..
they seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual
instinct. The letter from which these chief points are taken is
tremulous with sympathy and wit. Tchehov was twenty-six when he wrote
it. He concludes with the words: 'What is needed is constant work day
and night, constant reading, study, will. Every hour is precious for
it.'
In that letter are given all the elements of Tchehov the man. He set
himself to achieve a new humanity, and he achieved it. The indifference
upon which Tchehov's humanity was built was not therefore a moral
indifference; it was, in the main, the recognition and acceptance of the
fact that life itself is indifferent. To that he held fast to the end.
But the conclusion which he drew from it was not that it made no
particular difference what any one did, but that the attitude and
character of the individual were all-important. There was, indeed, no
panacea, political or religious, for the ills of humanity; but there
could be a mitigation in men's souls. But the new asceticism must not be
negative.
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