There is nothing else, everything is imagination and lies, and I am called to disclose these lies, I must announce to mankind that it is being betrayed, that life is a naked struggle of beasts and there is no point in controlling, besides there is nothing with which to control, this struggle. I am the first to discover that a man is powerless to protest against the meanness in himself and there is no reason that he should do so—for it is a legitimate and effective weapon in this mutual struggle.

There exists a wicked fairy-tale: a crowd of people are unanimously admiring the beauty and richness of their emperor’s attire, when an urchin cries out:

“Why, the emperor is naked!”

And then they all see: yes, indeed, the emperor is naked and hideous.

Am I to play the part of the penetrating urchin?

These thoughts obsessed me particularly in the year 1914 when the infamous war broke out and everything human dropped from men like the scales from rotten fish.

Reading over all that I have written, I see that it is not what it should be, the story is not told correctly. I have pictured myself as a man who has got entangled in thoughts, sprained his soul with philosophy, destroyed in it the human element, all that is considered as being kind and good. No, that is not the case, it is not so.

Thoughts, in spite of their abundance, never confused my mind or lured me. They appear to me as bubbles on the boiling surface of feelings—the bubbles come up, burst, vanish, others come in their place. Only such thoughts are vital and effective as are loaded with feeling; when they are that, I become physically aware of them, they act like fingers, seizing, picking up and transplanting facts, molding, and building up, then, fertilized by more feelings, they in their turn give birth to new ones. Without this fertilization, thought plays about with man like a prostitute, unable to change anything in him. Of course one can also love a prostitute quite sincerely, but it is more natural to treat her with a certain caution—she might rob or contaminate one.

For nineteen years I lived among people of uniform ways of thinking, in an atmosphere of uniform-colored ideas. Their particular shade did not satisfy me, seemed dull and joyless like a gray autumn day.

But I well saw that these people were so strongly pulled up by their beloved idea precisely because it filled all their being, penetrated into their flesh and blood. It was not a bubble but a closely pressed fist, relying on its strength.

In the years 1907 and 1914, observing how easily people gave up their beliefs, I became aware that something was lacking in them, something which they had always lacked. What was it? A physical fastidiousness in regard to something that their mind repudiated? Or the habit of living honestly?

Here, it seems to me, I have struck upon something true: the habit of living honestly is something which people lack. My comrades lacked it, too. Their life contradicted their convictions, principles—the dogmas of faith. This contradiction was particularly strongly revealed in the methods of party life, in the struggle with people of the same faith, but of different tactics. Here the most shameful type of Jesuitry took place, crooked tricks were admitted, even the mean little methods of gamblers, exhilarated by the game to the limit of consciousness, playing only for the sake of the game.

Yes, yes, that is so—men lack the habit of living honestly. I know, of course, that most of them did not have and still have not got the chance of developing this, habit. But those whose aim is to rebuild life, re-educate mankind, are mistaken if they believe that all means are allowed in a struggle. No, with a dogma like that one will not succeed in teaching people to live honestly.