for that.  We want to know what we are to expect, and arrange our life accordingly.  I have tried to say to myself:  “Stop, you will never leave that enchanted circle; why enter it at all?” I have every qualification to render myself a well-satisfied, cheerful animal; but I cannot always be satisfied with that.  It is said the Slav temperament has a tendency towards mysticism.  I have noticed that our greatest writers and poets end by becoming mystics.  It is not surprising that lesser minds should be now and then troubled.  As to myself I feel obliged to take notice of those inward struggles in order to get a faithful image of myself.  Perhaps I feel also the want of justifying myself before my own conscience.  For instance, with the great “I do not know” before me, I still observe the regulations of the Church; yet do not consider myself a hypocrite.  This would be the case if, instead of the “I do not know,” I could say “I know there is nothing.”  But our scepticism is not an open negation; it is rather a sorrowful, anxious suspicion that perhaps there is nothing,—­a dense fog around our minds that stifles the breath and hides from us the light.  I therefore stretch out my hands towards that sun that maybe shines beyond the mist.  I fancy that not I alone am in that position, and that of all those who go to church and mass on Sundays the prayers might be condensed in these words:  “O God! lift the mist!”

I cannot write coldly or dispassionately about all this.  I keep religious observances for the simple reason that I long to believe, and since the sweet teaching of my childhood tells me that faith is a gift of grace, I am waiting for that grace.  I am waiting that it may be given unto me; that my soul may believe unquestioningly, even as it believed in childhood.  Those are my motives; no self-interest prompts me; it would be much easier to be a cheerful, contented animal.  Since I am justifying my outward semblance of piety, I have some other less noble and more practical reasons.  From the days of my childhood I have been accustomed to keep certain rules, and they have grown into a habit.  Henry the Fourth said Paris was well worth a mass; so say I that the peace of those nearest is worth a mass; people of my class, as a rule, observe religious prescriptions, and I should protest against the outward symbols only in such a case if I could find something more conclusive to say than “I do not know.”  I go to church because I am a sceptic in regard to my own scepticism.  It is not a comfortable feeling, and my soul drags one wing along the earth.  But it would be much worse with me if I always pondered over these questions so earnestly as I have done while writing these last pages.  Fortunately for me this is not the case.  I have mentioned already that at times I am indifferent to them.  Life carries me along, and although in the main I know what to think of its hollow pleasures, I give myself up to it altogether, and then the moral “to be,