A CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN TWO CORNERS
only the direction of the first step, then the second step, and so on. Only
the spirit knows the direction of the path as a whole; hence conscious–
ness feels deceived after each step. Wundt named this phenomenon the
heterogeneity of goals: the goal set by consciousness on the road of real–
ization is displaced or supplanted by another, completely alien to the
first; and so link after link; the intended short straight line turns out
to be· curved-this is the spirit that imperceptibly and irresistibly bends
the walker's steps toward its own dream, unknown to reason. What we
see now in the Revolution does not tell anything about the long-range
calculation and design with which the spirit called it into being.
M.G.
XI.
ToM. 0. Gershenzon:
My dear friend, have we not sufficiently compromised ourselves,
each in his own way-I by my mysticism, and you by your anarchistic
utopianism and cultural nihilism, as the two attitudes would be defined
and condemned by the "compact majority" (the term is Ibsen's) of
contemporary meetings and assemblies? Should we not each go to our
corner and stay quiet on our beds? "How can your heart express itself?
How can another understand you? Will he grasp what makes you live?
Each uttered thought is but a lie." I do not like to abuse this sad con–
fession of Tiutchev's*; I like to think that it voices not an eternal truth
but the basic lie of our dismembered and disintegrated cultural epoch,
which is powerless to give birth to a consciousness, an .epoch that real–
izes the next to the last consequences of the age-old sin of "individua–
tion," which has poisoned the whole historical life of mankind, all cul–
ture.
We strive to overcome this fatal principle every day and every
hour by the uninterrupted creative process carried on in little and big
cults-every cult is catholic while it is alive, even if it attracts only
three or two devotees-and catholicity flashes up for a moment and
dies out again, and the multi-headed hydra of culture torn by inner dis–
sension cannot change into a harmonious cult. Nevertheless, the thirst for
unity must not tempt us to yield and compromise, i.e., to establish an
external and sham bond where the very roots of consciousness and, so
to speak, the arteries of our spiritual beings have not become woven into
one net. In the depth of depths, which is unattainable to us, all of us
*The quotation is from
Silentium
by F.
I.
Tiutchev
( 1803-1873 ),
one of the
major Russian poets· of the nineteenth century.-Trans.
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