From time to time he was obsessed by dreams of goodness. He wished to sell his carriage and give the money to the poor: to give them the tenth part of his fortune; to live without the help of servants, “for they were men like himself.” During an illness[1] he wrote certain “Rules of Life.” He naïvely assigned himself the duty of “studying everything, of mastering all subjects: law, medicine, languages, agriculture, history, geography, and mathematics; to attain the highest degree of perfection in music and painting,” and so forth. He had “the conviction that the destiny of man was a process of incessant self-perfection.”
Insensibly, under the stress of a boy’s passions, of a violent sensuality and a stupendous pride of self,[2] this faith in perfection went astray, losing its disinterested quality, becoming material and practical. If he still wished to perfect his will, his body, and his mind, it was in order to conquer the world and to enforce its love.[3] He wished to please.
To please: it was not an easy ambition. He was then of a simian ugliness: the face was long, heavy,
- ↑ In March and April, 1847.
- ↑ “All that man does he does out of amour-propre,” says Nekhludov, in Boyhood.In 1853 Tolstoy writes, in his Journal: “My great failing: pride. A vast self-love, without justification. … I am so ambitious that if I had to choose between glory and virtue (which I love) I am sure I should choose the former.”
- ↑ “I wanted to be known by all, loved by all. I wanted every one, at the mere sound of my name, to be struck with admiration and gratitude.”
