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The whole vast series of history is become a wilderness to me; and my mind, as to all such absurd knowledge, under the blessing of Heaven, is pretty nearly a tabula rasa. In this Gothic expression of self-congratulation upon the extent of his own ignorance, though doubtless founded upon what the Germans call an einseitig or one-sided estimate, there was however that sort of truth which is apprehended only by strong minds, and such as naturally adhere to extreme courses.
It is true that cavalry cannot hide themselves over exposed ground as infantry can, but they have one advantage that nothing can deprive them of rapidity of motion; and the distance that would take them say 10 seconds to traverse, viz., 150 yards, would take infantry a minute. Prince Kraft writes: "No battle field is a tabula rasa, for in the most exposed country there are depressions.
The very emphasis of those objects, their importunity to the eye, the ear, the finite intelligence, was but the measure of their distance from what really is. One's personal presence, the presence, such as it is, of the most incisive things and persons around us, could only lessen by so much, that which really is. To restore tabula rasa, then, by a continual effort at self-effacement!
Nay, and if any one thing is more probable than another, in the great tabula rasa, or unknown land, which we are fain to call the biography of Villon, it seems probable enough that he may have gone upon a visit to Charles of Orleans.
The chemical plate has two advantages over the human retina: First, it is sensitive to rays which are utterly powerless to produce any visual effect; next, it can accumulate impression almost indefinitely, while from the retina they fade after one-tenth part of a second, leaving it a continually renewed tabula rasa.
What he must admire, and love if he could, was "equilibrium," the void, the tabula rasa, into which, through all those apparent energies of man and nature, that in truth are but forces of disintegration, the world was really settling. And, himself a mere circumstance in a fatalistic series, to which the clay of the potter was no sufficient parallel, he could not expect to be "loved in return."
"That, anyway," said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical smile, his eyes flashing malignantly, "has the charm of what's one to call it? geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of making of all the past a tabula rasa no property, no family then labor would organize itself. But you gain nothing..." "Why do you mix things up?
What he must admire, and love if he could, was "equilibrium," the void, the tabula rasa, into which, through all those apparent energies of man and nature, that in truth are but forces of disintegration, the world was really settling. And, himself a mere circumstance in a fatalistic series, to which the clay of the potter was no sufficient parallel, he could not expect to be "loved in return."
But suppose a kind of social tabula rasa, every social unit perfectly equal, an increase of population everywhere in the same ratio, and give the same amount of land to each family; it would not be long before you would again have all the existing inequalities of fortune; it is glaringly evident, therefore, that there are such things as superiority of fortune, of thinking capacity, and of power, and we must make up our minds to this fact; but the masses will always regard rights that have been most honestly acquired as privileges, and as a wrong done to themselves.
Like the majority of their educated countrymen, they believed that in the race of progress Russia was about to overtake and surpass the nations of the West, and that this desirable result was to be attained by making a tabula rasa of existing institutions, and reconstructing society according to the plans of Proudhon, Fourier, and the other writers of the early Socialist school.
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