First published in Sovremennye Zapiski Publishing House, Paris, 1929. Printed from: YMCA-PRESS, Paris, 1975.

"Overcoming Self-Evidence" was published in the journal "Modern Notes" (No 8, 1921, No 9, 1922). "Daring and Submission" was published in the journal "Modern Notes" (No 13, 1922, No 15, 1923). "Sons and Stepchildren of Time" was published in the journal "Modern Notes" (No 25, 1925). "Gethsemane Night" was published in the journal "Modern Notes" (No 19, 1924). "Furious Speeches" was published in the magazine "Versty" (1926). "What is Truth?" was published in the journal "Modern Notes" (No 30, 1927).

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Lev Shestov

ON JOB'S SCALES

(Soul-to-heart journeys)

If my sorrow had been weighed, and my suffering had been weighed in the balances, it would now be heavier than the sand of the seas.

Job, VI, 2, 3

A great and final struggle awaits human souls.

Plotinus, I, 6, 7

SCIENCE AND FREE INQUIRY (Instead of a preface)

I

An old, well-known, but forgotten legend comes to mind. The clever Thracian woman, who saw how Thales, who was looking for heavenly secrets, fell into the well, laughed sincerely at the old eccentric: she could not see what was under his feet, and imagined that she would see what was in the sky...

All sensible people reason in the same way as the Thracian woman. Everyone is convinced that the ordo et connexio rerum in heaven is the same as on earth. Even philosophers, who, it must be supposed, not without reason, have always listened to the judgments of intelligent men, have long sought to establish the law of the continuity of phenomena in the universe. Thales himself, about whom tradition has preserved the anecdote just told to us, Thales himself was the one who first came up with the idea of the unity of the universe. And it is quite conceivable that when he fell into his well and heard the merry laughter of a young girl, he felt with horror that the "rightness" was on her side, that it was necessary, really necessary, to look at his feet even for him, or perhaps for the most part, who was troubled by the mysteries of heaven.

Thales was the father of ancient philosophy, his horror and his convictions, which grew out of horror, were successively communicated to his disciples and the disciples of his disciples. In philosophy, the law of heredity reigns as imperiously and inseparably as in all other spheres of organic being. If you doubt this, take a look at any textbook. After Hegel, no one dares to think that philosophers are given "freely" to think and search. The philosopher grows out of the past like a plant grows out of the soil. And if Thales was frightened by the laughter and hurtful words of the Thracian woman, then everyone who followed him was already sufficiently frightened and "enriched" by his experience. They already knew for sure that before they search in the sky, they must carefully see what is under our feet.