To a shortsighted acquaintance
Look at you, arming yourself with modern shortsightedness and becoming convinced that you can make accurate judgements about current events! Your conclusions are corrupt, for they were made without God. Why are you looking to history? To you, history is dead, it is but a closed book. You cannot draw grand conclusions from history without God; all you could ever get would be trivial and bland.
Russia is not France, and French elements are not Russian. You have even forgotten that every nation is unique, and you think that the same chain of events would affect different nations in the same exact way. A hammer could fall on a mirror and shatter it, yet should the same hammer fall on iron, it would forge it[1]. Your thoughts on finance are based on foreign books and English journals, and they are therefore lifeless thoughts.
You are a smart man, and that is why you should be ashamed that you are yet to appreciate your own mind. Instead of letting it grow on its own, you chose to clutter it with foreign rubbish. I do not see God's hand in your projects. When I look at your letters, which are very witty, I do not see God present in your thoughts as you were writing them. I do not see the heavenly blessing in your thoughts. No, you will not do any good in your position, even though you would love to. Your efforts will not bear the fruit you expect. A person can do great harm despite good intentions; many have done precisely that. Over the past few years, it was the intelligent, not the fools, who caused the most damage, and that was because they put too much trust and hope in their own intelligence and ability.
You are proud; what are you proud of? No, you cluttered your great mind with rubbish and made it a foreigner to your own self. You are proud of someone else's dead mind and try to pass it off as yours. Watch yourself; you are playing a dangerous game. You want to be a statesman, and you will be, because you most definitely have that gift. That is why you should watch yourself even more carefully. Do not focus on the ideas that you devised before you even got your current position. Remember that the smallest of your conduct could bring forth great evil if you do not think it through well enough.
Even your current projects are driven by fear rather than caution. All your thoughts and efforts are directed at preventing some future misfortune. Yet it is the present day that you should fear and not the future. God tells us to take care of the present day. Whoever is plagued by the fear of the future has already lost sight of God. Whoever is with Him looks to the future with hope and joyous anticipation. And you are prideful; you do not even want to see anything. You are self-assured; you think you already know everything. You think you already understand everything about Russia, and there is nothing anyone could teach you. You are trying to be like those statesmen who rose to prominence quickly and soon disappeared. They had everything they needed to do a lot of good, and they even desperately wanted to; they laboured day and night their entire lives. Yet they did not leave any legacy, and we do not even remember their names. Like ripples on water, their impact on Russia's history and culture has now vanished. To our great shame, Europeans still point us to their great figures. Yet at least they left a firm, lasting legacy, while we do so much in vain. Once we are gone, all of it will turn to dust and be forgotten.
I am telling you, you are prideful. I will say it again: you are prideful. Be sober, be vigilant: guard yourself against pride before it takes hold. Start by convincing yourself you are the worst fool in all of Russia. From there, you should diligently seek wisdom and listen to every single person as if you knew nothing and would want to learn everything from them. Yet my words are still a mystery to you; they will not get to you. You need to experience some kind of misfortune or shock. That is what you should pray and beg God for; that He sends you some sort of misfortune or trouble, that someone insults or humiliates you in public in such a way that your vainglorious pride is shattered entirely. This will be your true brother and liberator. Oh, how much we sometimes need to be ridiculed in front of everyone!
Footnotes
- A reference to Pushkin's Poltava:
Перетерпев судеб удары,
Окрепла Русь. Так тяжкой млат,
Дробя стекло, кует булат.
Surviving through the blows of fate,
Grew stronger Russia. And so the heavy hammer,
Although it shatters glass, smithes damascus.
