Page:The Journal of Leo Tolstoy.djvu/421

Rh in connection with his work on some literary topic.

Besides the thoughts which appeared in connection with his writings, one meets in the Journal, as was said above, such thoughts which appeared during the period of intense clarification of the various problems of his personal and family life. In connection with the observations which he lived through and experienced, Tolstoi quite often wrote down his own spiritual state, his personal sufferings and the right attitude that he should take towards them.

At one time, he was occupied especially with the problem of the philosophic definition of time and space and he wrote down his thoughts on this theme quite often. At another time, he was interested in the problem of error, of whether the outer world was such as it appeared. Quite often he noted his thoughts on the themes: On God, on the meaning of life, on the difference between the spiritual and the animal life, on reason, on prayer. Quite often, at this time, thoughts came to him about the given work of God, about service to God, about love in general and about love towards enemies in particular.

Besides this, there are scattered in the whole Journal for the four mentioned years, various thoughts on the sex-problem—on falling in love, on women, on marriage—and also quite a number of thoughts on illness, on death, on the unjust life of the rich, on memory and on many other subjects. Sometimes one finds thoughts in the Journal which appear in connection with the books that he was reading; for instance, there are several thoughts