pride and an insane conviction that I was called to teach people, myself not knowing what.

Now that I think of that time, of my mental state, and of the mental state of those men (however, there are thousands of such even nowadays), I feel pity, and terror, and amusement; there arises precisely the feeling that one experiences in a madhouse.

We were all convinced at that time that we must talk and talk, and write, and print, as fast as possible, and that that was necessary for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, denying and cursing one another, printed and wrote, teaching others. And, without noticing that we knew nothing, that to the simplest question of life,—what is good, and what bad,—we did not know what answer to give, we all spoke together, without listening to our neighbours, and now and then encouraged and praised each other, so that we, too, might be encouraged and praised, and now and then were irritated toward one another, precisely as in a madhouse.

Thousands of workmen day and night worked with all their strength, setting type and printing millions of words, and the post-office spread them all over Russia, and we proceeded to teach, and did not have time enough to teach everything, and kept growing angry because little attention was paid to us.

It is all very strange, but now it is easy to understand. Our real, intimate calculation was that we wanted to get as much money and praise as possible. In order to ob-