Kokoro

by Natsume Sōseki

You may remember I once said to you that no one is inherently bad by nature, and I warned you to be careful because most honest folk will suddenly turn bad when circumstances prompt it.

But I believe that a commonplace idea stated with passionate conviction carries more living truth than some novel observation expressed with cool indifference. It is the force of blood that drives the body, after all. Words are not just vibrations in the air, they work more powerfully than that, and on more powerful objects.

I distrusted the human race where money was concerned, but not yet in the realm of love. So despite the obvious contradiction, both states of mind happily coexisted inside me.

Everyone, of course, at the beginning of their studies is full of fine aspirations and dreams, but one year passes and then another, and as graduation draws near, you realize you are plodding.

It seemed clear to me that his heart had rusted like iron from disuse.

In retrospect, I see that my jealousy of K was already showing its horns.

It strikes me now that the people I knew back then were all a bit peculiar—no one around me ever spoke about private matters of the heart. No doubt quite a few had nothing to confide, but even those who did kept silent. This must seem most peculiar to you, in the relative freedom of your present age. I will leave it to you to judge whether it was a lingering effect from the Confucianism of an earlier time or simply a form of shyness.

Let me remind you that he had none of that weakness of character that makes most people concerned with what others are thinking. He had the kind of daring and courage that would simply press ahead once he’d decided something.

But if K failed to toss away his old self and throw himself into becoming a new man, it was not for want of such concepts. Rather, it was because he could not bear to reject a self and a past that had been so noble and exalted. One might even say that it had been his reason for living. So his failure to rush headlong in pursuit of love must not be read as proof that his love was lukewarm. No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past.

Those impulsive words of remorse were spoken beyond my will, directly from my natural being.

Thanks to this grief, a touch of balm momentarily soothed my poor heart, which had been clenched tight around its fear and pain.

But a black shadow hovered behind my happiness. This very happiness, it seemed to me, could well be a fuse that drew the flame of my life toward a bitter fate.

We humans cannot know what lies ahead,

No, I failed to confess for the simple reason that I could not bring myself to contaminate her memory of the past with the tiniest hint of darkness.

After a while, I could no longer bury my heart in books. Once more I found myself surveying the world from a distance, arms folded.

The world might be rotten, I felt, but I at least am a man of integrity. But this faith in myself had been shattered on account of K.

that the person I loved and trusted most in the world could not understand me. But it’s within your power to help her understand, I thought, and yet you’re too cowardly to do so, and I grew still sadder. Desolation filled me. There were many times when I felt I lived utterly alone, remote and cut off from the world around me.

Or perhaps, after all, our differences spring from the individual natures we were born with.

My past, which made me what I am, is an aspect of human experience that only I can describe. My effort to write as honestly as possible will not be in vain, I feel, since it will help both you and others who read it to understand humanity better.