DECEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
the unsuitable meaning which is ascribed to it. Realism, moreover, weakens its significance . . .
N. refused to serve in the military. I called on him. 29 Philosophov 30 died. . . . Wrote sev- eral worthless letters.
I have thought during this time much in meaning. Much of it I could not understand and have forgotten.
1) I have often wanted to suffer, wanted per- secution. That means that I was lazy and didn't want to work, so that others should work for me, torturing me, and I should only suffer.
2) It is terrible, the perversions ... of the mind to which men expose children for their own purposes during the time of their education. The rule of conscious materialism is only explained by this. The child is instilled with such nonsense that afterwards the materialistic, limited, false conception, which is not developed to the conclu- sions which would show its falsity, appears like an enormous conquest of the intellect.
3) I made a note, "Violence frees," and it was something very clear and important, and now I don't remember what it was at all.
/ have remembered. December 23. Violence is a temptation because it frees us from the strain of attention, from the work of reasoning: one must labour to undo a knot; to cut it, is shorter.
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