DECEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
not weakened my faith, but have strengthened it to an enormous degree.
11) Reason is not given that we should recognise what we ought to love; this it won't dis- close; but only for this: to show what we ought not to love.
12) As in each piece of handiwork, the principal art lies not in the regular making of certain things anew, but in the ever bettering of the inevitable faults of a wrong and ruined work, so even in the business of life, the principal wisdom is not how to begin to act and how to lead life correctly, but how to better faults, how to liberate oneself from errors and seductions.
13) Happiness is the satisfaction of the requirements of a man's being living from birth to death in this world only; but the good is the satisfaction of the requirements of the eternal essence living in man.
14) The essence of the teachings of Christ consists in this, that man ought to know who he is; that he should understand, like a bird which does not use its wings and runs on the land, that he is not a mortal animal, dependent on the conditions of the world, but like a bird which has understood that it has wings and has faith in them, he should understand that he himself was never born and never died and always is, and passes through this world in one of the innumerable forms of
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