LETTER TO N. N.
My dear N. N.
I address you as "dear," not because this is a customary form, but because since I received your first letter, and especially since your second one came, I feel that we are very closely united, and I love you dearly. In the feeling which I experience, there is much that is egotistical. You certainly do not think so, but you cannot imagine to what degree I am alone, to what a degree the actual "I" is scorned by all surrounding me. I know that he that endures to the end will be saved: I know that only in trifles is the right given to a man to take advantage of the fruit of his labor, or even to look on this fruit, but that in the matter of divine truth which is eternal it cannot be given to a man to see the fruit of his work, especially in the brief period of his short life: I know all this, and yet I am often despondent, and therefore my meeting with you and the hope, almost the certainty, of finding in you a man who is sincerely going with me in one way, and to one and the same good, is to me very cheering.
Now, then, I will reply in a systematic way. Your letters to Aksakof, especially the last one, pleased me. Your arguments are irresistible, but for him do not exist. Everything he says I knew long ago. This is all repeated in life, in literature, in conversations; it is always the same thing and the same thing. And this is precisely what it is: You say, "I see that this is the truth and this other is false, for this reason and for that, and that this is good and that is evil, for this reason and for that."
Aksakof and those like him see that this is the truth; even before you have told them they know the truth. But
431
