'If a man smokes opium or hashish, or intoxicates himself with wine till he falls down and loses his senses, of course the consequences may be very serious; but for a man merely to come slightly under the influence of hops or tobacco, surely cannot have any serious consequences,' is what is usually said. It seems to people that a slight stupefaction, a little darkening of the judgment, cannot have any important influence. But to think so, is as if one supposed that it may harm a watch to be struck against a stone, but that a little dirt introduced into it cannot do it any harm.
Remember, however, that the chief work actuating man's whole life is not work done by his hands, feet, or back, but by his consciousness. For a man to do anything with feet or hands, a certain alteration has first to take place in his consciousness. And this alteration defines all the subsequent movements of the man. Yet these alterations are always minute and almost imperceptible.
Brullóf[1] one day corrected a pupil's study. The pupil, having glanced at the altered drawing, exclaimed: 'Why, you only touched it a tiny bit, but it is quite another thing.' Brullóf replied: 'Art begins where the tiny bit begins.'
That saying is strikingly true, not of art alone, but of all life. One may say that true life begins where the tiny bit begins—where what seem to us minute and infinitely small alterations take place. True life is not lived where great external changes take place—where people move about, clash, fight, and slay one another—but it is lived only where these tiny, tiny, infinitesimally small changes occur.
Raskólnikof[2] lived his true life, not when he murdered the old woman or her sister. When murdering the old woman herself, and especially when murdering her sister, he did not live his true life, but acted like a machine, doing what he could not help doing—dis-
- ↑ K. P. Brullóf, a celebrated Russian painter (1799–1852).
- ↑ The hero of Dostovéfsky's novel, 'Crime and Punishment.'
