He could not avow that the truth appeared to him then, but that he was mistaken now; because, as he began calmly to analyze his feelings, they eluded him. He could not avow that he had been deceived then, because he had experienced a temporary spiritual condition; and if he pretended that he had succumbed to a moment of weakness, he would sully a sacred moment. He was in a state of internal conflict, and he strove with all the strength of his nature to free himself from it.
CHAPTER IX
These thoughts tormented him with varying intensity, but he could not free himself from them. He read and meditated; but the more he read and meditated, the end desired seemed to grow more and more remote.
During the latter part of his stay in Moscow, and after he reached the country, he became convinced of the uselessness of seeking in materialism an answer to his doubts; and he read over the philosophers whose explanations of life were opposed to materialism, — Plato and Spinoza, and Kant and Schelling, and Hegel and Schopenhauer.
These thoughts seemed to him fruitful while he was reading, or was contrasting their doctrines with those of others, especially with those of a materialistic tendency; but just as soon as he attempted, independently, to apply these guides to some doubtful point, he fell back into the same perplexities as before. The terms "mind," "will", "freedom," "essence," had a certain meaning to his intellect as long as he followed the clew established by the deductions of these philosophers, and allowed himself to be caught in the snare of their subtle distinctions; but when practical life asserted its point of view, this artistic structure fell, like a house built of cards; and it became evident that the edifice was built only of beautiful words, having no more connection than logic with the serious side of life.
Once, as he was reading Schopenhauer, he substituted
