At Kresttsy, I was witness to a parting between father and children that touched me all the more emotionally because I am myself a father and soon, perhaps, shall part from my children. An unfortunate prejudice in the noble rank compels them to enter service. The name alone of service produces an uncommon disturbance in my blood! It is possible to maintain a thousand to one that out of a hundred young squires entering service ninety-eight will become rakes, while two when near old age—or to put it more accurately when they are in their decrepit, if not exactly old, years—will become good people. The rest progress through the ranks, squander or amass an estate and so on….—When I sometimes look upon my older son and think that soon he will enter service or, to put it in other words, that the bird will fly the coop, my hairs stand on end. Not because service in itself corrupts morals, but because it would be fitting for one to begin service with a mature character.—Someone will say, “But who is giving it in the neck to these milquetoasts?” Who? I will follow the general example. A staff officer is seventeen years of age; the colonel is twenty; the general twenty; the chamberlain, senator, governor, commander of the forces. What father would not wish his children, although still in their youth, to be in the distinguished ranks which wealth, honor, and reason follow in due course.—In looking upon my son I imagine: he has begun to serve, made the acquaintance of flibbertigibbets, the debauched, gamblers, fops. He has learned how to dress impeccably, to play cards, to maintain himself by card playing, to talk about everything thoughtlessly, to frequent whores, or to tell nonsensical lies to gentlewomen. Fortune, spinning on its chicken leg, has somehow favored him; and my little, still beardless son has become a distinguished boyar.60 He has conceived a fancy that he is smarter than everyone else in the world. What good could one possibly expect from such a commander or town governor?—Tell me in truth, child-loving father, tell me, O authentic citizen! Would you not prefer to strangle your little son than let him be in service? Is your heart not pained that your sonny-boy, a grand boyar gentleman, despises the merits and qualities that move slowly along the path to promotion because they do not want to be crafty? You will weep, won’t you, to see your dear son, wearing a charming smile, confiscate property, honor; to see him poison and slaughter people not always with his own gentlemanly hands but by means of his minions’ paws.
The gentleman from Kresttsy was, I thought, about fifty years old. Scant streaks of gray scarcely appeared in his blond head of hair. His regular facial features signified the tranquility of a soul immune to passions. A gentle smile of unflappable satisfaction, born from kindness, burrowed in his cheeks the dimples that are so fetching on women; when I entered the room where he was seated his gaze was fixed on his two sons. His eyes, the eyes of benevolent reason, seemed draped in a light veil of sorrow; but the veil was shot through with flashes of firmness and hope. Before him stood two youths, nearly equal in age; they differed from one another by one year in time of birth but not in the progress of their mind and heart. For in the younger, the zeal of the father had hastened the opening up of his mind, and brotherly love had tempered the elder’s success in learning. They understood matters equally, they knew the rules of life equally, but nature had planted in each a different sharpness of mind and responsiveness of the heart. The gaze of the elder was strong, the features of face were steady, they exhibited the beginnings of a decisive soul and a steadfastness in undertakings. The gaze of the younger was sharp, his face was mobile and changeable. But their smooth motion was the infallible sign of his father’s good guidance.—They looked upon their father with a timidity uncharacteristic for them that arose from grief over their pending separation rather than from a sense of power or control over them.—Sparse teardrops flowed from their eyes. “My friends!” said the father, “today we will part,” and hugging them as they sobbed, he clasped them to his breast. I had already been witnessing this scene standing still by the doors for several minutes when the father turned to me: “Be a witness, sensitive traveler, be a witness before the world to how heavily it weighs on my heart to satisfy the powerful force of custom. In removing my children from the vigilant paternal eye, the only incentive I have in this regard is that they acquire experience, that they understand man from his actions, and that, once they have grown tired of the clatter of worldly life, they might happily leave it behind. But may they have respite from persecution and daily bread in hardship. This is why I remain in my own cultivated field. Do not allow, Lord Almighty! do not allow them to roam after the charity of grandees and acquire in them a comforter! May their heart be their consoler; may their reason be creator of benefit for them.—Sit down and pay heed to my speech as something that ought to remain in the depth of your souls.—I repeat to you again: today we shall part.—It is with ineffable joy that I behold the tears that sprinkle your cheeks. May the agitation of your soul cause my advice to penetrate to its inner sanctum so that in recalling me it will be shaken—and so that even when absent, I shall be to you as a bulwark from evils and griefs.
“Since taking you into my embrace even from the maternal womb, I never wanted anyone else as your guardian to execute things concerning you. Never did a hired caretaker touch your body and never did a hired tutor touch your heart and reason. The vigilant eye of my zeal kept watch over you day and night lest injury draw close to you; and I call myself a blessed man because I led you to the point of separation from me. But do not imagine that I would wish to wrench from your lips gratitude for the care I showed you or acknowledgment, however weak, of what had been done for you by me. Led by the stimulus of self-interest, what was undertaken for your benefit always kept in view my own delight. And so banish from your thoughts that you both are under my power. You are in no way obligated to me. Not in reason, and even less in law, do I wish to locate the strengths of our bond. It is founded in your heart. Woe unto you if you should forget it! My image, pursuing the destroyer of the union of our friendship, will follow him in his hiding and inflict on him unbearable punishment until he returns to our bond. I repeat again to you: you are in no way obligated to me. Consider me as though I were a vagrant and stranger, and if your heart should feel some tender inclination for me, then let us live in friendship, in that greatest prosperity to be found on earth.—If it should be without any sensation—then let us be oblivious of one another as if we had never been born. All-merciful God, grant that I never see this and that I return to your bosom before it happens. You owe me nothing for your feeding, education, and least of all for your birth.—For birth?—Were you participants in it? Were you asked whether to be born? Whether being born was for your good or ill? In giving birth to their son, do a father and mother know whether in life he will be blessed or miserable? Who can say that in entering into matrimony he thought about lineage and descendants; and if he had such an intention, whether it was for the welfare of the children that he wished to beget them or for the preservation of his name? How can I wish well to someone I do not know, and what would it be? Is it possible to call an undefined wish, instigated by the unknown, a good?—The desire for matrimony also indicates the cause of birth. Attracted more by the spiritual goodness of your mother than the beauty of her face, I employed a reliable method in our mutual ardor—sincere love. I obtained your mother as a spouse. But what was the motive for our love? Mutual pleasure, a pleasure of the flesh and spirit. In partaking of a joy mandated by nature we did not think of you. Your birth was pleasant for us but not for you. Reproducing oneself flattered one’s vanity, your birth was a new sensual union, so to speak, a union confirming the union of hearts. It is the source of the primal passion of parents for their sons; it is strengthened by habit, by the sense of one’s power, by the reflection on the father in praise for his sons.—Your mother shared my opinion that you owed no meaningful debt for your birth. She made no show of pride before you because she bore you in her womb, demanded no recognition for nurturing you with her blood, did not demand respect in exchange for the pain of birth nor for the tediousness of nourishing you from her own teats. She attempted to give you, as she herself possessed, a worthy soul and she wished to plant there friendship but not a sense of obligation, not duty, or servile submissiveness. Fate did not permit her to see the fruits of her cultivations. She left us, and while her spirit was firm she did not wish for her end, seeing your infancy and my devotion. In becoming like her, we do not forfeit her entirely. She will live with us until we depart to join her. You know that the most pleasant conversation with you is conversing about she who bore you. That is when it seems that her soul converses with us: then she herself is present to us, then she appears in us, then she is still alive.” And speaking, he wiped drops of tears pent up in his soul.—
“For your keep, you owe me as little as you owe for your birth. When I offer hospitality to a visitor, when I feed feathered chicks, when I give food to a dog who licks my hand, do I do this for them?—In this I find my own joy, pleasure, and benefit. The same impulse brings about the feeding of children. Born into this world, you have become citizens of the society in which you live. My duty was to nourish you, since I would have been a murderer if I had allowed a premature death to affect you. If I was more thoughtful about your nourishment than many others happen to be, I followed the sensation of my heart. It was in my power to take up your nourishment or neglect it; to preserve your days or be their squanderer; to keep you alive or allow you to die prematurely: this is clear proof that you do not owe me for the fact that you are alive. Had you perished because of neglect by me, as many do, legal retribution would not have pursued me.—But it will be said that you owe me for your tuition and education.—Was it not my own advantage I sought in your being worthy? The praises accorded your good conduct, intelligence, learning, culture, in encompassing you reflected on me like solar rays from a mirror. Those praising you praise me. What would I have gained if you had given in to vice, shunned learning, were stupid in your thoughts, nasty, base, and devoid of sensibility? Not only would I have suffered with you in your crooked behavior, but I would have been a victim, perhaps, of your brutality. But now I remain calm in weaning you from myself. Your capacity to reason is upright, your heart stout, and I live in it. O my friends! Sons of my heart, by giving birth to you I had many duties in regard to you. But you owe me nothing; I seek your friendship and love. If you will grant them to me, I shall depart, blissful, to the beginning of life and when I die shall not rebel over leaving you forever, since I shall live on in your memory.
“But if I have fulfilled my duty in your education, I am obliged to tell you the reason why I raised you in this way rather than another, and wherefore I taught you this rather than something else; and, therefore, you will hear the tale of your education and learn the reason of all my actions upon you.
“From the time of your infancy you have felt no compulsion. Although in your activities you have been led by my hand, you all the same never felt its guidance. Your actions were foreknown and forestalled; I did not want the heavy hand of obedience or submission to leave the least trace upon you. And this is why your spirit, hostile to baseless orders, is pliant to the council of friendship. But if, while you were children, I found that you, compelled by a random force, were deviating from the path I had determined, I then stopped your advance; or, better yet, imperceptibly guided you back onto previous path like a stream that overflowing its embankment is returned to its banks through a skillful hand.
“Diffident tenderness was not a trait of mine when I gave the appearance of neglecting to preserve you from the hostility of the elements and the weather. I preferred your body to have been injured briefly by transient pain to its growing feeble when you were of a mature age. And this is why you often went about barefoot, your heads uncovered; in the dust, in the dirt you stretched out to rest, on benches or on rocks. I made no less an effort to keep you from harmful food or drink. Our efforts were the best spice in our midday meal. Remember the pleasure we took in dining in an unfamiliar village after we lost our way home. How delicious we then found the rye bread and village kvass!
“Do not begrudge me if you sometimes find yourselves mocked because you lack a comely gait, because your posture stands comfortably rather than as custom or fashion dictate; that you dress tastelessly, that your hair is curled by the hand of nature rather than a hairdresser. Do not begrudge me if you are overlooked at assemblies, and particularly by women, because you do not know how to praise their beauty. Recall, however, that you run quickly, that you swim tirelessly, that you can lift weights without strain, that you are able to use a plow, dig a furrow, can use a scythe and axe, a plane and chisel, are able to ride horseback, to shoot. Do not feel sad because you are not able to leap like jugglers. Know that the best dancing contains nothing majestic; and if you should be moved by its appearance, the root of it will be salaciousness, everything else is ancillary to this. But you are able to draw animals and nature morte, to draw the features of the king of nature, man. In painting, you shall find genuine satisfaction not only of the senses but of reason as well.—I taught you music so that a string quivering in harmony with your nerves would arouse your slumbering heart; for music, by setting inwardness into motion, makes a habit of tenderheartedness in us.—I taught you the barbaric art of fencing, too. But may this art remain dormant in you until self-preservation requires it. It will not, I reckon, make you arrogant; since you are firm of spirit and will not take offence if an ass kicks you with its hoof or a pig grazes you with its stinking snout.—Do not fear telling anyone that you are able to milk a cow, that you can braise cabbage and porridge, or that a piece of meat roasted by you will be tasty. A person who is able to do something himself will be in a position to make another do it and will be forgiving of mistakes because he knows all the difficulties of performance.
“In your infancy and adolescence, I did not burden your reason with readied reflections or alien thoughts, did not burden your memory with too many topics. But having offered you the path to knowledge, since that time you have begun to sense the power of your own reason, you stride by yourselves along the way that is open to you. Your knowledge is better founded because you acquired it not through repetition, as the proverbial saying goes, like parroting birds. In accordance with this rule, for as long as your powers of reason were inactive, I did not present you concepts about the Almighty Being and even less about Revelation. For what you learned before you acquired reason would have been prejudice in you and hindered reasoning. When I then observed that in your ratiocinations you were led by the mind, that was when I suggested to you the connection of concepts that lead to the awareness of God. I am convinced in the depth of my heart that it is more pleasant for the all-munificent Father to behold two unspoiled souls in whom the lamp of learning is not ignited by prejudice, but of their own accord rise aloft to the primal fire to be kindled. That was when I made a proposition to you about the law of Revelation without hiding from you everything that had been said by many in refutation of it. Because I wanted you to be able to discriminate between milk and bile, and joyously saw that you accepted this vessel of comfort boldly.
“In giving you instruction in the sciences, I did not neglect to acquaint you with various peoples, having taught you foreign languages. But above all my duty was that you should know your own language so that you would be able in it to express your thoughts orally and in writing and so that your style would be unforced and not cause a drop of sweat to form on your face. I tried to give you greater familiarity with the English language,61 as well as Latin, than with others. For the resilience of the spirit of freedom, when transmuted into the signification of language, also trains reason in the concrete concepts essential to all governments.
“But if I allowed your reason to guide your steps on the paths of learning, I endeavored to be all the more vigilant in your moral education. I tried to moderate in you momentary anger, subjecting to reason the anger that is extended and leads to retribution. Retribution! … Your soul abhors it. Of this natural inclination of creatures endowed with sensitivity you have only by defying the urge to repay violence kept the defensiveness of your organism.
“The time has now arrived when your feelings, after reaching an apogee of agitation still short of a complete understanding about what has been stimulated, begin to be alarmed by every external stimulus and to produce a dangerous tremor within you. Now you have reached the time when, as it is said, reason becomes the determinant of your activity and inactivity; or better to say when feelings, earlier sustained by the fluidity of infancy, begin to feel disturbance, or when vital juices, having filled the vessel of youth, begin to overflow its brim in search of a path that suits their current. I preserved you inviolable until now from corrupt disturbances of feelings, but did not hide from you, by using the cloak of ignorance, the fatal consequences of being diverted from the path of moderation in sensual satisfaction. You were witnesses of how awful an excess of sensual satisfaction is and abhorred it; you were witnesses of the terrible tumult of passions that overflowed the banks of their natural course, recognized their fateful devastation and recoiled. My expertise, watching over you like a new Aegis, protected you from pointless pains. Now you shall be your own pilots, and while my advice will always be a lamp for your own initiatives, since your heart and soul are open to me, but like a light that grows dimmer as it grows distant from the object, so shall you, at a distance from my presence, feel the weak warmth of my friendship. And this is why I shall teach you the rules of private life and civic life so that you shall feel no disgust at activities done in a passionate state once they have subsided, and shall not know the meaning of remorse.
“The rules of private life, insofar as this pertains to you, must relate to your body and morality. Never forget to use your physical powers and your feelings. Their moderate exercise will strengthen but not exhaust them, and will serve to benefit your health and longevity. And for that reason practice in the arts, crafts, and skills that you know. Mastery in them might sometimes be required. The future is unknown to us. Should inimical fortune strip you of everything it has given you, you will be rich in the moderation of your desires, sustained by the work of your hands. But if you neglect to practice in days of happiness, it will be late to think about this during sad times. Luxury, indolence, and the immoderate satisfaction of senses destroy both the body and spirit. For one who exhausts the body through lack of restraint exhausts the strength of the spirit. But use of your strength will reinforce the body and with it the spirit. If you feel an aversion to foodstuffs and illness comes knocking at the door, leap up then from your bed on which you indulge your senses, engage your sleeping limbs in action with exercise, and you will feel an immediate renewal of your strength. Restrain yourself from the food needed when you are healthy and hunger will make sweet the food that tasted bitter when you were full. Remember always that to put hunger to rest, all that is needed is a morsel of bread and ladle of water. If sleep, the beneficial deprivation of external sensations, should depart from the head of your bed and you are unable to renew your mental and physical powers—flee from your halls and once you have wearied your limbs to the point of exhaustion, lie down on your bed and you will fall asleep for the sake of health.
“Be fastidious in your attire, keep your body clean since cleanliness conduces to health while negligence and fetidness of the body open an insidious path to vile vices. But in this too be not immoderate. Do not shirk from helping to raise up a cart stuck in the mud in a ditch and to help someone who has fallen: get your hands, legs, and body dirty but enlighten your heart. Enter the cabins of degradation, comfort one suffering from poverty, taste his victuals, and your heart will be assuaged through giving joy to the sufferer.
“You have reached now, I repeat, that terrible time and hour when the passions begin to awaken, but when reason is still a weak curb on them. For on the scales of will, the tray of reason without experience will rise up but the tray of passions instantaneously drops very low. There is, therefore, no other way to approach equilibrium except by dint of effort. Put your body to work, your passions will not experience so strong a disturbance; put your heart to work by practicing goodness, sensibility, compassion, generosity, forgiveness, and your passions will find a happy issue. Put your reason to work, laboring at reading, reflections, the search for truth and facts, and reason will guide your will and your passions. But do not have the presumption in a fit of reason that you are able to eliminate the roots of the passions and that you can be completely dispassionate. The root of the passions is good and founded by nature on our sensibility. When our senses, external and internal, weaken and become dulled the passions, too, weaken. They produce in man a beneficial disquiet without which he would fall asleep in inertness. An absolutely dispassionate person is a dolt and ludicrous dummy equally incapable of good and evil. There is no merit in holding back from bad designs if you are unable to carry them out. A man missing an arm is unable to wound anyone but nor can he give aid to a drowning man or restrain a man on the shore who falls into the abyss of the sea.—Therefore moderation in passion is a good; progress on the middle path is secure. Excess in passion is fatal, dispassion is moral death. Like the wayfarer who, wandering away from the middle of the path, risks the danger of falling into this or that ditch, so, too, is the pathway for morality. But should your passions be directed toward a positive goal by experience, reason, and the heart, throw off from them the reins of wearying prudence, do not stymie their flight; grandeur will always be their goal, and there only can they come to rest.
“But if I encourage you not to be dispassionate, more important than anything is moderation of erotic passion in your youth. It has been planted in our heart by nature for our pleasure. Hence a mistake can arise in the lack of moderation and the object but never in its coming to life. Take care, therefore not to be mistaken in the object of your love and not to mistake a semblance for mutual ardor. If the object of love is good, you will not know the immoderateness of passion. As we are talking about love, it would be natural to speak as well about marriage, about this holy social union whose rules nature did not outline in the heart, but whose sanctity flows from the fundamental condition of society. To your reason, scarcely embarked on this path, this would not be clear; to your heart, as yet not having experienced in society the egotistical passion of love, a story about it would be imperceptible to you, and therefore useless. If you should wish to have an idea about marriage, recall her who gave birth to you. Remember me with her and with you, revive in your hearing our words and mutual kisses, and clasp this picture to your heart. You will then feel in it some sort of pleasant shudder. What is it? With time you will recognize, but for now be contented with its sensation.
“Let us now briefly consider the rules of civic life. They cannot be prescribed accurately since their arrangement often takes shape according to momentary circumstances. But to avoid mistakes as much as possible, interrogate your heart in every initiative; it is good and can in no way betray you. What it tells you that is what you should do. By following your heart in youth you will not be mistaken if you have a good heart. But anyone is truly a madman who thinks he can follow reason even before they have hairs on their chin signifying experience.
“The rules of civic society relate to the fulfilment of customs and popular mores, or to the fulfilment of the law, or to the performance of virtue. If in society mores and customs are not contrary to the law, if the law does not present obstacles to virtue on its path, then adherence to the rules of civil society is easy. But where does a society of this type exist? All those known to us are full of many contradictions in mores and customs, the laws and virtues. This is why the fulfilment of one’s duty as a human being and citizen becomes difficult, since they frequently occur in complete contradiction.
“Inasmuch as virtue is the acme of human actions, its accomplishment, therefore, must not be hindered in any way. Disregard the mores and customs, disregard civil and sacred law, things held in such respect in society, when their accomplishment separates you from virtue. Do not attempt, above all, to cover up the failure of virtue with cowardly prudence. Without virtue you will be superficially fortunate but never blessed.
“In following what customs and mores require of us, we acquire the goodwill of those with whom we live. By implementing the prescription of the law, we may acquire the name of an honest person. By observing virtue, we acquire general trust, respect, and admiration even among those who otherwise have no wish to feel these in their soul. When giving a cup of poison to Socrates, the treacherous Athenian Senate trembled inwardly before his virtue.
“Never dare to observe customs contrary to the law. The law, however bad, is the connecting principle of society. And even if the ruler himself were to bid you to violate the law do not obey him, since he is mistaken to his own detriment and that of society. Should he abolish the law whose violation he orders, then obey it since the ruler is the source of laws in Russia.
“But if the law, or ruler, or some other earthly power incited you to a lie and the ruin of virtue, remain steadfast. Fear not mockery nor torment nor illness nor prison nor even death. Remain resolute in your soul like a stone surrounded by rioting but powerless waves. The fury of your tormentors will be smashed on your firmness; and if you are consigned to death they will be mocked, while you will live on in the memory of noble souls to the end of time. Be careful in advance about calling weakness in affairs prudence: weakness is the first enemy of virtue. Today you will infringe virtue for some sort of deference, tomorrow its ruin will seem to be virtue itself; and thus it is that vice will come to reign in your heart and distort the features of innocence in your soul and on your face.
“The virtues are private or civil. Motivations for the first are a good heart, gentleness, compassion, and their roots are always good. Motivations for civic virtues often have their origin in vanity and ambition. But one should not stop in their implementation. The purpose that moves them gives them importance. In the figure of Curtius who saved his fatherland from a fatal plague nobody sees a person who was vain or gloomy or desperate but rather a hero. If, however, the motivations to our civil virtues have their origin in a philanthropic firmness of soul, then their brilliance will be that much the greater. Always test yourself in the private virtues in order to be worthy of the implementation of the civic virtues.
“I shall propound to you also several rules of life to follow.—More than anything try in all your actions to earn your self-respect so that when in moments of solitude you turn your gaze inward you shall not only have nothing to regret in what you have done but will look upon yourself with reverence.
“Consistent with this rule, stay aloof insofar as possible from even the appearance of obsequiousness. When you enter the world, you will quickly learn that there is custom in society. The custom of visiting important figures in the mornings on celebratory days is miserable, meaningless, displaying in the visitors the spirit of timidity and in the visited a spirit of arrogance and feeble reason. The Romans had a similar practice, which they called ambition, that is ‘aspiration’ or ‘cultivation,’ which is why the love of honor is called ambition since the young through their visits to distinguished people sought for a path for themselves to ranks and distinctions. The same also happens now. But if the custom of the Romans was introduced so that young people could learn through their courting of experienced individuals, I doubt that the goal of this custom has always been preserved uncorrupted. In our times, in visiting distinguished lords nobody has education rather than the attainment of favor as a goal. And thus may your foot never cross the boundary separating obsequiousness from the discharging of a duty. Never visit the antechamber of an important lord if it is not in the performance of your duty. Then even the one whom the contemptible crowd adulates with servility will, in the depths of his soul, not confuse you with the rest, even if he does so with umbrage.
“If it should happen that death truncates my days before you are firmly established on the good path, and the passions lure you off the path of reason while you are still young—do not despair when you see your sometimes misguided course. In your error, in your obliviousness to yourself, love the good. A debauched life, limitless ambition, arrogance, and all the vices of youth leave intact a hope for correction since they glide on the surface of the heart, not wounding it. I would prefer that you be debauched in your young years, spendthrift, arrogant, than tightfisted or even excessively frugal, foppish, more concerned with your appearance than anything else. A disposition we might call systematic to foppishness always indicates a closed mind. If it is recounted that Julius Caesar was a fop then his foppishness had a goal. A passion for women in his youth was the stimulus to this. But from a fop he would have clad himself in a flash in the vilest rag if that had facilitated the attainment of his desires.
“In a young person not only is passing foppishness forgivable, but so is practically every kind of foolishness. If, however, you are going to camouflage treachery, mendacity, perfidy, avarice, pride, vengefulness, beastliness with dazzling actions then while you will blind your contemporaries with the brilliance of your shiny appearance (although you will find nobody who loves you sufficiently to hold up the mirror of truth to you) do not think, however, that it will dull the gaze of perspicacity.—It will penetrate the shiny raiment of cunning, and virtue will expose the blackness of your soul. Your heart will start to hate virtue, and like a sensitive plant will wither at your touch, its arrows will wound and torment you not immediately, but from afar.
“Farewell, my dear ones, farewell, friends of my soul. Today, helped by a fair wind cast your boat off from shores of someone else’s experience, course along the waves of human life so you may learn to govern yourselves. Blessed you will be if, having avoided disaster, you reach the berth we crave. Have a happy voyage, that is my sincere wish. My vital forces, exhausted by activity and life, will grow weak and will peter out. I shall leave you for evermore. But this now is my testament to you. If inimical fate exhausts all its arrows on you, if your virtue no longer can find a refuge on earth, if pushed to the last extreme you have no protection from oppression, remember then that you are a person, recall your majesty, seize the crown of beatitude though others attempt to filch it from you.—Die.—I bequeath you the words of the dying Cato.—But if you know how to die in virtue, then know how to die in vice as well, and be, one might say, virtuous in evil itself.—If you hasten after bad deeds, having forgotten my prescriptions, your soul accustomed to virtue will be alarmed, and I shall appear to you in a dream.—Rise, then, from your bedstead, follow in your soul my apparition.—If a tear flows from your eyes, you go back to sleep, you will wake up ready for improvement. But if amidst your bad initiatives, your soul remains unmoved and your eye remains dry…. Here is the steel, here is the poison.—Spare me the grief, spare the earth this shameful burden.—Remain, still, my son.—Die for virtue.”
While the old man was speaking, a youthful blush covered his wrinkled cheeks; his glance emitted rays of hopeful rejoicing, the features of his face shone with a supernatural substance.—He kissed his children and, conducting them to the carriage, remained firm to the final farewell. But scarcely had the ring of the little postal bell announced to him that they had begun to withdraw from him, this resolute soul softened. Tears filled his eyes, his breast heaved; he reached out his arms for the departing and seemingly wanted to stop the horses in their rush. The youths, spotting from afar that their progenitor was in such a state of sorrow, began to sob so loudly that the breeze carried their pitiful groan to our hearing. They likewise stretched out their arms to their father and seemingly called him to them. The old man was unable to bear the spectacle, his strength waned, and he fell into my embrace. In the meanwhile a hillock screened the youths as they departed from our sight, and once the old man revived, he stood on his knees and raised his arms and eyes to the sky. “Lord,” he cried out, “I beseech You to strengthen them in the ways of virtue, pray that they will be blessed. Thou knowest, munificent Father, that I have never bothered You with a pointless supplication. I am certain in my soul how good and just You are. In us what is dearest to You is virtue; the actions of a pure heart are for You the best sacrifice…. Today I have separated my sons from myself…. Lord, may Your will be done upon them.” Troubled but resolved in his hope, he left for his home.
The speech of the nobleman from Kresttsy would not leave my head. His arguments on the futility of the power of parents over children seemed incontestable to me. Even if in a well-policed society the young must respect the old, and the inexperienced must respect perfection, there is no apparent necessity for parental power to be unlimited. If the bond between father and son is not established on tender sentiments of the heart, it is of course not firm, and it will remain not firm despite all the legislation. If the father sees in his son his slave and searches the legislation for power, if the son respects the father for the sake of an inheritance, what good is this to society? Either just another slave in addition to many others, or a serpent at one’s breast…. A father is obliged to nourish and educate a son and ought to be punished for the son’s misdeeds until he has entered his maturity, and a son should find his duties in his heart. If he doesn’t feel anything, then the father is guilty because he has not planted anything in him. The son has truly the right to demand a helping hand from the father for as long as he is helpless and immature, but once of age this inherent and natural link lapses. The chick does not seek the aid of the birds who produced it once it begins to find food on its own. The male and female forget their chicks when these have become mature. This is the law of nature. If the civil laws become estranged from it they always produce a freak. The child loves his father, mother, or teacher for as long as his love has not turned to another object. May your heart not be insulted by this, child-loving father, nature requires this. The sole comfort you will have lies in remembering that even your son’s son will love his father only to a mature age. Whereupon it will be up to you to attract his zeal to yourself. If you succeed in this, you will be blessed and deserving of respect.—These were my thoughts as I arrived at the post station.