Page:The Journal of Leo Tolstoy.djvu/37

 DECEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi

once when the struggle with surroundings is ended ; man adjusts himself to it or he goes under, and this struggle is neither cruel nor is it an evil one. The struggle begins to be cruel only when man directs his consciousness upon it, prepares it, strengthens and multiplies its energy tenfold and hundredfold.

As Pascal says: there are three kinds of people; one kind know nothing and sit quietly, and just as quiet are those who know; but there are a middle kind who don't know but believe they do; from them comes all the evil in the world. They are the people in whom consciousness has awakened, but they don't know how to use it.

2) The whole thing lies in this that you should always remember who you are. There is no situation so difficult, from which the way out would not immediately offer itself, if you only would remember that you are not a temporary, material manifestation, but an eternal omnipres- ent being. " I am the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in me shall never die, and though he were dead yet shall he live. Believest thou this?"

I walked on the street. A wretched beggar ap- proached me. I forgot who I was and passed by. And then suddenly I remembered, and just as naturally as the hungry begin to eat and the tired

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