Conduct of Life: A Series of Essays

The following essays contain the author's observations and reflections on human life and behavior, based on extensive communication with people at different levels and at all levels of intellectual development - from peer to peasant, from scientist to ignorant, from people with refined manners and elegant taste up to the uneducated children of nature. It has often occurred to the author that thinking about human behavior, based on correct observation and aimed at a sincere desire to indicate what should be achieved and what should be avoided, can be generally useful and hardly cannot be so for the youth and inexperience, as well as for this large class of society, who, although youth have passed away, acquired, but very limited skills of observation and reflection. The most important relationships in life are the themes of the following Essays, which begin with family ties and end with those that make everyone else insignificant - the relationship in which people stand to the Creator. Although the style of this work is necessarily didactic, given the scale and importance of its plots, the author cannot send it out into the world without a feeling of sincere and even painful uncertainty. The author would be happy if, to some extent, he achieves the goal he was striving for; all the more so if he encourages someone of genius who has learned to play a leading role in shaping and channeling the opinions and feelings of humankind to devote their time and talents to an important subject of behavior in human life. There are presented such topics as: Family Life; Social Life; Studious Life; Active Life; Political Life; Moral Life; Religious Life.