letters, is a man who early took himself in hand, organized his aims and efforts and drove with incessant energy toward a perfectly definite goal.
But I haven't finished my account of genuine Chekhovism till I say that when Chekhov had emerged from the peasantry and had become an intellectual he proceeded then to emerge from the intelligentsia in order to become an individual and a "free artist."
The artist, too, has his ethics and his honor. "Respect yourself, for the love of Christ; don't give your hands liberty when your brain is lazy." That is pure ethics. The first principle of honor is that the artist must preserve his integrity as a spectator, letting nothing interfere with the pure objectivity of his vision. We know, of course, that "pure objectivity" is an illusion, and doubtless Chekhov did also; but there is a relative objectivity which may furnish a working principle:
It seems to me that it is not the business of novelists to solve such questions as those of God, pessimism and the like. The novelist's business is only to describe who has been speaking or thinking about God or pessimism, how and in what circumstances. . . . For writing fellows, particularly for artists, it is time to confess that one can't make anything out in this world, as once Socrates confessed and Voltaire, too. The mob thinks it knows and understands everything; and the stupider it is the wider it fancies its outlook to be. If an artist in whom the mob believes will make up his mind to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees, that in itself will be a great gain in the sphere of thought and a great step forward.
To this should be added his more intimate avowal of skepticism and positive faith in a letter of 1889:
