ce
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. It must not cast away the goods of civilisation because
civilisation is largely a sham.

'Alas! I shall never be a Tolstoyan. In women I love beauty above
all things, and in the history of mankind, culture expressed in
carpets, carriages with springs, and keenness of wit. Ach! To make
haste and become an old man and sit at a big table!'

Not that there is a trace of the hedonist in Tchehov, who voluntarily
endured every imaginable hardship if he thought he could be of service
to his fellow-men, but, as he wrote elsewhere, 'we are concerned with
pluses alone.' Since life is what it is, its amenities are doubly
precious. Only they must be amenities without humbug.

'Pharisaism, stupidity, and despotism reign not in bourgeois houses
and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the
younger generation.... That is why I have no preference either for
gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or
for the younger generation. I regard trade marks and labels as a
superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health,
intelligence, talent inspiration, love, and the most absolute
freedom--freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they make
take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great
artist.'

What 'the most absolute freedom' meant to Tchehov his whole life is
witness. It was a liberty of a purely moral kind, a liberty, that is,
achieved at the cost of a great effort in self-discipline and
self-refinement. In one letter he says he is going to write a story
about the son of a serf--Tchehov was the son of a serf--who 'squeezed
the slave out of himself.' Whether the story was ever written we do not
know, but the process is one to which Tchehov applied himself all his
life long. He waged a war of extermination against the lie in the soul
in himself, and by neces