Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchMay 7.I have read Bourget’s “Disciple” in the Russian translation. This ishow it strikes me. Bourget is a gifted, very intelligent and culturedman. He is as thoroughly acquainted with the method of the naturalsciences, and as imbued with it as though he had taken a gooddegree in science or medicine. He is not a stranger in the domain heproposes to deal with—a merit absent in Russian writers both newand old.… The novel is interesting. I have read it and understand whyyou were so absorbed by it. It is clever, interesting, in places witty,somewhat fantastic. As to its defects, the chief of them is his pretentiouscrusade against materialism. Forgive me, but I can’t understandsuch crusades. They never lead to anything and only bringneedless confusion into people’s thoughts. Whom is the crusadeagainst, and what is its object? Where is the enemy and what isthere dangerous about him? In the first place, the materialistic movementis not a school or tendency in the narrow journalistic sense; itis not something passing or accidental; it is necessary, inevitable,and beyond the power of man. All that lives on earth is bound to bematerialistic. In animals, in savages, in Moscow merchants, all thatis higher and non-animal is conditioned by an unconscious instinct,while all the rest is material, and they of course cannot help it. Beingsof a higher order, thinking men, are also bound to be materialists.They seek for truth in matter, for there is nowhere else to seekfor it, since they see, hear, and sense matter alone. Of necessity theycan only seek for truth where their microscopes, lancets, and knivesare of use to them. To forbid a man to follow the materialistic line ofthought is equivalent to forbidding him to seek truth. Outside matterthere is neither knowledge nor experience, and consequently thereis no truth ….I think that when dissecting a corpse, the most inveterate spiritualistwill be bound to ask himself, “Where is the soul here?” And ifone knows how great is the likeness between bodily and mentaldiseases, and that both are treated by the same remedies, one cannothelp refusing to separate the soul from the body.… To speak of the danger and harm of materialism, and even114
Anton Chekhovmore to fight against it, is, to say the least, premature. We have notenough data to draw up an indictment. There are many theoriesand suppositions, but no facts …. The priests complain of unbelief,immorality, and so on. There is no unbelief. People believe in something,whatever it may be ….As to immorality, it is not people like Mendeleyev but poets, abbots,and personages regularly attending Embassy churches, whohave the reputation of being perverted debauchees, libertines, anddrunkards.In short, I cannot understand Bourget’s crusade. If, in startingupon it, he had at the same time taken the trouble to point out tothe materialists an incorporeal God in the sky, and to point to Himin such a way that they should see Him, that would be anothermatter, and I should understand what he is driving at.115
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