WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN?

by Leo Tolstoy

Translated from the Original Russian and edited by Leo Wiener

Assittant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University

1886

And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then ?

He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise (Luke iii. 10, 11).

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal :

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness !

No man can serve two masters : for either he will hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek :) for your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you (Matt, vi. 19-25, 31-33).

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Matt. xix. 24 ; Luke xviii. 25 ; Mark x. 25).

I.

I had passed all my life in the country. When, in the year 1881, I moved to Moscow, I was struck by the poverty of the city : I knew what the poverty of the village was, but that of the city was new and incomprehensible to me. In Moscow it is impossible to walk through a street without meeting mendicants, of a particular type, such as do not resemble those one sees in the country. These beggars are not mendicants with a wallet and with Christ’s name, such as village beggars are imagined to be, but beggars without a wallet and without Christ’s name. The beggars of Moscow do not carry a wallet and beg no alms. As a rule, when they meet you or allow you to pass them, they try to catch your eyes, and they beg or not, according to your glance.

I know one such beggar from the gentry. The old man walks slowly, putting his weight on each foot. When he meets you, he puts his weight on one foot and acts as though he were bowing to you. If you stop, he takes hold of his cockaded cap, bows to you, and begs you for an alms ; if you do not stop, he pretends just to have such a gait, and passes on, bowing with a leaning on bis other foot. He is a real, trained Moscow beggar. At first I did not know why the Moscow beggars did not beg outright, but later I came to understand it, though I did not understand their condition.

One day, as I was walking through Afanasev Lane, I saw a policeman putting a tattered peasant, who was pudgy with the dropsy, into a cab. I asked him why he was doing this.

The policeman answered me: “For begging alms.”

” Is that forbidden ? ”

” I guess it is,” replied the policeman.

The dropsical man was taken away in the cab. I took another cab and followed them. I wanted to find out whether it was true that it was prohibited to beg alms, and how this prohibition was carried out. I could not make out how one man could be kept from asking a thing of another, and, besides, I could not make myself believe that there could be a law against begging, since Moscow was full of beggars. I had myself driven to the police station whither they took the beggar. In the station a man with a sword and a pistol was sitting at a table. 1 asked him :

” Why was this peasant arrested ? ”

The man with the sword and the pistol looked sternly at me, and said :

” That is not your business.”

However, as he felt the necessity of explaining something to me, he added :

” The authorities order such people to be arrested, and so it is right.”

I went away. The policeman who had brought the beggar was sitting in the vestibule on a window-sill, and looking gloomily into a memorandum-book. I asked him :

” Is it true that beggars are not permitted to beg in Christ’s name ? ”

The policeman was startled. He looked at me, then half frowned, half fell asleep again, and, seating himself back on the window-sill, said :

“ The authorities order it, and so it is right,” and started to busy himself once more with his book.

I went out on the porch to the cabman.

“Well, how is it? Did they take him?” asked the cabman.

The cabman was evidently interested in the same thing.

” They did,” I replied.

The driver shook his head.

” How is this ? Do they not allow people here in Moscow to beg in the name of Christ ?” I asked.

” Who can make them out ? ” said the driver.

” But how is this ?” I said. ” A beggar is Christ’s, and they take him to the station.”

” They have stopped it all in these days, — they don’t let them.”

After that I saw policemen on several occasions, taking beggars to the station and from there to Yusupov Workhouse. One day I met a crowd of such beggars, about thirty of them, in Myasnitskaya Street. They were preceded and followed by policemen. I asked one of them why they were taken away.

” For begging alms.”

So it turns out that according to the law alms may not be asked by any of those mendicants of whom one meets several at a time in every street, and rows of whom stand in front of the churches during divine service and especially during funerals.

But why are some caught and locked up somewhere, while others are let alone ? That I was unable to make out. Or are there among them lawful and unlawful beggars ? Or are there so many of them that it is impossible to apprehend all? Or do they take some away, while others take their place ?

In Moscow there are many beggars of every kind : there are some who make a living in this manner ; others are real beggars, who in one way or another are stranded in Moscow, and really suffer want.

Among these beggars there are frequently simple peasants, men and women, in peasant attire. I have often come across such. Some of these fell sick and came out of hospitals, and are unable to provide food for themselves, or to get out of Moscow. Others again have, in addition, been on sprees (such, no doubt, was that dropsical man) ; others were not convalescents, but men who had lost their property in fire, or old men, or women with children ; others again were quite well and able to work.

These well peasants, who were begging alms, interested me more particularly. These healthy, able-bodied beggars interested me also for the reason that ever since my arrival in Moscow I had made it my habit to take my exercise by going out to the Sparrow Hills and working there with two peasants who were sawing wood. These two peasants were just such beggars as those whom I met in the streets. One of them was Peter, a Kaluga peasant, the other Semen, from the Government of Vladimir. All they possessed was what they wore on their backs, and their hands. And with these hands they, by working very hard, earned from forty to forty-five kopeks per day, out of which amount they saved up money : the Kaluga peasant, — to buy himself a fur coat, and the Vladimir peasant, — to get enough money with which to return home. For this reason I was particularly interested in such people, when I met them in the streets.

Why do those work, while these beg ?

Whenever 1 met such a peasant, I generally asked him what had brought him into such a plight. One day I met a peasant with his beard streaked gray and with a sound body. He was begging. I asked him who he was and whence he came. He said that he had come from Kaluga to try to earn something. At first he and his friend had found some work to do, — cutting up old lumber for firewood. They had finished the job, and had been looking for more work, but could find none. In the meantime his friend had strayed from him, and here he was struggling the second week, and had spent everything, and did not have a kopek to buy a saw or an axe with. I gave him money with which to buy a saw, and told him where to come to work. I had already left word with Peter and Semén to receive him and find a partner for him.

” Be sure and come ! There is lots of work there.”

” I will, of course I will come. What good,” he said, “ is there in begging ? I can do a day’s work.”

The peasant swore that he would come, and I thought that he was not deceiving me, but fully intended to come.

On the following day I went to my friends, the peasants, to ask them whether he had come. No, he had not. And thus a number of men deceived me. I was also deceived by such as wanted money just for a ticket with which to get home, but whom a week later 1 met in the street again. Many of these I came to know, just as they knew me ; at times they forgot me and approached me again with the same deception, and at other times they went away the moment they saw me. Thus I saw that among the number of these people there were also many cheats ; but even these cheats were very pitiful : they were all half-naked, poverty-stricken, emaciated, sickly people ; they were of that class who really freeze to death and hang themselves, as we know from the newspapers.

II.

Whenever I spoke of this urban wretchedness to city people, I was always told: “Oh that is nothing! You have not seen everything : you must go to Khitrov Market and to the doss-houses thereabout. There you will see the genuine crack company.” One jester told me that it was no longer a company, but a crack regiment, for there were so many of them. The jester was right, but he would have been still more in the right if he had said that there was, not a company, and not a regiment, but a whole army of them in Moscow : I think there are fifty thousand of them. Old citizens, in speaking to me of the urban wretchedness, always spoke with a certain degree of pleasure, as though they were proud to know it. I remember, when I was in London, the natives seemed to speak boastfully of the London poverty, as much as to say: ” That’s the way we do things.”

I wanted to see the wretchedness of which I was told. I started several times to go to Khitrov Market, but I felt every time uncomfortable and ashamed.

” Why should I go to see the sufferings of men whom I am unable to help ? ” one voice said.

” No, if you live here and see all the joys of city life, go and see this also,” another voice said.

And so, in the month of December of the third year, on a cold and stormy day, I started for this centre of city wretchedness, for Khitrov Market. It was a week-day, about four o’clock in the afternoon. As I was going down the Solyanka, I began to notice more and more people in strange apparel, evidently not their own, and in still stranger footgear, — people with an unusually sickly complexion and, above all, with a special expression of indifference to the surroundings, which was common to them all. Though wearing the strangest kinds of garments, of most unseemly patterns, these people walked along freely, evidently devoid of all thought as to how they might strike other people. All these were walking in the same direction.

I did not ask for the road, though I did not know it, but followed them, and came out on Khitrov Market. In the market-place just such women, young and old, in tattered capes, cloaks, jackets, boots, and overshoes, acting with just as little constraint, in spite of the monstrosity of their attire, were sitting and hawking something, or walking about and cursing. There were few people in the market-place. Apparently it was past market-time, and the majority of people were going up-hill, past the market and across it, all of them in the same direction. I followed them. The farther I went, the greater was the throng of people walking in the same direction. After I had passed the market I walked up the street, falling in with two women, one of them old, the other young. Both wore torn gray clothes. They were walking and talking about something.

After every necessary word they uttered one or two unnecessary, extremely improper words. They were not drunk, but were agitated by something; the men who were walking toward them, and preceding or following them, did not pay the slightest attention to their strange expressions. In these places evidently all people spoke in the same way.

On the left were private lodginghouses, and a few stopped here, while others walked on. After ascending the hill, we came to a large corner house. The majority of those who were walking with me stopped at this house. On the whole sidewalk in front of this house just such people walked about or sat down on the walk or in the snow of the street. On the right hand of the entrance door were women, and on the left — men. 1 walked past the women, and then past the men (there were several hundreds of them), and stopped where their file came to an end. The house, in front of which these people were stopping, was the free Lyàpinski lodginghouse. The crowd of people were waiting to be admitted for a night’s lodging. The doors are opened at five o’clock, when the people are admitted. It was to this place that the majority of people past whom I had walked were trying to get.

I stopped where the file of men came to an end. The people nearest to me began to look at me and attracted me with their glances. The remnants of the garments that covered their bodies were quite varied ; but the expression of all the glances that these people directed at me was absolutely the same. In all their glances one could read the question, ” AVhy did you, a man from another world, stop here by the side of us? Who are you ? Are you a self-satisfied rich man, who is trying to take delight out of our misery, to distract yourself in your ennui, and to torture us ? Or are you — what does not happen and cannot be — a man who pities us ? “

This question was on all the faces. A man would glance at me, meet my glance, and turn away again. I felt like starting up a conversation with some one, but for a long time I could not make up my mind to do so. But while we were silent, our glances were bringing us closer together. No matter how much life separated us, we felt after the exchange of two or three glances that we were all men, and we ceased fearing one another. Nearest to me stood a peasant with a swollen face and a red beard, in a torn caftan and overshoes worn down to the skin. It was eight degrees Reaumur below zero. Our eyes met for the third or fourth time, and I felt myself so close to him that, far from feeling ashamed to speak with him, I felt that I should be ashamed if I did not strike up a conversation with him.

I asked him where he came from. He answered cheerfully, and began to talk ; others came up to us. He was from Smolensk, and had come to find work with which to earn money for grain and for the taxes.

“You cannot find any work,” he said, “for the soldiers nowadays get all the work away from us. And so I am wandering about. I swear by God I have not had anything to eat for two days.”

This he said timidly, with an attempt at a smile. A sbiten 1 peddler, an old soldier, was standing near by. I called him up. He filled up a glass of sbiten. The peasant took the hot glass into his hands and, before drinking it, warmed his hands over it, trying not to waste any of the heat. While he was warming his hands he told me his adventure. The adventures, or the stories of the adventures, are nearly always the same : he had a small job, but it stopped, and his purse with his money and his ticket were stolen in a lodginghouse. Now he was unable to get away from Moscow. He told me that in the daytime he warmed himself in taverns and fed on free lunches (bits of bread in the taverns) ; at times they let him have a piece, and at times they drove him out ; he passed his nights in the free Lydpinski House. He was waiting for the police raid which would take him to jail, as he had no passport, and would send him by étappe back to his place of residence. “ They say the raid will happen on Thursday.” (The jail and the étappe presented themselves to him as a promised land.)

While he was telling me this, two or three men from among the crowd confirmed his words, saying that they were in precisely the same condition. A lean, pale, long—

1 Λ drink composed of water, honey, and laurel leaves, or sage, used by the masses in the place of tea. nosed young man, with nothing but a shirt over the upper part of his body, with holes above his shoulders, and in a visorless cap, pushed his way toward me sidewise through the crowd. He was trembling all the time with a violent chill, but tried to smile contemptuously at the remarks of the peasants, hoping thus to fall in with my tone, and kept looking at me. I offered him also a glass of sbiten. He, too, took the glass and warmed himself over it, and just as he began to talk he was pushed aside by a tall, swarthy, hook-nosed man, in a chintz shirt and a vest, and without a hat.

The hook-nosed fellow, too, asked me for some sbiten. Then came a long-legged old man with a wedge-shaped beard, wearing an overcoat with a rope girdle and bast shoes, — he was drunk ; then a little fellow with a swollen face and tearful eyes, who wore a brown nankeen frock coat, and whose bare knees could be seen through the holes of his summer pantaloons, striking one against the other from the cold. He could not hold the glass because of his chill, and spilled its contents over himself. They began to scold him. He only smiled pitifully and trembled.

Then there came a crooked cripple with rags on his body and on his bare feet, then something that resembled an officer, and something that resembled a clergyman, then something strange and noseless, — all that cold and hungry, imploring and humble mass crowded about me and made for the sbiten. They all drank the sbiten. One of them asked for some money, and I gave it to him. A second, a third, asked for money, and I was besieged by the crowd. The janitor of a neighbouring house shouted to the crowd to clear the sidewalk in front of his house, and the people submissively executed his command. Some men in the crowd took the matter in hand, and offered me their protection : they wanted to take me out of the crush, but the crowd, which before had been stretched out along the sidewalk, was now in commotion, pressing close to me. They all looked at me, and begged me for something ; and one face was more pitiful, more emaciated, and more humbled than another. I gave them everything I had. I did not have much money with me, — something like twenty roubles, — and I entered the lodginghouse with the crowd.

The lodginghouse is enormous. It consists of four divisions. In the upper stories are the apartments for men, and in the lower those for women. At first I entered the female division : a large room is here taken up by bunks, resembling those of third-class railway-cars. The bunks are arranged in two tiers. Strange, ragged women, both old and young, with nothing but the clothes they had on, kept coming in and occupying their places, some below, and others above. Some of them, the older ones, made the sign of the cross and prayed for him who had founded this asylum, while others laughed and cursed.

I went up-stairs. There the men took up their bunks ; among them I saw one of those to whom I had given money. When I saw him, I suddenly felt dreadfully ashamed, and I hurried to get out. I left this house with the sensation of having committed a crime, and went home. At home I walked over the carpet of the staircase into an antechamber, the floor of which was covered with cloth, and, having taken off my fur coat, I sat down at a five-course dinner, which was served by two lackeys in dress coats, white ties, and white gloves.

Thirty years ago I saw in Paris a man decapitated by a guillotine in the presence of a thousand spectators. I knew that this man was a terrible criminal ; I knew all those reflections which men had been writing for so many centuries, in order to justify such acts ; I knew that it was being done intentionally, conscientiously ; but at the moment when the head and the body separated and fell into the box, I groaned, and I understood, not with my mind, not with my heart, but with my whole being, that all the reflections which I had heard about capital punishment were a horrible blunder ; that, no matter how many people might come together in order to commit murder, — the worst crime on earth, — and no matter how they might call themselves, murder was murder, and that this sin had been committed in my sight. By my presence and non-interference I approved of this sin, and took part in it.

Even so now, at the sight of this starvation, cold, and humiliation of thousands of men, I understood, not with my reason, nor with my heart, but with my whole being, that the existence of tens of thousands of such men in Moscow, while I with other thousands gorge myself on fillet and sturgeon, and cover the floors and the horses with stuffs and carpets, — no matter what all the wise men of the world may tell me about its being necessary, — is a crime, which is not committed once, but is being committed all the time, and that I, with my luxury, not only incite to it, but also take part in it. For me the difference of these two impressions consisted in this, that there all I could have done was to have called out to the murderers who were standing near the guillotine and attending to the murder, that they were doing wrong, and to have tried in every way to interfere with them; but in doing so, I might have known that that act of mine would not have prevented the murder. But here I not only was able to give the sbiten and all the miserable little sum which I had with me, but might have given away my overcoat and everything which I had at home. I did not do so, and so I felt, and feel even now, and shall never stop feeling, that I am a participant in a crime which is taking place all the time, so long as I have superfluous food, and another man has none, and I have two garments, when another has not even one.

III.

That very evening, upon my return from Lyapinski House, I told my impressions to a friend of mine. My friend — a denizen of Moscow — began to tell me, not without pleasure, that this is a very natural urban phenomenon ; that it was only my provincialism which made me see something peculiar in it ; that it had been so all the time and would always be so, and that it was an inevitable condition of civilization. In London it was worse still, — consequently there was nothing bad in this, and there was no reason for being dissatisfied with it.

I began to retort to my friend, but did this with so much excitement and vim that my wife came running in from the other room, to ask what had happened. It was discovered that, without knowing it myself, I had been shouting with tears in my voice and waving my arms in my friend’s face. I yelled, ” It is impossible, it is impossible to live in such a way, impossible!” I was put to shame for my excessive excitement, and I was told that I could not speak calmly about anything and that I became unpleasantly irritated, and, above all else, it was proved to me that the existence of such unfortunates could by no means be a cause for poisoning the life of one’s family.

I felt that that was quite true, and I grew silent ; but in the depth of my soul I felt that I was right, and I could not calm myself.

The city life, which had been strange and alien to me before, now disgusted me so much that all those joys of a luxurious life, which heretofore had appeared as joys to me, now became a torment for me. No matter how much I tried to find in my soul some kind of a justification of our life, I could not without irritation look either at my own drawing-room or at that of another person, nor at a cleanly, elegantly set table, nor at a carriage, nor at a fat coachman and his horses, nor at shops, theatres, or assemblies. I could not help but see side by side with them the cold, hungry, and humiliated inmates of Lyapinski House. I could not rid myself of the idea that these two things were connected and that one grew out of the other. I remember how the feeling of guilt remained in me the same it had appeared in the first moment ; but very soon another sentiment mingled with this and overshadowed it.

AVhen I spoke of my impression of Lyapinski House to my near friends and acquaintances, all gave me the same answer that was given me by my first friend, to whom I had been yelling so, but they, in addition to that, expressed their approval of my goodness and sensitiveness, and gave me to understand that this spectacle acted upon me thus only because I, Lev Nikolaevich, was good and kind. I believed them readily. Before I had a chance to look around, the feeling of resentment and repentance, which I had experienced at first, gave way in me to a feeling of satisfaction with my virtue, and a desire to express it to other people.

” No doubt,” I said to myself, “it is not I who am guilty here with my luxurious life, but the necessary conditions of life. The change of my life could certainly not change the evil which I saw. By changing my life I should only make myself and my family unhappy, while those misfortunes will remain what they are.

” Consequently, my task does not consist in changing my life, as I had thought at first, but in contributing, as much as it lies in my power, to the improvement of the condition of those unfortunates who have called forth my compassion. The whole matter is that I am a very good and kindly man and wish to do my neighbours some good.”

And so I began to consider a plan of philanthropic activity in which 1 should have a chance to give expression to my virtue. T must, however, say that, while reflecting on this philanthropic activity, I, in the depth of my soul, felt that it was not the right thing, but, as frequently happens, the activity of my mind and of my imagination drowned in me this voice of my conscience.

Just then they were taking the census. This seemed to me to be a chance for the exercise of that philanthropy in which I wanted to express my virtue. I knew of many charitable institutions and societies that existed in Moscow, but their activity seemed to me to be falsely directed and insignificant in comparison with what I wanted to do. And so I hit on the following : I would call forth in the rich a sympathy for the city’s wretchedness ; would collect money and bring together men who would be willing to cooperate in this matter ; would visit with the censustakers all the purlieus of poverty and, besides the work of taking the census, would enter into communion with the unfortunates; would find out the details of their needs and aid them with money, with work, with sending them out of Moscow and locating the children in schools and the old people in homes and poorhouses. More than this : I thought that out of those people who would busy themselves with this there would be formed a permanent organization, which, dividing up among themselves the wards of Moscow, would see to it that the poverty and misery should not become infectious; would always destroy the infection, at its inception ; would attend not so much to the duty of curing as to the hygiene of the urban poverty. I imagined that, not to speak of the mendicants, there would not be any merely needy people in the city ; and that it would be I who would do all this; and that we, the rich people, would after that sit quietly in our drawing-rooms, and eat five-course dinners, and travel in carriages to theatres and assemblies, no longer troubled by such sights as I had seen near Lyapinski House.

Having formed this plan, I wrote an article about it, and, before sending it to be printed, called on acquaintances whose cooperation I hoped to get. To all whom I saw during that day (I turned mainly to the rich) I repeated the same words, almost what I had written in the article : T proposed to make use of the census for the purpose of discovering all about the poverty in Moscow, and helping it with works and with money, and seeing to it that there should be no poor in Moscow, so that we, the rich people, might with a calm conscience enjoy the benefits of life to which we were accustomed. All listened to me attentively and seriously, but precisely the same thing took place with every one of them. The moment my hearers understood what it was all about, they seemed to feel uncomfortable and a little conscience-stricken. They felt embarrassed, mainly for my sake, because I was talking such foolish things, and yet such that it was impossible to say outright that they were foolish. It was as though some external cause compelled the hearers to nod consent to this my foolishness.

” Oh, yes ! Of course. It would be so nice,” they said to me. ” It goes without saying that we must sympathize with that. I thought so myself, but our people are in general so indifferent that it is scarcely possible to count on much success — However, I ou my part am, of course, prepared to cooperate.”

All told me very nearly the same. All consented, but they did so, as I thought, not in consequence of my conviction and not in consequence of their own desire, but in consequence of some external cause which made it impossible for them not to agree. This 1 noticed from the fact that not one of those who offered me their cooperation by contributing money himself defined the sum which he intended to give, so that 1 was compelled to determine it by asking, ” So I may count on you to the extent of 300, or 200, or 100, or 125 roubles?” and not one of them gave the money. I mention this, because when people contribute money for something they sympathize with, they are generally in a hurry to give the money. For a box at Sarah Bernhardt’s performance people pay out the money at once, in order to secure the matter ; but here, not one of all those who agreed to contribute, and who expressed their sympathy, offered to pay the money at once ; they only acquiesced in the sum which 1 determined for them.

In the last house in which I happened to be on that evening, I accidentally met a large company. The hostess of this house had for some years been busying herself with philanthropy. At the entrance stood several carriages, and in the antechamber sat a number of lackeys in costly liveries. In the large drawing-room married and unmarried ladies, wearing expensive garments, were seated at two tables with lamps, dressing small dolls, and near them were also a few young men. The dolls which were being fixed up by these ladies were to be rallied off for the benefit of the poor.

The sight of this drawing-room and of the men who were gathered in it struck me very disagreeably. Not to mention the fact that the fortunes of the people gathered there were equal to several millions ; that the mere interest of the capital which was expended here on garments, lace, bronzes, brooches, carriages, horses, liveries, lackeys, would be a hundred times greater than what these ladies were manufacturing here, — not to mention all that, the expenses incurred by the ladies and gentlemen in coming out here, — their gloves, their linen, their travelling, the candles, tea, sugar, and cake furnished by the hostess amounted to a hundred times the sum they would realize from their work. I saw all this, and so I ought to have known that there I should not find any sympathy for the business which brought me there ; but I had come to make my proposition, and, no matter how hard this was for me, I told them what I wanted (I repeated almost word for word what I had written in my article).

One of the ladies present olfered me money, saying that she did not feel strong enough on account of her nerves to visit the poor, but that she would give money ; how much she would give, and when she would furnish it, she did not say. Another lady and a young man offered their services in making the round of the poor ; but I did not avail myself of their offer. The chief person to whom I addressed myself told me that it would not be possible to do much, because the means were insignificant. The means were not sufficient because all the rich people of Moscow were already booked for other charities, and everything that possibly could be obtained from them had been extorted from them ; that all these philanthropists had already received their ranks, medals, and other honours ; that in order to secure a financial success it would be necessary to obtain the grant of new honours from the authorities, and that this was the one effective means, but that it was hard to obtain it.

When I returned home that night, I lay down to sleep, not only with the presentiment that nothing would come of my idea, but also with shame and with the consciousness that I had done something very contemptible and disgraceful on that whole day. But I did not throw up the matter. In the first place, the matter had been set a-going, and a false shame kept me from giving it up ; in the second place, not only the success of this matter, but my every occupation with it, made it possible for me to continue life in those conditions in which I was living, while its failure subjected me to the necessity of renouncing my life and of seeking new paths of life. Of this I was unconsciously afraid. I did not believe my inner voice, and continued what I had begun.

1 sent my article1 to the printer, and read it in proof to the City Council. As I read it, I blushed to tears and faltered in speech, for I felt so uncomfortable. Apparently all my hearers felt as uncomfortable as I. In reply to my question, which 1 put at the end of my reading, whether the managers of the census accepted my proposition, which was that they should stay in their places in order that they might be mediators between society and the needy, there ensued an awkward silence. Then two orators delivered speeches. These seemed to mend the awkwardness of my proposition : they expressed sympathy for me, but pointed out the inapplicability of my idea, which was approved by all of them. They felt a relief.

But when I later none the less tried to gain my point, and asked the managers privately whether they consented at the census to investigate the needs of the poor, and to remain in their posts for the purpose of serving as mediators between the poor and the rich, they again felt ill at ease. They seemed to be saying to me with their glances : ” Here we have, out of respect for you, whitewashed your stupid break, and you annoy us once more with it.” Such was the expression of their faces, but in words they told me that they agreed with me ; two of them, each one separately, as though having plotted together, told me in the same words : ” We consider ourselves morally obliged to do so.”

The same impression was produced by my communication on the student censustakers, when I told them that in taking the census we should not only pursue the aims of the census itself, but also those of philanthropy. I

1 “On the Census in Moscow,” given in this present volume. noticed that, while I was speaking to them of it, they looked with embarrassment into my eyes, just as one is embarrassed to look into the eyes of a good man who is talking some nonsense. The same effect was produced on the editor of the newspaper, by my article, when I handed it to him, and on my son, on my wife, and on people of every description. All for some reason felt ill at ease, but all of them considered it necessary to approve of the idea itself, and immediately after such an approval began to express their doubts as to the success, and for some reason (all of them without exception) to condemn the evident indifference and coldness of our society and of all men, except of themselves.

In the depth of my heart I continued to feel that I was not doing the right thing, and that nothing would come of it; but the article was printed, and I began to take part in the census : I had set the matter a-going, and it drew me along.

IV.

At my request they assigned to me a district of the Khaniovnicheski Ward, near Smolénsk Market, along Protdchny Lane, between Beregovoy Passage and Nikolski Lane. In this district are the houses which are collectively called Bzhanov House, or Bzhanov Fort. These houses at one time belonged to Merchant Bzhanov, but now belong to the Zimins. I had long ago heard of this place as the purlieus of the most terrible miser)’ and debauch, and so had asked the managers of the census to assign me to this district. My wish was fulfilled.

After receiving the instructions from the City Council, and a few days before the taking of the census, I started on a round of my district. From the plan which was given to me I immediately found Bzhanov Fort.

I entered by Nikolski Lane. Nikolski Lane ends on the left with a gloomy house, which has no gate facing this side; I guessed from the aspect of the house that this was Bzhanov Fort.

As I descended Nikolski Street, I came abreast of some boys from ten to fourteen years of age, dressed in jackets and paltry overcoats, who were sliding downhill or skating on one skate along the frozen incline of the sidewalk in front of this house. The boys were all in rags, and, like all city boys, bold and daring. I stopped to take a look at them. A tattered old woman, with sallow, flabby cheeks, came around the corner. She was walking toward the city, in the direction of Smolénsk Market, and wheezing terribly, like an asthmatic horse, at every step she was taking. When she came abreast with me, she stopped to draw a snarling breath. In any other place this woman would have asked me for some money, but here she only struck up a conversation with me.

“ You see,” she said, pointing to the skating boys, « they are wasting time! They will be just such Bzhanovians as their fathers.”

One of the boys in an overcoat and vizorless cap heard her words and stopped.

“ Don’t scold ! ” he shouted to the old woman. ” You are yourself a Bzhanov viper ! “

I asked the boy : ” Do you live here ? ”

” Yes, and she does, too. She has stolen a boot-leg ! ” shouted the boy, and, raising his foot, he skated past me.

The old woman discharged a lot of curses, which were interrupted by her cough. Just then a ragged old man with snow-white hair came down the middle of the street, swaying his arms (in one of them he carried a bundle with a white loaf and some cracknels). The old man looked as though he had just braced himself with a dram. Evidently he had heard the old woman’s curses, and he took her part.

” Just let me catch you, little devils ! ” he shouted to the boys, pretending to make for them. After passing me he stepped on the sidewalk. On the Arbat this old man startles people by his decrepitude, old age, and wretchedness ; here he was a merry labourer returning from his daily labour.

I followed the old man. He turned a comer to the left, into Protéchny Lane, and, after passing the whole house and the gate, disappeared in the door of a restaurant.

Two gates and several doors front on Protdchny Lane : they are those of a restaurant, a tavern, and a few groceries and other shops. This, indeed, is Bzhànov Fort. Everything is here gray, diny, and stinking, — the buildings, the shops, the yards, the people. The majority of the people whom 1 met here were tattered and half-dressed. Some were passing by, while others ran from door to door. Two of them were haggling about a piece of some rag. I walked all around the building from the side of Protôchny Lane and Beregovoy Passage, and, upon returning, stopped at the gate of one of the houses. 1 wanted to go in and see what they were doing there, inside, but I felt ill at ease at what I should say if they asked me what I wanted. Still, after some hesitation, I entered.

The moment I entered the courtyard 1 was struck by a disgusting stench. The yard was terribly dirty. I turned around a corner, and that very moment heard to the left of me, in an upper wooden gallery, the tramp of men running, at first along the deals of the gallery, and then over the steps of the staircase. First there came running out a lean woman with sleeves rolled up, in a faded pink dress and with shoes on her bare feet. After her came a shaggy-haired man in a red shirt and pantaloons which were as wide as a petticoat, and in galoshes.

At the foot of the stairs the man caught the woman.

“ You will not get away from me,” he said, laughing.

” You cross-eyed devil,” began the woman, apparently flattered by this persecution ; but, upon seeing me, she shouted : ” Whom do you want ? “

As I did not want anybody, I felt embarrassed and went away. There was nothing remarkable about it, but after what I had seen outside the yard, — the cursing woman, the merry old man, and the skating boys, — this incident suddenly showed me my undertaking from an entirely new side. I had undertaken to benefit these people with the aid of the Moscow rich. Now I understood for the first time that all these unfortunates, whom I wanted to benefit, had not only a time when, suffering from hunger and cold, they waited to be admitted to the house, but also a time which they used to some purpose ; that they had twenty-four hours each day and a whole life, which 1 had never thought before. 1 now understood for the first time that all these people had not only the desire to protect themselves against the cold and to get something to eat, but also must live somehow those twenty-four hours of each day, which they had to live like any other being. I understood that these men had also to be angry, and feel weary, and brace themselves, and have their brown studies, and make merry. Mo we ver strange this may sound, I now clearly understood for the first time that what I had undertaken could not consist merely in feeding and clothing a thousand people, — like feeding and putting under a roof a thousand sheep, — but that it ought to consist in doing people good. When I understood that each of these thousand people was just such a man as I was, with just such a past, just such passions, temptations, and delusions, just such thoughts, just such questions, my undertaking suddenly appeared so difficult to me that I felt my impotence. But the thing was begun, and I continued it.

V.

On the first appointed day the student censustakers started in the morning, but I, the benefactor, did not get to them before noon. I could not have come earlier, because I arose at ten, then drank coffee and smoked, waiting for my digestion to take place. I arrived at noon at the gate of Rzhanov House.

A policeman showed me a restaurant on Beregovoy Passage, where the censustakers asked those to come who wanted to see them. I entered the restaurant. It was a dark, stinking, dirty place. In front was the counter, on the left, a small room with tables that were covered with dirty napkins ; on the right, a large room with columns, and similar tables at the windows, along the walls. At some of the tables, drinking tea, sat tattered and decently dressed men, such as workmen and small traders, and a few women. The restaurant was very dirty, but apparently it did a good business. The facial expression of the clerk behind the counter was businesslike, and the waiters were quick and attentive : I had barely entered, when a waiter got ready to take off my overcoat and receive my order. Obviously they were here in the habit of doing prompt and exact work.

I asked about the censustakers.

” Vdnya ! ” shouted a small man, dressed in German fashion, who was putting something into a cupboard behind the counter ; he was the proprietor of the restaurant, a Kaluga peasant, Ivan Fedotych, who rented half the apartments of the Zimin houses, in order to sublet them to other people. A waiter, a boy of about eighteen years of age, lean, hook-nosed, sallow-faced, ran up to him. ” Take the gentleman to the censustakers : they have gone to the main wing, above the well.”

The lad threw down the napkin, put on an overcoat over liis white shirt and white trousers, and a cap with a large vizor, and, rapidly moving his white legs, led me through a back door which shut with a block. In the nasty, stinking kitchen in the vestibule we met an old woman who was cautiously carrying terribly malodorous guts that were wrapped in a rag. From the vestibule we went down into an inclined yard, which was all filled up with frame buildings on lower stone stories. The stench in this yard was very great. The centre of this stench was a privy, near which there was always a crowd, no matter how often I passed there. The privy itself was not a place of defecations, but it served as an indication of the place near which it was customary to defecate. It was impossible not to notice this place, whenever one crossed the yard ; it was oppressive to enter into the pungent atmosphere of the stench which rose from it.

The lad cautiously guarded his white pantaloons, carefully led me past this spot over the frozen impurities, and walked in the direction of one of the buildings. The men who were crossing the yard and the galleries stopped to take a look at me. Apparently a neatly dressed man was a rarity in these places.

The lad asked a woman whether she had not seen where the censustakers were, and three men at once answered this question ; some said that they were above the well ; others said that they had gone from there, and were now with Nikita Ivanovich. An old man in a shirt, who was fixing himself near the privy, said that they were in Number 30. The lad decided that this information was the most reliable, and so led me to Number 30, under the cover of a basement story, into darkness and into a stench which was different from the one in the yard. We descended lower and walked along an earth floor of a dark corridor. As we were walking along the corridor, a door was opened with a start, and a drunken old man in a shirt, who was evidently not a peasant, rushed out from the room. A washerwoman, with sleeves rolled up, and soapy hands, was driving and pushing this man with a piercing shriek. Vanya, my guide, pushed the drunken man aside and rebuked him.

“ It will not do to make such a racket,” he said, ” and you are an officer, too.”

Then we arrived at the door of Number 30. Vanya pulled the door: it smacked, having been stuck, and opened, and we were surrounded by vapours of soap-suds and by the pungent odour of bad victuals and of tobacco, and entered into complete darkness. The windows were on the opposite side, while nearer to us were board corridors on the right and on the left, and little doors at all kinds of angles, leading into rooms that were unevenly partitioned off by shingles that were painted white with a watery paint. In a dark room on the left could be seen a woman washing something in a trough. Through a door on the right an old woman could be seen. Through another open door I saw a bearded, red-faced peasant in bast shoes, who was sitting on a bed bench ; he was holding his hands on his knees, swaying his bast shoe covered feet, and looking gloomily at them.

At the end of the corridor there was a little door which led into the room where the censustakers were. This was the room of the landlady of the whole of Number 30. She rented the whole number from Ivan Fedotych, and let it out to permanent renters and to night lodgers. In this tiny room a student censustaker, with his cards, was sitting under a foil image and, like an investigating magistrate, examining a man in a shirt and vest. This was the landlady’s friend, who was answering the questions for her. Here was also the landlady — an old woman — and two curious lodgers. When I arrived, the room was crowded to its fullest capacity. I pushed my way to the table. The student and I exchanged greetings, and he continued his questions. I looked around and questioned the inmates of this apartment for my own purposes.

It turned out that in this apartment I did not find one on whom my benefaction could be bestowed. In spite of the poverty, smallness, and dirt of these quarters, which startled me when I compared them with the mansion in which I lived, the landlady lived in comparative ease, as compared with the poor inhabitants of the cities ; but in comparison with the village poverty, with which I was well acquainted, she lived even in luxury. She had a feather bed, a quilted coverlet, a samovar, a fur coat, a cupboard with dishes. The landlady’s friend had the same well-to-do appearance : he even had a watch with a chain. The lodgers were poor, but there was not one who demanded immediate aid. Those who wanted help were the woman at the wash-trough, who had been abandoned with her children by her husband, an old widow, who, as she said, had no means of support, and that peasant in the bast shoes, who told me that he had not had that day anything to eat. But upon closer inquiry it appeared that all these persons were not in particular want, and that, in order that I might aid them, I should have to become better acquainted with them.

When I proposed to the woman, whom her husband had abandoned, to put the children in a children’s home, she became confused, fell to musing, and thanked me, but apparently it was not what she wanted : she preferred a contribution in money. Her eldest girl helped her to wash, and her middle girl took care of her boy. The old woman wanted very much to go to a poorhouse, but, upon examining her corner, I saw that the woman was not in straits. She had a little trunk with some possessions, a teapot with a tin mouth, and Mont-pensier boxes with sugar and tea. She knitted stockings and gloves, and received a monthly allowance from a benefactress. But the peasant was evidently not so much in need of something to eat as of something to drink, and anything which might have been given to him would have gone into the tavern.

Thus these quarters did not contain people with whom, I thought, the house was filled, such as I could make happy by giving them money. These poor, so it seemed to me, were of a doubtful character. I made a note of the old woman, of the woman with the children, and of the peasant, and decided that it would be necessary to look after them, but only after I should have busied myself with those particularly unfortunate people whom I expected to find in the house. I decided that the aid would have to be furnished in a given order, — at first to those who needed it most, and then to these people. But in the next quarters, and in the next, it was the same : the people were all such as had to be investigated before any aid was offered them. There were no unfortunates to whom money was to be given, and who, having been unhappy, would become happy. Though I ought to be ashamed to say so, I began to be disappointed, because I did not find in these houses anything I had expected. I had expected to find people of a particular kind, but when I had made the round of all the quarters, I convinced myself that the inhabitants of these houses were not at all a particular kind of men, but precisely such men as I saw myself surrounded by. Even as among us, there were among them people who were more or less good, more or less bad, more or less happy, more or less unhappy. The unfortunate ones were just as unfortunate as those among us, whose misfortune was not in external conditions but within themselves, — a misfortune which could not be mended by a bill.

VI.

The inmates of these houses form the lower urban population, of whom there must be more than one hundred thousand in Moscow. Here, in this house, there are representatives of all kinds of this population ; here you will find small masters and proprietors, bootmakers, brushmakers, joiners, turners, shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, drivers, self-supporting traders and huckstresses, washerwomen, second-hand dealers, usurers, day-labourers and people without any definite occupations, and beggars, and prostitutes.

Here are many of the same class of people which I saw in front of Lydpinski House, but here they are scattered among working people. Besides, those others I had seen at their very worst time, when everything was spent in food and drink, and they, freezing and starving and driven out of the restaurants, were waiting, as for the heavenly manna, for admission into the free lodginghouse, and from there to the longed-for jail, in order to be sent back to their domicile ; whereas here I saw them amidst a majority of labouring people, and at a time when in one way or another they had gained three or five kopeks for a night’s lodging, and at times roubles for food and drink.

And, no matter how strange this may sound, I here experienced nothing resembling the feeling which I had experienced in Lydpinski House; on the contrary, during my first round, both I and the students experienced almost a pleasant sensation, — but why do I say ” almost pleasant ” ? That is not true : the sensation evoked by the intercourse with these people, no matter how strange this may seem, was simply exceedingly pleasant.

The first impression was that the majority of people who were living here were labourers and very good people.

The greater part of the inmates we found at work,— the washerwomen over their troughs, the joiners at their tables, the shoemakers on their stools. The close quarters were filled with people, and they were working energetically and merrily. There was an odour of workmen’s perspiration, and of hides at the shoemaker’s, and of shavings at the joiner’s, and frequently we heard songs, and saw the bared muscular arms which went through the habitual motions with rapidity and with agility. We were everywhere met with mirth and with kindness : nearly everywhere our intrusion into the habitual life of these people failed to rouse those ambitions, that desire to show their importance and to snub, which the appearance of the censustakers produced in the majority of the quarters of the well-to-do people ; on the contrary, to all our questions these people answered as was proper, without ascribing any special significance to them. Our questions merely served for them as a cause for amusement and jesting as to how one was to be written down, who was to be put down for two, and what two would stand for one, and so forth.

Many we found at dinner or at tea, and to our greeting, ” Bread and salt,” or ” Tea and sugar,” they invariably replied by, ” Please to join us,” and even moved aside to make place for us. Instead of purlieus of a constantly changing population, which we had expected to find here, it turned out that in this house there were many apartments where people had lived for a long time. A joiner and his workmen, a shoemaker and his master workman had lived for ten years in one place. At the shoemaker’s it was very dirty and crowded, but the people at work were very cheerful. I tried to talk to one of the workmen, as I wished to get from him an account of the wretchedness of his condition and of his indebtedness to the master, but the workman did not understand me and spoke in the highest terms of his master and his life.

In one apartment there lived an old man and his wife. They were selling apples. Their room was warm, clean, and full of every good thing. The floor was carpeted with straw matting, which they got in the apple shop. There were trunks, a safe, a samovar, and dishes. In the corner were a number of images, and in front of them two lamps were burning. Covered fur coats were hanging on the wall behind a sheet. The old woman had star-shaped wrinkles: she was kind and talkative, and apparently took delight in her quiet, well-arranged life.

Ivan Fedotych, the proprietor of the restaurant and the landlord of the apartments, came from the restaurant and walked with us. He jested cheerfully with many renters, calling them by their names and patronymics, and gave us short sketches of them. They were all people like the rest of us, — Mdrtin Semenoviches, Peter Petrdviches, Marya Ivanovnas, — people who did not consider themselves unfortunate, and who indeed were like the rest of us.

We had prepared ourselves to see nothing but what would be terrible; but, instead of anything terrible, we saw nothing but what was good, what involuntarily evoked our respect. And of these good people there was such a multitude that the ragged, hopeless, idle people, who now and then were met with among them, did not impair the general impression.

The students were not so startled by it as I was. They were simply out doing something useful for science, as they thought, and at the same time made their casual observations; but I was a benefactor, — I went out to help the unfortunate, lost, corrupt people, whom I had expected to find in this house. Suddenly, instead of unfortunate, lost, and corrupt people, I saw a large number of calm, satisfied, happy, kind, and very good working people.

This impressed itself upon me very vividly, whenever I met in these quarters that very crying want which I was prepared to assist.

Whenever I met this want, I found that it was already attended to, and that the aid which I wanted to offer to it had already been given. This aid had been given before me, and by whom ? By those same unfortunate, corrupt creatures, whom I was prepared to help, and it was given in a way which I could not emulate.

In a basement lay a lonely old man who was sick with the typhus. The old man did not have a friend. A widow with a little girl, a stranger to him, but a neighbour of his, took care of him, brought tea to him, and bought medicine for him with her own money. In another apartment a woman was lying sick with puerperal fever. A woman who was making a living by debauch rocked the baby, made a sucking-rag for it, and for two days did not go out to her calling. A girl who was left an orphan was taken into the family of a tailor, who himself had three children. Thus the only unfortunates that were left were some idle people, officials, scribes, lackeys out of a job, beggars, drunkards, prostitutes, children, who could not be at once helped with money, but who had to be carefully examined, taken care of, and given work. I was in search of pure unfortunates, such as were unfortunate through poverty, and as could be helped by giving them of our abundance ; but it seemed to me that I failed to find such, and that all the unfortunates 1 came across were such that much time and care would have to be expended on them.

VII.

The unfortunates whom I marked down naturally classified themselves in my imagination according to three categories, namely, as people who had lost their former profitable situation and were waiting to return to it (such people belonged both to the higher and to the lower conditions of life) ; then prostitutes, of whom there were very many in these houses ; and the third category, — children. The largest number marked down by me belonged to the first category, to those who had lost their profitable situations and were wishing to return to them. Of such people, especially of those who belonged to the burgher and the official worlds, there were very many in these houses. In nearly all the quarters which we entered with the landlord, Ivan Fedotych, we were told by him : ” Here you do not need to write the census card yourselves ; here you will find a man who can do all that, if only he is not on a spree.”

Ivén Fedôtych would call such a man by his first name and patronymic, and it always turned out to be one of those men who had fallen from a higher condition of life. To Ινάη Feddtych’s call an impoverished gentleman or official would creep out from some dark corner, and he would generally be drunk and always undressed. If he was not drunk, he was always delighted to take hold of the matter which was placed before him, significantly shook his head, frowned, put in his remarks with learned terms, and with cautious tenderness held the clean, printed red card in his trembling, dirty hands, and with contempt eyed his fellow lodgers, as though triumphantly asserting the superiority of his education before those who had humiliated him so often. He was obviously glad to commune with that world where they printed cards on red paper, and where he had once been himself. To my inquiries about his life, such a man nearly always replied readily and began with enthusiasm to recite, like a prayer learned by rote, the history of those calamities to which he had been subjected, and, above all, of his former position, where he belonged according to his education.

Such men were widely scattered through Rzhdnov House. One of the apartments is solidly occupied by such men and women. When we came up to it, Ivan Fedotych said to us : ” Here comes the apartment of the gentry.” The apartment was quite full : nearly all of them, about forty, were at home. More thoroughly fallen, unfortunate, neglected old persons, and pale, hopeless young persons could not be found in the whole house. I talked with some of them. It was nearly always the same story, only in various degrees of evolution. Each of them had been rich, or a father, a brother, uncle, had been or still was rich, or his father, or he himself, had occupied a fine position. Then a misfortune occurred, caused by some envious person, or by his own goodness, or by some special accident, and he lost everything, and now was doomed to perish in these improper, hateful surroundings, — covered with lice, dressed in rags, among drunkards and harlots, feeding on liver and bread, and extending the hand for alms.

All the thoughts, wishes, and recollections of these people are directed only to the past. The present appears to them as something unnatural, abominable, and unworthy of attention. Not one of them has a present. They have only recollections of the past and expectations in the future, which may be realized at any moment, and for the realization of which very little is needed, but this very little is wanting and is not to be had, and so lite is being uselessly ruined, one having suffered for a year, another for five, and a third for thirty years. One needs only to dress himself in decent clothes, in order to make his appearance before a person who is favourably inclined to him ; another needs only to put on decent clothes, pay his bills, and reach Orél ; a third needs only to redeem his mortgaged property and obtain some small means for the continuation of his case at law, which must end in his favour, and then all will be well again. They all say that they need only something external, in order that they may get back to the condition which alone they consider natural and happy for them.

If I had not been befogged by my pride of virtue, I needed only to scan a little their young and their old, for the most part weak, sensual, but good faces, in order to understand that their misfortune was incorrigible by external means; that they could not be happy in any situation, if their view of life remained the same ; that they were not a special class of people, in unusually unfortunate circumstances, but just such people as we were surrounded by on all sides, and as we ourselves were. I remember that my communion with this class of unfortunates was particularly hard for me. Now I understand why it was so: I saw myself in them as in a mirror. If I had stopped to think of my life and of the lives of the men of our circle, I should have seen that between us there was no essential difference.

If those who are around me now live in grand quarters and in their own houses on the Sivtsev Vrazhok and on the Dmitrovka, and not in Rzhanov House, and still eat and drink palatable things, and not liver and herring with bread, that does not keep them from being just as unhappy. They are just as dissatisfied with their situation, regretting the past and wishing for something better, and this better situation which they wish for is just such as the inmates of Rzhanov House desire, that is, such as will make it possible for them to work less and make more extensive use of the labours of others. The difference is only in the degree and the time.

If I had then stopped to think, I should have understood it ; but I did not stop to think : I questioned these people and noted them down, hoping to aid them later, after I should have learned of their conditions and their needs. I did not understand then that such a man could be helped only by changing his world conception ; but, in order to change the world conception of another person, a man must first have his own better world conception and live in accordance with it, whereas mine was just such as theirs was, and I lived in accordance with the world conception which had to be changed in order that these people should stop being unhappy.

I did not see that these people were unhappy, not because they, so to speak, lacked nutritive food, but because their stomachs were ruined, and they no longer demanded nutritive food, but such as roused their appetite; I did not see that, to aid them, I was not to offer them food, but should cure their ruined stomachs. Though I am anticipating here, I will say that I actually did not help a single one of the men whose names I had taken down, although for some of them precisely that was done which they had wanted, and which, it seemed, ought to have put them on their feet. I specially remember three of these people. All three of them are, after numerous upliftings and falls, in precisely the same condition in which they were three years ago.

VIII.

The second category of unfortunates whom I had hoped to help later was that of the prostitutes ; of such women there is a very large variety in Rzhânov House, — from young ones, who resemble women, to old ones, terrible to look at, who have lost every human semblance. This hope of helping the women, which I had not had in mind before, arose under the following circumstance.

It was in the middle of our censustaking, and we had by that time worked out a certain mechanical method of procedure.

As we entered new quarters, we immediately asked for the landlord of the rooms ; one of us sat down, clearing a place where he could write, and a second walked from corner to corner, questioning each person separately, and transmitting the information to the recorder.

Upon entering one of the apartments of the basement story, a student went to find the landlord, while I began to question all those who were in these quarters. The quarters were arranged as follows: In the middle of a room twenty feet square there was a stove ; from the stove radiated four partitions, forming four smaller compartments. In the first passage room there were four cots and two persons, — an old man and a woman. After this came a long compartment: here was the landlord, a young, respectable-looking, extremely pale burgher, dressed in a gray cloth coat without sleeves. On the left of the first corner was the third compartment : there was a man asleep, no doubt drunk, and a woman in a pink blouse, winch was open in front and gathered

behind ; the fourth compartment was beyond a partition : it was entered from the landlord’s room.

The student went to the landlord’s room, and I stopped in the passage room to question the old man and the woman. The man was a master printer, but now had no means of support. The woman was the wife of a cook. I went to the third compartment and questioned the woman in the blouse about the sleeping man. She said that he was a guest. I asked the woman who she was. She said she was a Moscow burgher woman.

“ What is your occupation ? “

She laughed, and gave me no answer.

” How do you support yourself ?” I repeated, thinking that she had not understood my first question.

” I sit in the restaurant,” she said.

I did not understand, and again asked :

” What do you live by ? ”

She made no reply, and only laughed. In the fourth compartment, where we had not yet been, there were also heard laughing female voices. The landlord came out of his compartment, and walked over to us. He had apparently heard my questions and the woman’s answer. He cast a stern glance upon the woman, and turned to me : ” A prostitute,” he said, obviously satisfied, because he knew the word which is used in official language and pronounced it correctly. Having said this, he with a faint and respectful smile of satisfaction, which was meant for me, turned to the woman. The moment he turned to her, his whole face was changed. Speaking in that peculiar, contemptuous, quick tone, with which one addresses a dog, and without looking at her, he said :

” What use is there of talking bosh, ‘ I sit in a restaurant’? You sit in a restaurant! Say outright, — a prostitute,” he repeated the word. ” She does not know how to call herself.”

His tone offended me.

” It is not proper for us to put her to shame,” 1 said. ” If all of us lived in godly fashion, there would be none of them.”

” AVell, that is so,” said the landlord, with an unnatural smile.

” Then we ought not to rebuke them, but to pity them. Is it their fault ? “

I do not remember how I expressed myself, but 1 remember that I was offended by the contemptuous tone of this youthful landlord of the quarters which were full of women whom he called prostitutes, and I was sorry for this woman, and so I expressed both sentiments. The moment I had said this, the boards of the beds in the compartment where the female voices were heard began to creak, and above the partition, which did not reach as high as the ceiling, there rose a curly, dishevelled female head with small, swollen eyes and a shining red face, and after her a second and a third head. They were evidently standing on their beds, and all three of them stretched their necks and with bated breath and strained attention looked silently at us.

There ensued an embarrassing silence. The student, who had been smiling before, became serious ; the landlord became embarrassed, and lowered his eyes ; the women did not dare to draw breath, and looked at me, and waited. I was embarrassed more than the rest. I had not expected to see a casual word produce such an effect. It was as though Ezekiel’s field of death, covered with dead bones, had quivered by the touch of the spirit, and the dead bones had come to life. I unwittingly uttered a word of love and of compassion, and this word acted upon all persons as though they had all been waiting for this word, in order to cease being corpses, and come to life again. They kept looking at me and waiting for what would come next. They were waiting for me to say those words and do those acts which would make the

bones come together, be covered with flesh, and come to life again. But I felt that I did not possess those words nor those acts with which I might continue what I had begun ; I felt in the bottom of my heart that I had lied, that I was precisely such as they were, and that I had nothing else to say, and I began to record the names and occupations of all the persons in these quarters.

This incident led me into a new delusion, — into the thought that it was possible to help these unfortunates also. In my self-conceit it then appeared to me that that was easy. I said to myself : ” We will note down these women also and later we ” (I did not render myself any account as to who these ” we ” were) “ shall busy ourselves with them.” I imagined that we, those men who for the period of several generations had brought these women to such a state, would one beautiful day bethink ourselves and mend all that at once. And yet, if I had only recalled my conversation with that lewd woman who was rocking the baby of the woman sick in childbirth, I might have comprehended the whole madness of this supposition.

When we saw this woman with the child, we thought that it was her child. In reply to the question who she was, she answered outright, ” A girl.” She did not say, ” A prostitute.” It was only that burgher, the landlord, who had used that terrible word. My supposition that she had a baby gave me the idea of bringing her out of her situation. I asked :

” Is this your child ? “

” No, it belongs to this woman.”

“ Why, then, do you rock it ? ”

“ She asked me to : she is dying.”

Though my supposition proved incorrect, I continued to speak to her in the same spirit. I asked her who she was, and how she had come to her present condition. She cheerfully and in a simple manner told me her story. She was the daughter of a factory hand, a Moscow burgher. She had been left an orphan, and her aunt took her to her house. From her aunt’s she started frequenting the restaurants. Her aunt was dead now. When I asked her whether she did not want to change her manner of life, my question apparently did not even interest her. Indeed, how could the proposition of something quite impossible interest a person ? She smiled, and said :

” But who will take me with my yellow police card?”

” Suppose I found you a place as a cook ?” I said.

This idea occurred to me, because she was a strong, blonde woman, with a silly-looking round face. Cooks are generally of this description. My words evidently displeased her.

” A cook ! But I cannot bake bread,” she said, laughing. She said that she could not be one, but I saw by her face that she did not want to be a cook, because she considered the position and calling of a cook to be low.

This woman, who in the simplest manner possible, like the widow of the Gospel, sacrificed everything she had for the sake of the sick mother, like her other companions, regarded the condition of a working man as low and worthy of contempt. She was brought up to live without working, and to live a life which by those who surrounded her was considered natural for her. In this did her misfortune lie. Through this misfortune she had got into her present state and was maintaining herself in it. That had brought her to loaf in restaurants. Which of us, man or woman, will correct her false conception of life ? Where, in our midst, are those j)eople who are convinced that any life of labour is more respectable than a life of idleness, — who are convinced of it, and live in accordance with that conviction, and in accordance with that conviction value and esteem people ? If I had stopped to think of it, I should have comprehended that neither I nor any one else of those whom I know could cure this disease.

I should have comprehended that those startled and meek heads that were thrust forward above the partition were expressing nothing but amazement at the sympathy which I had given utterance to, and by no means hope in having their immorality mended. They do not see the immorality of their lives. They see that they are despised and cursed, but it is impossible for them to comprehend why they are despised. Their lives have been passed since childhood amidst just such women, who, they know full well, have always existed and are necessary to society, so necessary that there are special officers whose duty it is to look after their regular existence. Besides, they know that they exercise power over men and control them, often more completely than do other women. They see that their position in society, despite the fact that everybody curses them, is recognized by women and by men and by the authorities, and so they fail to understand what they are to repent of or why they should mend.

During one of the rounds a student told me that in one of the rooms there was a woman who carried on a trade with her thirtecn-year-old daughter. As I wished to save this girl, I went directly to that room. The mother and the daughter were living in great poverty. The mother, a small, swarthy prostitute of about forty years of age, was not merely homely, but disagreeably so. The daughter was just as repulsive. To all my roundabout questions as to their life, the mother answered me curtly, and with suspicion and hostility, obviously feeling me to be an enemy with evil intentions; the daughter made no replies and did not look at her mother, having evidently full confidence in her mother. They did not evoke any sincere pity in me, but rather disgust ; but I decided that it was necessary, to save the daughter, to get the ladies interested who sympathized with the miserable condition of these women, and to send them thither.

However, if 1 had stopped to think of the mother’s long past, of how she had borne, reared, and brought up her daughter in her condition, no doubt without the slightest aid from people and with heavy sacrifices ; if 1 had stopped to think of that view of life which had formed itself in this woman, — I should have understood that in the mother’s act there was positively nothing bad or immoral : she was doing for her daughter all she could, that is, what she considered best for herself. It is possible by force to take the daughter away from her mother ; but it is impossible to convince the mother that she is doing wrong in selling her daughter. If it comes to saving, it is the mother that ought to be saved; above all, she ought to be saved from that view of life, approved by all men, which makes it possible for a woman to live out of wedlock, that is, without bearing children and without working, serving only for the gratification of sensuality.

If I had stopped to think of it, I should have comprehended that the majority of those ladies whom I wanted to send there for the purpose of saving this girl not only lived themselves without bringing forth children and without work, serving only the gratification of sensuality, but also brought up their daughters for the same life : one mother takes her daughter to the restaurant, another takes hers to court or to balls. But the world conception is the same with either mother, namely, that a woman must gratify a man’s lust, and that for this she has to be fed, and dressed, and taken care of. How, then, can our ladies improve this woman and her daughter ?

IX.

More extravagant still was my relation to the children. In my capacity of benefactor I turned my attention to the children also, wishing to save the innocent creatures that were going to perdition in this den of debauch, and took down their names, intending to busy myself with them later.

Among the children I was particularly struck by twelveyear-old Serézha. This bright, wide-awake boy, who had been living at a shoemaker’s, but was now left without a home, because his master was in jail, I pitied with my whole soul, and I wanted to do him some good.

I will now tell how my attempt at benefiting him ended, because the story of this boy shows better than anything my false position in my capacity as benefactor. I took the boy to my house, and put him in the kitchen, — it was certainly impossible to take a lousy boy out of the den of debauch into my children’s rooms ! And I considered myself particularly good and kind, because he did not embarrass me, but the servants in the kitchen, and because it was not I who fed him, but our cook, and because I gave him some old clothes to wear.

The boy stayed about a week. During this time I once or twice, in passing him, said a few words to him, and during my constitutional called on a shoemaker I knew, offering him the boy as an apprentice. A peasant, who happened to call at my house, invited him to join his family in the village : the boy refused, and within a week disappeared. I went to lizhànov House to inquire about him. He had returned there, but when I called he was not at home. This was the second day he had been going to Pryésnenski Ponds, where he hired out at thirty kopeks a day to act as a costumed wild man leading an elephant in a procession. They were giving some kind of a show there. 1 called a second time, but he was so ungrateful that he evidently avoided me.

If I had then stopped to think of the life of this boy and of my own, I should have comprehended that the boy was spoiled by this, that he had discovered the possibility of a merry life without labour, that he had lost the habit of work. And I, to benefit and improve him, took him to my house, where he saw what ? My children, — those who were older than he, and younger, and of his age, — who not only had never worked for themselves, but did everything in their power to.give work to others, who soiled and ruined everything about them, and gorged themselves on fat, savoury, and sweet food, and broke dishes, and spilled and threw to the dogs such food as to this boy appeared as dainties. If I took him out of the den and brought him to a good place, he could not help but acquire those views which exist in respect to life in that good place ; and from these views he saw that in a good place it was necessary to live in such a way as to do no work, and to eat and drink sweet things, and to live merrily.

It is true, he did not know that my children were working very hard to study the declensions out of the Latin and the Greek grammars, and he would not have been able to comprehend the aims of these labours. But it is impossible to overlook the fact that, if he had comprehended this, the effect of my children’s example would have been more powerful still. He would have comprehended that my children were being educated in such a way that they might have nothing to do at present and should in the future, by making use of their diploma, be able to work as little as possible and enjoy the benefits of life as much as possible. He understood this, and so did not go with the peasant to look after his cattle and eat potatoes and drink kvas with him, but, instead, went to the Zoological Garden, to lead an elephant for thirty kopeks, while clad as a wild man.

I might have comprehended how foolish it was of me, who was educating my children in complete idleness and luxury, to correct other people and their children, who were perishing from idleness in Bzhanov House, which I have called a den, but in which, however, three-fourths of the people worked for themselves and for others. But I did not understand anything about it.

There were very many children in Bzhanov House, who were in a most miserable state : there were children of prostitutes, and orphans, and children carried by beggars on the streets. They were all very wretched ; but my experience with Serézha showed me that, living the life I did, I was not able to help them. While Serézha had been living at our house, I noticed in myself a desire to conceal from him our life, especially the life of our children. I felt that all my endeavours to lead him to a good life of labour were destroyed by the examples of our life and of that of our children. It is easy enough to take a child away from a prostitute, or from beggars. It is very easy, having money, to wash and clean him up, and dress him in clean clothes, feed him, and even teach him all kinds of sciences; but it is very difficult, and even impossible, for us, who do not earn our bread, but do the very opposite, to teach him to earn his own bread, because with our examples and with the material improvements of his life, which do not cost us anything, we teach him the very opposite. You can take a puppy and feed him, and teach him to carry something, and enjoy the sight of him ; but it is not enough to rear and bring up a man, and teach him Greek : he has to be taught to live, that is, to take less from others, and give more ; and we are unable to teach him to do the opposite, whether we take him to our house, or send him to a special home.

X.

I NO longer experienced that sentiment of compassion for people and of disgust with myself which I had experienced in Lyapinski House : I was all absorbed in the desire to fulfil the work which I had undertaken, — to do good to the people whom I should meet here. Strange to say, one would think that doing good, giving money to others, is a very good thing, and ought to dispose one to the love of men, but the very opposite took place : it provoked my ill-will and condemnation of people. In the evening of the first day’s round there happened a scene exactly like the one in Lyapinski House ; but this scene did not produce on me the same impression as in Lyapin ski House, but evoked an entirely different feeling. It began with this, that in one of the quarters I found an unfortunate who demanded immediate aid : it was a hungry woman, who had not eaten for two days.

It was like this : in one very large, almost empty lodging apartment I asked an old woman whether there were there any very poor people, such as did not have anything to eat. The old woman thought for awhile and mentioned two persons ; then she seemed to recall something.

” Oh, yes, there is one lying here,” she said, peering into one of the occupied bunks. ” This woman, I think, has not had anything to eat.”

“ Is it possible ? Who is she ? ”

” She was a lewd woman, but now nobody wants her, so she has no money to buy anything with. The landlady has been pitying her, but she wants to drive her out now. Agafya, oh, Agafya ! ” shouted the old woman.

We walked up to the bunk, on which something raised itself. It was a half-gray, dishevelled woman, as lean as a skeleton, in nothing but a dirty, torn shirt, with a peculiarly beaming and arrested glance. She looked with an arrested glance past us, with her lean hand caught her sack in order to cover her bony breast, which could be seen back of her dirty and torn shirt, and almost barked out, “ What is it ? What is it ? “

I asked her how she was getting along. For a long time she could not understand me ; finally she said :

” I do not know myself, — they are driving me out.”

I asked her, — I blush to write it down, — I asked her whether it was true that she had not eaten. She answered in the same feverish and rapid tone, without looking at me :

“ I have not bad anything to eat yesterday, or to-day.”

The sight of this woman touched me, but not as I had been touched in Lyapinski House: there my pity for the people made me feel ashamed of myself, while here I was glad to have at last found what I had been looking for, — a hungry person.

I gave her a rouble, and I remember that I was very glad that others saw it. When the old woman noticed it, she, too, asked me for some money. It gave me such pleasure to offer money that I gave the old woman some, without considering whether it was right to give her any, or not. The old woman saw me out at the door, and the people who were standing in the corridor heard her thanking me. Apparently the questions which I had put in respect to poverty had roused some expectations, and several persons followed us. In the corridor they began to ask me for some money. There were among the supplicants some who were evidently confirmed drunkards, who roused a disagreeable feeling in me ; but, having given some to the old woman, I had no right to refuse these either, and I began to distribute my money. While I was giving, others came up, and in every quarter there was excitement. People appeared on the staircases and in the galleries, and they followed me.

As I came out into the yard, a boy, pushing his way through the crowd, came flying down the staircase. He did not see me, and he shouted, hurriedly, ” He gave Agafya a rouble.” Having run down-stairs, the boy joined the crowd that was following me. I went out into the street; all kinds of people followed me, begging for money. I distributed all the change I had, and went into an open shop to ask the dealer to change a ten-rouble bill. Here the same happened as in Lyapinski House, namely, there was a terrible crush. Old women, people of the gentry, peasants, children, crowded at the shop, extending their hands ; I gave them money, asking a few about their lives, and making note of them in my memorandum-book. The dealer turned in the fur corners of the collar of his fur coat and sat like an idol, now and then casting a glance at the crowd and again directing his eyes past me. Apparently he felt, like the rest, that it was foolish, but he could not say so.

In Lyapinski House I had been horrified by the wretchedness and the humiliation of the people, and I felt myself guilty : I felt a desire and a possibility of being better. But now, a similar scene produced an entirely different effect upon me : in the first place, I experienced a malevolent feeling toward many of those who were besieging me, and, in the second, unrest at what the shopkeepers and janitors were thinking of me.

. When I returned home on that day, I did not feel at my ease. I felt that what I had done was foolish and immoral ; but, as always happens in consequence of an inner confusion, I talked a great deal about my undertaking, as though I did not in the least doubt its success.

On the following day I went by myself to those persons noted down by me, who seemed to me more miserable

than the rest, and whom, I thought, it was easier to help. As I said, I did not help even one of those persons. It turned out that it was much harder to help them than I had thought. Either because I did not know how, or because it was impossible to do otherwise, 1 only irritated the people, without helping them. Before the end of the censustaking 1 visited Bzhanov House several times, and each time the same thing happened : I was surrounded ‘ by a crowd of begging people, in the mass of whom 1 was completely lost. I felt the impossibility of doing anything, because there were too many of them, and so 1 felt an ill-will toward them, because there were so many of them ; besides, each of them individually did not gain my favour.

I felt that each of them was telling me an untruth or not the whole truth, and saw in me only a purse from which one could draw money. Very frequently it seemed to me that the very money which one of them extorted from me would not improve his situation, but would make it worse. The more frequently I went to these houses, the more I had intercourse with those people, the more manifest did it become to me that it was impossible to do anything ; but I did not recede from my set purpose till the last nightly round of the census.

1 feel particularly ashamed to recall this last day’s round. Before that I used to go alone, while now we went twenty of us together. At seven o’clock there gathered at my house all those who wanted to go with me on this last night’s round. They were mostly strangers, — students, an ofhcer, and two of my society acquaintances, who, saying the customary ” C’est très intéressant ! ” begged me to receive them among the number of censustakers.

Aly society acquaintances dressed themselves in peculiar hunting-jackets and high travelling-boots, — a costume which they put on when they went out hunting, and which, in their opinion, was proper for a visit to the lodginghouses. They took with them peculiar books and outlandish pencils. They were in that peculiar state of excitement in which people are who are getting ready for the chase, for a duel, or for the war. From them could most clearly be seen the insipidity and falseness of our situation, but the rest of us were in the same false condition.

Before our start we had a consultation, something like a military council, as to how we should begin, how distribute ourselves, etc. The consultation was precisely like what takes place in councils, assemblies, and committees, that is, everybody spoke, not because they had anything to say, but because they invented something to say, in order not to fall behind the rest. In the course of these discussions nobody mentioned anything about philanthropy, of which I had spoken so frequently. Though I was ashamed to do so, I felt that it was necessary to make mention of the philanthropic work, that is, of the taking note, during our round, of all those who were in wretched circumstances. I always felt ill at ease whenever I spoke of this, but here, amidst our excited preparation for the expedition, I had the greatest difficulty in speaking about it. They listened to me, as I thought, with melancholy, and all agreed with me verbally ; but it was evident that all knew that it was foolish, and that nothing would come of it, and they all began at once to speak of something else. This lasted till the time when we had to go, and we started.

We arrived at the dark restaurant, where we roused the waiters and began to unpack our note-books. When we were told that the people had heard of our visit and were leaving the quarters, we asked the landlord to shut the gates, and we went ourselves into the yard to talk to the people who were trying to get away and to assure them that no one would ask for their police cards. I remember the strange and oppressive feeling produced on me by those excited lodgers : half-undressed and ragged, they appeared to me tall in the lamplight of the dark yard ; frightened and terrible in their fright, they stood in a crowd about the malodorous privy, listening to our assurances, but not believing them ; they were evidently prepared for anything, like baited beasts, if only they could get away from us.

Gentlemen of every description — as policemen and as gendarmes, and as examining magistrates, and as judges — had been harassing them all their lives, in the cities and in the villages, on the roads and in the streets, in the restaurants and in the doss-houses, — and now these gentlemen suddenly came and shut the gates on them, merely to count them ; that was as hard for them to believe as it would be for hares to believe that the dogs came to count them, and not to hunt them. Hut the gates were locked and the excited lodgers went to their quarters, and we, dividing into groups, started on our round.

I had the two society gentlemen and two students with me. In front of us, in the darkness, walked Vànya, in an overcoat and his white trousers, and with a lantern in his hand, and we followed him. We went to the quarters with which I was acquainted. The rooms were familiar to me and so were some of the people, but the majority of the people were new to me, and the spectacle was new and terrible, much more terrible than what I had seen • near Lyâpinski House. All the quarters were full, all the cots were occupied, generally by two people. The spectacle was terrible on account of the crowded condition and of the intermingling of men and women. All women who were not beastly drunk were sleeping with men. Many women with children on narrow cots were sleeping with strange men. Terrible was the spectacle of the wretchedness, dirt, raggedness, and fright of these people ; and, above all, terrible on account of the enormous number of people who were in this condition. There was one apartment, and another, and a third, and a tenth, and a twentieth, and there was no end to them. Everywhere the same stench, the same stilb ng atmosphere, the same crowding, the same mingling of the sexes, the same deliriously drunken men and women, and the same fright, humility, and guilt on all the faces, — and I again felt ill at ease and pained, as in Lydpinski House, and I understood that what I had undertaken was nasty, stupid, and, therefore, impossible. I stopped taking down notes and questioning people, for I knew that nothing would come of it.

I was dreadfully oppressed. In Lyapinski House I had been like a man who suddenly sees a sore on another man’s body. He is sorry for the man, sorry because he did not pity him before, and he still may hope to be able to help the ailing man. But now I was like a physician who comes with his medicaments to the patient, lays open his sore, probes it, and must confess to himself that he has done all that in vain, that his medicaments are no good.

XI.

This visit inflicted the last blow to my selfdeception. It became patent to me that my undertaking was not only stupid, but also abominable. But, although I knew this, it seemed to me that I could not all at once throw up the whole matter : it seemed to me that I had to continue this occupation, in the first place, because with my article, my visits, and my promises I had roused the expectations of the poor, in the second place, because with the same article and with my conversations I had roused the sympathy of the benefactors, many of whom had promised to me their cooperation, both by personal service and by money contributions. I waited for both sides to turn to me with their requests, which I should have to answer the best way I knew how.

As to the applications of the needy, this is what took place : I received more than one hundred letters and applications ; these applications were all from the rich poor, if I may express myself in this fashion. On some of these I called, some I left without a reply. Nowhere did I succeed in doing anything. All the applications to me were from persons who had once been in a privileged condition (I call thus the condition in which people receive more from others than they give), who had lost it, and now wanted to go back to it. One needed two hundred roubles in order to bolster up his declining trade and finish the education of his children ; another needed a photographgallery ; a third wanted to pay debts and redeem his decent clothes ; a fourth needed a piano, in order to perfect himself in playing and support his family by giving music lessons. The majority did not determine the exact sum and simply asked for assistance; but, whenever I investigated their demands, it turned out that these demands grew in proportion with the assistance, and they were not satisfied, and could not be. I repeat, it is very likely that all that was due to the fact that I did not know how ; in any case, I did not help any one, although I sometimes tried to do so.

As to the cooperation on the part of the benefactors, something very strange and unexpected took place. Of all the persons who had promised me monetary contributions and had even determined the sums, not one handed me as much as a rouble to distribute to the poor. To judge by the promises which they had made me, I could count ou something like three thousand roubles, and of all these men not one recalled the former conversations or gave me a single kopek. The only persons who gave me anything were the students who turned over to me the money which they received for their work in taking the census, which was, I believe, twelve roubles. Thus my whole undertaking, which was to have been expressed in tens of thousands of roubles contributed by the rich, and in hundreds aud thousands of people who were to be saved from wretchedness and debauch, reduced itself to this, that I distributed at haphazard a few tens of roubles to those men who extorted it from me, and that I had on my hands twelve roubles contributed by the students, and twenty-five roubles sent to me by the City Council for my work as superintendent, which sums I was at a loss to dispose of.

The whole affair came to an end. And so, before my departure to the country, I went one Sunday morning, about Butter-week, to Ilzhanov House, in order to get rid of the thirty-seven roubles before my departure, and to distribute them to the poor. I made the round of the familiar quarters, and there found one sick man to whom I gave five roubles, I think. There was no one else to give any money to. But, as I had not known them in the beginning, so I did not know them then, and so I decided to take counsel with Ivan Fedotych, the proprietor of the restaurant, to know to whom I should give the remaining thirty-two roubles.

It was the first day of Butter-week. All were dressed up and had plenty to eat, and many were already drunk. In the yard, near the corner of the house, stood an old, but still hale, ragpicker, in a torn gabardine and bast shoes ; picking over his booty in a basket, he threw out into heaps scraps of leather and of iron and of something else, and sang a merry song in a beautiful and powerful voice. I got into a conversation with him. He was seventy years old and all alone ; he made a living by his occupation as a ragpicker, and not only did not complain, but even said that he had enough to eat and to get drunk on. I asked him about those who were most in need. He grew angry and said outright that there were no needy persons, except drunkards and lazybones ; but when he heard of my purpose, he asked me for a nickel with which to get him a drink, and ran into the restaurant. I went myself into the restaurant to Ivan Feddtych, in order to give him what money I had left for distribution.

The restaurant was full ; dressed up girls swarmed from door to door ; all the tables were occupied ; there was already a large number of drunken persons, and in a small room some one was playing the accordion, and two were dancing. Out of respect for me Ivan Feddtych ordered the dance stopped, and sat down with me at an unoccupied table. I told him that, since he knew his lodgers, he might be able to point out to me those who were most in need, as I had been ordered to distribute a small sum of money. Good-natured Ivan Feddtych (he died a year later), though busy attending to his trade, stayed away from it for awhile, in order to aid me. He fell to musing, and was apparently perplexed. An elderly waiter had heard us speak, and took part in the consultation.

They began to pass in review a number of persons, some of whom I knew myself, and we could not come to an understanding.

” Paramonovna,” the waiter proposed.

” Yes, that is so. Goes often without food. Well, she does have sprees.”

” What of it ? Still.”

“Well, Spiridon Ivanovich, — has children. That’s it.”

But Ivan Fedotych had some objection to Spiridon Ivanovich.

” Akulina ? She receives money. Well, how about the blind man ? ”

To this one I myself objected. I had just seen him. He was an old man of eighty years of age and blind, without kith or kin. One would imagine that there could not be a harder lot than his ; but I had seen him just awhile ago : he was lying on a high feather bed, drunk, and, as he did not see me, discharged the vilest of words in a terrible bass against his comparatively young mate.

Then they mentioned an armless boy and his mother. I saw that Ivan Fedotych was embarrassed, on account of his honesty, for he knew that, no matter what should be given, it would all come to him in his restaurant. But I had to get rid of the thirty-two roubles, and so I insisted, and, by making compromises, we managed to distribute the money. Those who received it were generally well dressed, and it was not necessary to go far for them, for they were all there, in the restaurant. The armless boy came in extensible boots, a red shirt, and a vest.

Thus ended my whole philanthropic activity, and I went back to the village, irritated at others, as is nearly always the case when I have committed some foolish and bad

act. My philanthropy was reduced to zero and came to a complete stop, but the train of thought and of feelings which it had evoked in me did not come to a stop : my inner work proceeded with redoubled force.

XII.

What, then, had happened ?

I had lived in the country, and there had had relations with the village poor. Not out of humility, which is worse than pride, but in order to tell the truth, which is necessary for the comprehension of the whole train of my thought and feelings, I will say that in the country I had done very little for the poor ; but the demands made on me were so modest, that even this little was useful to men and created around me an atmosphere of love and union with the people, in which it was possible for me to calm the gnawing feeling of the consciousness of the illegality of my life. When I moved to the city I expected to live in the same manner. But here I came across want of an entirely different description.

The city want was less genuine, and more exacting, and more cruel than the village want. Above all, there was so much of it in one place that it produced a terrible impression on me. The impression which I received in Lyapinski House in the first moment made me feel the monstrousness of my life. This sentiment was sincere and very strong. But, in spite of its sincerity and strength, I was at first so weak as to get frightened at the transformation of my life, to which this sentiment called me, and was so ready for compromises, I believed that which everybody was telling me, and which everybody has been saying since the creation of the world, namely, that there was nothing bad in wealth and luxury ; that it was given by God ; that it was possible to aid the needy and yet continue to live in wealth. I believed it and wanted to act accordingly.

I wrote an article in which I appealed to all the rich people to offer their assistance. All the rich people acknowledged themselves morally obliged to agree with me, but evidently either did not wish, or were unable to do or give anything for the poor. I began to visit the poor, and I beheld there what I had never expected to see. On the one hand, I saw in these dens, as I called them, people whom it was impossible for me to assist, because they were labouring people, who were used to work and to privations, and so stood incomparably higher than I in life ; on the other hand, I saw unfortunates whom I could not assist, because they were the same kind of men that I myself am. The majority of the unfortunates whom I saw were unfortunate only because they had lost the ability, the desire, and the habit of earning their bread, that is, their misfortune consisted in being precisely such as I am.

Of unfortunates who could be aided at once, — sick, freezing, hungry people, — I did not find a single person but starving Agafya. I convinced myself that, with my aloofness from the lives of the people whom I wished to aid, it was almost impossible for me to find such unfortunate people, because every true need was always met by those very people among whom these unfortunates lived ; and, above all else, I was convinced that I was not able with money to change that unfortunate life which these people led. I was convinced of all that, but from a false shame I did not throw up my undertaking and, deceiving myself with my own virtue, I continued the matter for quite awhile, until it reduced itself to zero, until I with great difficulty, and with the aid of Ivan Fedotych, in the restaurant of Rzhanov House, got rid of the thirty-seven roubles which I did not consider my own.

Of course I might have continued this business and made of it a semblance of philanthropy; I might have pushed the people who had promised me the money to give it to me ; might have collected more; might have distributed the money and consoled myself with my virtue ; but I saw, on the one hand, that we rich people did not wish and were unable to apportion to the poor a part of our abundance (we have so many needs of our own), and that there was no one to give the money to, if we indeed wished to do good to people, and not merely to distribute money at haphazard, as I had done in the Rzhanov restaurant. So I abandoned the whole business, and with despair in my heart returned to the country.

In the country I wanted to write an article about everything I had experienced, and to tell why my undertaking had been a failure. I wanted also to justify myself in regard to the rebukes which were heaped upon me on account of my article on the census ; I wanted to arraign society for its indifference and to point out the causes which bred this urban poverty, and the necessity of counteracting it and the means which I saw must be adopted to do so.

I immediately began writing my article, and it seemed to me that I should say some important things in it. But, no matter how much I struggled with it, no matter how abundant the material was, the excitement, under the influence of which I wrote, and because I had not yet sufficiently emerged from the impression produced by it to be able to treat it in a direct manner, and, above all, because I did not yet simply and clearly recognize the cause of it all, a very simple cause, which had its root in me, — I was unable to make headway with the article and so did not finish it until the present year.

In the moral sphere there takes place a very remarkable, but little observed phenomenon.

If I tell a man, who does not know it, anything I know from geology, astronomy, history, physics, mathematics, he will acquire some new information and will never say, ” What is there about it that is new ? Everybody knows that, and I have known it for quite awhile; ” but impart to a man the highest moral truth, which is expressed in the clearest, most compact manner, as it has never been expressed before, and the average man, especially if he is not interested in these moral questions, or, more especially, if the moral truth which you utter strokes his fur the wrong way, will be certain to say, ” Who does not know this ? This is an old story and has been said long ago.” It actually seems to him that it was said long ago and in precisely this form. Only those who value and esteem the moral truths know how precious and valuable they are and by what long labour one obtains the simplification and elucidation of a moral truth, — its transition from a hazy, indefinitely conceived supposition and wish, from indefinite, incoherent expressions, to a firm and definite expression, which inevitably demands corresponding actions. We are all of us accustomed to think that moral teaching is a very base and tiresome thing, in which there can be nothing new or interesting, whereas the whole of human life, with all its complex and varied activities, which seem to be independent of morality, in the fields of politics, science, art, has no other purpose than a greater and ever greater elucidation, confirmation, simplification, and accessibility of moral truths.

I remember one day I walked down a street in Moscow, and saw a man coming out of a shop and carefully scanning the stones of the sidewalk ; then he selected one of them, sat down on it, and began (as I thought) to chip it off or rub it with the greatest tension and effort.

« What is he doing to the sidewalk ? ” I thought. When I walked up close to him, I saw what the man was doing ; he was a fellow from a butcher shop ; he was whetting his knife against the stones of the sidewalk. He had not been thinking of the stones at all when he looked at them, and still less was he thinking of them while doing his work, — he was simply whetting his knife. He had to sharpen his knife to cut meat with it ; and there I thought that he was busy doing something to the stones.

Even so it only seems that humanity is busy with commerce, treaties, wars, sciences, arts ; but there is only one work which is of importance to humanity, and which it does : it is explaining to itself the moral laws by which it lives. The moral laws have existed before, and humanity only elucidates them to itself, and this elucidation seems unimportant and insignificant to him who does not need the moral law, who does not want to live by it. But this elucidation of the moral law is not only the chief, but also the only work of the whole of humanity. This elucidation is as unnoticeable as the distinction between a dull and a sharp knife. The knife is a knife, and for him who does not have to cut with this knife the distinction between a dull and a sharp knife is not noticeable. But for him who has comprehended that his whole life depends on a more or less dull or sharp knife, every whetting of it is of importance, and he knows that there is no end to this sharpening, and that a knife is a knife only when it is sharp, when it cuts what it is necessary to cut.

This happened with me when I began to write the article. It seemed to me that I knew everything, comprehended everything in respect to those questions which the impression of Lydpinski House and of the census had evoked in me ; but when I attempted to make them clear to myself and to expound them, it turned out that the knife would not cut, that it was necessary to sharpen it. Only now, after three years, did I feel that my knife was sufficiently sharpened to let me cut what I wanted. I had learned little that was new. All my thoughts are

the same, but they were duller, dispersed easily, and did not harmonize ; there was no sting in them ; they did not reduce themselves to the simplest and clearest resolve, as they do now.

XIII.

I remember how during the whole time of my unsuccessful experiment in aiding the unfortunate city dwellers I felt like a man who wants to pull another out of the mire, while he himself is standing on boggy ground. Every effort of mine made me feel the insecurity of the soil on which I was standing. I felt that I was myself in the bog ; but that consciousness did not cause me then to look more closely underneath me, in order that I might find out what I was standing on ; I kept all the time looking for an external means for succouring the evil which was outside of me.

I then felt that my life was bad and that it was impossible to live so. But from the fact that my life was bad and that it was impossible to live so, I did not deduce the very simple and clear conclusion that it was necessary to improve my own life and live better, but, on the contrary, drew the strange conclusion that it was necessary to correct the lives of others in order that I might be able to live better, — and so I began to correct the lives of others. I lived in the city and wanted to improve the lives of those who lived in the city, but I soon convinced myself that I could not do it at all, and began to think about the peculiarities of city life and city poverty.

” What is this city life and this city poverty ? Why could I not, while living in the city, help the city poor ? ” I asked myself. And I answered myself that I was unable to do anything for them, in the first place, because there were too many of them in one spot : in the second

place, because all these poor were quite different from the village poor. Why were there so many of them here, and in what did they differ from the village poor? There was one answer to both these questions. There were many of them here, because all those who have nothing to live on in the country gather here around the rich, and their peculiarity consists in this, that they are all people who have left the country in order to find a living in the city (if there are city poor who are born here, and whose fathers and grandfathers were born here, these fathers and grandfathers had come to the city to make a living).

What is meant by the expression ” to make a living in the city ” ? In the words ” to make a living in the city ” there is something strange, something resembling a jest, when you come to think of it. What ? Away from the country, that is, away from the places where there are forests, and fields, and grain, and cattle, — where the whole wealth of the land is, — do these people go to make a living in a place where there are no trees, nor grass, nor even soil, but only stones and dust ? What, then, is meant by the words ” to make a living in the city,” which are so constantly employed by those who make a living and by those who feed them, as something quite clear and comprehensible ?

I remember all the hundreds and thousands of city people, — both those who live well and those who are in need,— with whom I spoke about their coming thither, and all without exception told me that they came here from the country to make a living ; that Moscow neither sows nor reaps, but has wealth in heaps ; that there was plenty of everything in Moscow and that, therefore, they could only in Moscow gain the money which they needed in the country for bread, for their home, for a horse, for objects of prime importance. But the source of all wealth is in the country, — only there is the true wealth to be found, — bread, and the forest, and horses, and everything else. Why, then, go to the city in order to obtain what there is in the country ? And why, above all else, carry from the country to the city what the villagers need,— flour, oats, horses, cattle ?

I have spoken hundreds of times about it with peasants living in the city, and it became clear to me, from my conversations with them and from my observations, that the crowding of the country population in the cities was partly necessary, because they cannot otherwise earn a livelihood, and partly voluntary, and that the temptations of the city attract them thither. It is true that the condition of the peasant is such that, in order to satisfy the demands winch are made on him in the village, he cannot get along in any other way than by selling the grain and the cattle which, he knows, he will need, and so he is compelled against his will to go to the city in order to redeem his grain. But it is also true that the comparatively easier earnings and the luxury of life in the city attract him thither, and that, under the guise of making a living in the city, he goes there, in order to work less laboriously and eat better, to drink tea three times a day, to play the dandy, and even to get drunk and live a riotous life.

The cause of both is one and the same : the passing of the wealth of the producers into the hands of the nonproducers and the accumulation of the wealth in the cities. Indeed, the autumn comes, and all the wealth is hoarded in the village ; immediately there present themselves the demands of taxation, of military service, of rentals ; immediately there are put forth the temptations of vodka, weddings, holidays, petty traders, who travel from village to village, and of many other things ; and in one way or another all this wealth in the most varied forms — sheep, calves, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, eggs, butter, hemp, flax, rye, oats, buckwheat, peas, hemp and flax seeds — passes into the hands of strangers and is transferred to the

cities, and from the cities to the capitals. The villager is compelled to give it all up in order to satisfy the demands made on him and the temptations that entice him, and, having given up all his wealth, he is left in arrears ; he is compelled to go to where his wealth has been taken, and there he partly tries to recoup the money which he needs for his first wants in the country, and partly, being carried away by the temptations of the city, enjoys, with others, the accumulated wealth.

Everywhere, in the whole of Russia, and, 1 think, not only in Russia, but in the whole world as well, the same tiling takes place. The wealth of the country population passes into the hands of traders, landowners, officials, manufacturers, and the men who have acquired this wealth want to enjoy it ; but it is only in the cities that they can fully enjoy it. In the country it is, in the first place, impossible, on account of the thinness of the population, to find a gratification for all the wants of rich people : they miss all kinds of shops, banks, restaurants, theatres, and all kinds of social amusements. In the second place, one of the chief enjoyments furnished by wealth — vanity, the desire to startle and outdo others — can again, on account of the thinness of the population, be with difficulty gratified in the country. In the country there are no connoisseurs of luxury, and there is nobody to startle. No matter what adornments of the house, what pictures, bronzes, carriages, and toilets the country dweller may provide himself with, there is no one to look at them and envy him, for the peasants have no understanding about this whole matter. In the third place, luxury is even disagreeable and dangerous in the country for a man who has a conscience and fear. It is awkward and troublesome to take milk baths in the country and to feed puppies on milk, when the children near by have none ; it is awkward and troublesome to build pavilions and set out gardens among people who live in cabins which are surrounded by manure, and cannot be heated for want of wood. In the village there is no one to keep in restraint the stupid peasants who in their ignorance may destroy all this.

And so the rich gather in one place and settle near other rich people with similar wants in the cities, where the gratification of all kinds of luxurious tastes is cautiously guarded by a numerous police force. The fundamental city dwellers are the officials of the country ; about them are grouped all kinds of professionals and industrialists, and these are joined by the rich. Here a rich man need only have a wish, and it is immediately fulfilled. Here it is pleasanter for a rich man to live, for this reason also, that here he is able to satisfy his vanity, for he can vie in his luxury with others, and can startle and overshadow people. Above all else, a rich man feels happier in the city for this reason also, that before he had fears on account of his luxury in the country, but now, on the contrary, he feels out of place if he does not live as luxuriously as all his friends around him. What in the country seemed terrible and awkward to him, here seems to be in place.

The rich congregate in the city, and here, under the protection of the authorities, use up everything which is brought hither from the country. The villager is partly obliged to go where the unceasing holiday of the rich is celebrated, and where that which is taken from him is used up, in order that he may feed on the crumbs which fall from the tables of the rich ; and partly, as he looks at the free and easy, elegant, well-guarded life of the rich, which is approved of by everybody, he himself wants to arrange his life in such a way as to work least and enjoy most the labours of others.

And so he, too, is drawn to the city, where he hangs on to the rich, trying in every manner possible to get away from them what he needs, and submitting to all those conditions in which the rich have placed him. He contributes to the gratification of all their lusts ; he or she serves the rich man in the bath-house, and in the restaurant, and as a driver, and as a prostitute, and makes carriages for him, and toys, and fashion articles, and by degrees learns of the rich man to live like him, not by labour, but by all kinds of tricks, cheating others of their hoarded wealth, — and he becomes corrupted and perishes. It is this population, which is corrupted by the city wealth, that forms the city poverty, which I intended to assist, but could not.

Indeed, it is enough for one to stop and think of the condition of these country dwellers, who, for the purpose of earning money for bread and for the taxes, come to the city where they see all about them thousands slung thoughtlessly away and hundreds earned in a very easy manner, while they themselves earn kopeks by the hardest labour possible, — in order that one may marvel why there are still left working people, and why they do not all of them take to a much easier way of making money, by means of commerce, peddling, begging, debauch, rascality, and even robbery.

AVe, indeed, the participants in the unceasing orgy which takes place in the cities, we are able to get used to our life, so that it seems quite natural for us to live alone in five enormous rooms, which are heated with a quantity of wood sufficient to cook the food of twenty families, and to warm them, to travel half a verst with two trotters and two servants, to cover the parquetry floor with rugs, and to spend five and ten thousand for a ball, and twenty-five for a Christmas tree, and so forth. But a man who needs ten roubles for bread for his family, or from whom they take the last sheep for the seven roubles of his taxes, and who cannot earn these seven roubles by hard labour even, cannot get used to it.

We imagine that all this appears natural to poor people; there even are naïve people who say seriously that the poor are very thankful to us for supporting them through our luxury. But the poor are not deprived of human intelligence because they are poor, and they judge precisely as we do. Even as we, on hearing that such and such a person has lost in cards, or wasted ten or twenty thousand, think at first thought what a foolish and worthless man he is to have uselessly squandered such a sum, and how we might have made excellent use of it for our building, which we have been needing for quite awhile, or for the improvement of the estate, and so forth, — so the poor judge, when they see the wealth recklessly thrown about; and they are the more persistent in their reflections since they do not need the money for any fancies, but for the gratification of their daily needs, of which they are deprived. We are very much in error if we think that the poor can judge thus and yet look with indifference on the luxury which surrounds them.

They have never acknowledged the fact that it is right for one set of people to be celebrating all the time, while others are all the time fasting and working ; at first they are surprised at it and feel offended, but later they examine it more closely and, seeing that this order of things is considered legitimate, they try to free themselves from labour, and to take part in the holiday. Some succeed in it, and they become just such eternal celebrators ; others slowly make their way toward this state ; others give way before reaching their goal and, having lost the habit of working, fill the resorts of prostitution and the doss-houses.

Two years ago we took a peasant lad from the country to work in the buffet-room. He had a disagreement with the lackey, and was discharged ; he entered the service of a merchant, where he managed to please his master, and now he sports a vest and a chain and foppish boots. In his place we engaged another peasant, a married man ; he went on a spree and lost his money. We took a third man : he, too, took to drinking and, having spent every kopek, for a long time suffered misery in a doss-house. Our old cook got drunk in the city, and fell sick. Last year our lackey, who used to drink without let-up, but who for five years had kept himself straight in the country, without as much as touching liquor, went on a spree, and ruined his whole life. A young lad from our village is a servant of my brother’s buffet-room. His grandfather, a blind old man, came to me, during my stay in the country, and asked me to influence his grandchild to send him ten roubles for the taxes, for otherwise he would have to sell his cow.

“He keeps saying that he has to dress decently ; well, let him get a pair of boots, and let there be an end of it. Or is he going to provide himself with a watch, too ? ” said the old man, meaning to express as senseless a proposition as possible by it. The proposition was, indeed, senseless, if we know that the old man had prepared his food without butter during the whole of Lent, and that the wood which he had cut was being ruined, because he lacked one rouble and twenty kopeks to pay for it in full ; but it turned out that the senseless jest of the old man was a reality. The lad came to inc in an overcoat of fine black cloth and in boots for which he had paid eight roubles. The other day he took ten roubles from my brother and spent them all on boots. My children, who had known the lad since childhood, informed me that he regarded it indeed as necessary to provide himself with a watch. He is a very good lad, but he thinks that they will laugh at him so long as he does not procure a watch. And he must have the watch.

This year our chambermaid, a girl of eighteen years of age, entered into a liaison with the coachman. She was discharged. An old nurse, with whom I spoke of this unfortunate girl, reminded me of another girl, whom I had forgotten. She, too, had ten years before entered into a liaison with a coachman of ours ; she, too, had been discharged, and ended up in a house of prostitution, dying, before she had reached the age of twenty, in a hospital from the effect of syphilis. We need but look around us in order to get frightened at the infection which, to say nothing of the factories and manufacturing plants that also serve our luxury, we by our luxurious life directly disseminate among those people whom we wish to help.

And so, as I grasped the peculiarity of the city poverty, to which I was unable to offer any assistance, I saw that its first cause was this, that I took everything necessary away from the village dwellers and transferred it all to the city. The second cause was this, that here, in the city, where I made use of what I had collected in the country, I with my reckless luxury tempted and corrupted those country dwellers who came here in my track, in order somehow to get back what was taken from them in the village.

XIV.

I came to the same conclusion from an entirely different side. As I recalled all my relations with the city paupers at this time, I saw that one of the causes which kept me from aiding the city poor was this, that the poor were insincere and untruthful to me. They all looked upon me, not as a man, but as a means. I was not able to get in closer touch with them and, perhaps, I did not know how to; but without truthfulness aid was impossible. How could a man be aided if he did not tell everything about his situation ? At first I reproached them for it (it is so natural to reproach others), but one word of a remarkable man, namely, of Syutaev, who was staying at my house at that time, made the whole matter clear to me and showed wherein lay the cause of my failure.

I remember that even then the word uttered by Syutdev struck me forcibly ; but only much later did I grasp its whole meaning. It was during the full heat of my selfdeception. I was sitting at my sister’s, where Syutaev was also. My sister asked me about my undertaking. I told her about it and, as is always the case when a man does not believe in his own undertaking, I told her with much fervour, enthusiasm, and eloquence about what I was doing, and what might come of it ; I told her how we were going to look after orphans and old people; how we would send out of town such of the country dwellers as had fallen into straits in Moscow ; how we would make it easy for the corrupt to mend their ways ; how, if the matter would go at all, there would not be a man in Moscow who would be unable to get assistance.

My sister sympathized with me, and we went on talking. During the conversation I cast glances at Syutaev. As I knew his Christian life and the significance which is ascribed to charity, I expected him to sympathize with me, and I spoke in such a way that he might understand me ; I talked to my sister, but my words were directed at him. He sat motionless in his black-tanned sheepskin coat, which, like all peasants, he wore outside and in the house, and did not seem to be listening to us, but only thinking. His little eyes were not glistening, but seemed to be turned inward. Having talked quite awhile, I turned to him with the question what he thought about it.

” It’s all nonsense,” he said.

« Why ? “

” Your whole society is foolish, and no good will come from it,” he repeated, with conviction.

“ Why not ? Why is it foolish to help thousands, or say hundreds, of unfortunates? Is it bad according to the Gospel to clothe the naked and feed the hungry ? “

” I know, I know, but you are not doing the right thing. Do you suppose you can do anything this way ? You are walking, and a man asks you for twenty kopeks. You give them to him. Is that an alms ? Give him a spiritual alms, instruct him ; but what did you give him ? Oh, just something to get rid of him.”

” No, you do not understand me right. We want to find out where there is want, and then help with money and with deeds, — and to find work for them.”

” You will do nothing for the people in this manner.”

” Well, shall they starve and freeze to death ? ”

” Why should they ? Are there many of them here ? ”

« Are there many ? ” I said, thinking that he was looking so lightly at the matter because he did not know what an immense number there was of these people. “Do you know,” I said, “ that there are some twenty thousand of these starving and freezing people in Moscow ? And then, in St. Petersburg and other cities.”

He smiled.

” Twenty thousand ! and how many farms are there in Russia ? Will there be a million of them ? “

” What of it ? “

“What of it?” and his eyes sparkled, and he became enlivened. “ Well, let us consider the matter. I am not a rich man, but I will take two of them. You took a lad to the kitchen ; I invited him to go with me, but he would not. Even if there were ten times as many, we could manage them. You and I will take them. We will go to work together : he will see me work and will learn how to Eve, and we shall sit down to eat at the same table, and he will hear a good word from me or you. This I call charity, but that society of yours is all nonsense.”

These simple words startled me. I could not help but acknowledge the justice of his words, but it then seemed to me that, in spite of this justice, my undertaking might still be useful. But the farther 1 carried on this matter, the more I came in contact with the poor, the more frequently did I recall these words and the greater was the meaning which they began to have for me.

Indeed, I arrive in an expensive fur coat or am brought there in my own carriage, or he sees my two-thousand-rouble apartments, while he needs a pair of boots ; or he will see me give somebody five roubles without giving any thought to it, merely because 1 wanted to do so ; he knows that, if I give roubles in such a fashion, I do so because I have collected such a lot of them that I have many more, which I not only do not give to anybody, but have with ease taken away from others. What else can he see in me but one of those men who have taken possession of what ought to belong to him ? What other feeling can he have for me but the desire to get out of me as many as possible of these roubles, which I have taken away from him and from others? I want to become more closely acquainted with him, and I complain that he is not sincere ; but I, to tell the truth, am afraid to sit down on his bed for fear of becoming infested with lice or catching a disease, and am afraid to admit him to my room, when he comes to my house half-naked and waits, not even in the antechamber, but in the vestibule. And I say that it is his fault that I cannot come closer to him, and that he is not sincere.

Let the most cruel of men try to eat a good meal of five courses in the company of men who have eaten little or who eat nothing but black bread. Not one of them will have enough courage to eat, and to look at the hungry persons with their mouths watering. Consequently to be able to eat with pleasure amidst those who do not get enough to eat, the first duty is to hide from them and to eat in such a way that they may not see it. This is precisely what, before anything else, we actually do.

And so I looked more simply at our life, and I saw that a closer communion with the poor was not accidentally more difficult for us, but that we intentionally arranged our life in such a way as to make this communion difficult.

More than this : looking from one side at our life, at the life of the rich, I noticed that everything which is regarded as a good in this life consists in this, or is at least inseparably connected with this, that we should as much as possible segregate ourselves from the poor. Indeed, all the striving of our life of wealth, beginning with our food, our attire, our housing, our purity, and ending with our education, — everything has for its main purpose a segregation from the poor. And on this segregation and separation by impassable walls from the poor at least nine-tenths of all our wealth is wasted. The first thing a man grown rich does is to stop eating out of the same bowl, — he gets all kinds of appliances and separates himself from the kitchen and from the servants.

He feeds his servants well, so that their mouths shall not water over his savoury food, but he eats by himself ; but, as it is tiresome to eat alone, he invents things that may improve the food and beautify the table, and the mere nutrition (the dinners) become for him a matter of vanity and of pride; and the reception of food becomes for him a means for segregating himself from the rest of the people. It is unthinkable for a rich man to invite a poor man to his table. A man has to know how to take a lady to the table, how to bow, sit, eat, wash the mouth, and it is only the rich who know all this.

The same takes place with the wearing apparel. If a rich man wore simple garments, which only protected the body against the cold, — short or long fur coats, felt or leather boots, a peasant coat, pantaloons, shirts, — he would need very little, and he could not help, if he had two fur coats, but give one to him who had none ; but the rich man begins by having made for himself wearing apparel that consists of several parts and is good only for certain occasions, and so is of no use to the poor man. He has dress coats, vests, sack coats, patent leather boots, capes, shoes with French heels, garments that for the sake of fashion are cut up into small pieces, hunting coats and travelling ulsters, and so forth, which can be put to use only in a condition removed from poverty. Thus the wearing apparel also becomes a means for segregating oneself from the poor. Fashion makes its appearance, that is, that which separates the rich from the poor.

The same, but still more clearly, is to be seen in the matter of the domicile. In order to live alone in ten rooms, it is necessary that this be not seen by those who live ten at a time in one room. The richer a man is, the more difficult it is to get access to him, the more porters there are between him and the needy, and the less possible it is to take a poor man over his carpets and seat him in velvet chairs. The same is true in the matter of locomotion. A peasant who is travelling in a car or sledge must be very cruel not to give a passer-by a ride, — he has both the room and the possibility for it. But the more elegant the carriage is, the farther it is removed from the possibility of giving anybody a ride. There is even a saying about very foppish carriages being egotists.

The same is true of the whole manner of life, which is expressed by the word cleanliness.

Cleanliness ! Who does not know people, especially women, who regard this cleanliness as a high virtue? And who does not know the extravagancies of this cleanliness, which has no limits, when it is attained by other people’s work? What man who has grown rich has not experienced in his own person with what difficulty he has acquired this cleanliness, which only confirms the proverb, ” White hands love other people’s woik ? “

To-day cleanliness consists in changing your shirt every day ; to-morrow it will have to be changed twice a day. To-day it is the neck and the hands that are to be washed every day ; to-morrow it will be the feet, and another day the whole body, and at that with a particular kind of rubbing down. To-day it is a table-cloth for two days, to-morrow it will be one a day, and another time two a day. To-day the lackey’s hands should be clean ; to-morrow he is to wear gloves and to hand a letter on a clean tray, wearing clean gloves. There is no limit to this useless cleanliness, except to segregate one from the rest and to make communion with them impossible so long as this cleanliness is attained through the labour of other people.

Moreover, when I grasped it all, I became convinced that what in general is called education is also the same. Language does not deceive: it calls by the right name what people understand by this name. The masses understand by education a fashionable dress, a polite conversation, clean hands, — cleanliness of a certain character. Of such a man they say, in contradistinction from the rest, that he is an educated man. In the circle a little more cultured than the masses the same is understood by education, but to its conditions they add playing on the piano, the knowledge of French, the writing of a Russian letter without orthographical mistakes, and a still greater external cleanliness. In the next higher circle they mean by it the same with the addition of the English language and of a diploma from a higher institution of learning, and a still higher degree of cleanliness. But in all three cases the education is essentially the same. Education is those forms and that knowledge which are to segregate a man from the rest. Its aim is the same as that of cleanliness, — to separate a person from the mass of the poor, in order that they, the starving and the freezing, may not see us celebrate. But it is impossible for us to conceal ourselves, and they see.

And so I became convinced that the cause which made it impossible for us rich men to help the city paupers also lay in the impossibility of our communion with them, and that we ourselves made it impossible to commune with them by the whole life which we lead, by the use to which we put our wealth. 1 became convinced that between us, the rich, and the poor there had been raised by us a wall of cleanliness and of education, which our wealth has reared, and that, to be able to aid the poor, we must first of all destroy the wall and make possible the application of Syutdev’s method, — distributing the poor. And thus I came from another side to the same inference to which I had been brought by the train of my thought concerning the causes of the city poverty : the cause lay in our wealth.

XV.

I began to analyze the matter from a third, a purely personal, side. Among the number of the phenomena which struck me particularly during this time of my philanthropic activity, there was a very strange one for which I could not for a long time find any explanation. It was this : every time I had a chance in the street or at home to give to a pauper, without talking with him, some small coin, I saw, or I thought I saw, joy and gratitude expressed on the poor man’s face, and I myself experienced a pleasant sensation in connection with this form of philanthropy. I saw that I did what the man wanted and expected of me. But if I stopped to talk with the poor man, sympathetically asking him about his former and his present life, and more or less entered into the details of his life, I felt that I could no longer give him three or twenty kopeks, and began to rummage in my purse, doubting how much to give. I always gave more and always saw that the poor man went away from me dissatisfied. But if I entered into still closer communion with the poor man, I was in still greater perplexity as to how much to give, and, no matter how much 1 gave, the poor man grew more gloomy and more dissatisfied.

As a general rule it always turned out that if, after a closer contact with a poor man, I gave him three roubles or more, I nearly always saw gloom, dissatisfaction, and even resentment on the face of the man, and it sometimes happened that he took ten roubles and went away, without as much as thanking me for it, as though I had offended him. On such occasions I always felt ill at ease, and ashamed, and guilty. But if I watched a poor man for weeks, months, and years, aiding him and expressing my views to him, and keeping in close contact with him, my relations with him nearly always became a torment, and I saw that the poor man hated me. And I felt that he was right.

If I walk down the street, and he, standing in the street, asks me, among the number of other passers-by, for three kopeks, and I give them to him, I am for him a passer-by, and a good passer-by at that, one of those who give a thread out of which the naked man’s shirt is formed ; he is not expecting anything more than a thread, and if I give it to him, he is sincerely grateful to me. But if I stop to talk with him, as with a man, and show him that I want to be more than a passer-by to him ; if, as has frequently happened, he weeps, as he tells me his woe, he no longer sees in me a passer-by, but what I want him to see in me, — a good man. And if I am a good man, my goodness cannot stop at two dimes, nor at ten roubles, nor at ten thousand. It is impossible to be a good man just a little.

Let us suppose that I have given him a great deal, that I have fixed him up, clothed him, put him on his feet, so that he is able to live without another person’s aid ; but for some reason or other, whether from misfortune, or from weakness, or from viciousness, he again lacks an overcoat, and underwear, and the money which I gave him, and he is again freezing and starving, and he again comes to me, — why shall I refuse him ? If the cause of my activity consisted in obtaining a certain material aim, — in giving him so many roubles or such and such an overcoat, I could give that to him, and feel satisfied ; but the cause of my activity is not this : the cause is that I want to be a good man, that is, I want to see myself in every other man. Every man understands kindness in tins manner, and not otherwise. And so, if he has twenty times squandered what you have given him, and he is again freezing and starving, and you are a good man, you cannot help but give him some again, and you cannot stop giving him, if you have more than he has. But if you back out, you show by this that everything you did, you did not because you are a good man, but because you wanted to appear as a good man before all men and before him.

And it was with such people, when I had to back out and stop giving, and thus renounce the good, that I experienced agonizing shame.

What was this shame ? This shame I had experienced in Lyapinski House, and before and after that in the country, whenever I had occasion to give money or something else to the poor, and during my visits to the city poor.

Λ case of shame which lately happened with me reminded me and elucidated to me the causes of the shame which I used to experience when giving money to the poor.

This happened in the country. I needed twenty kopeks to give them to a pilgrim ; I sent my son to borrow them from some one; he took two dimes to the pilgrim, and told me that he had borrowed them from the cook. A few days later other pilgrims came, and 1 again needed twenty kopeks; I had a rouble; 1 recalled my owing the cook twenty kopeks, and went to the kitchen, in the hope that the cook would have some more change. I said to him :

” I borrowed two dimes from you, so here is a rouble.”

Before I had finished speaking, the cook called his wife from the adjoining room.

” Parasha, take it,” he said.

Assuming that she understood what I needed, I gave her the rouble. I must say that the cook had lived about a week in our house, and I had seen his wife, though I had never spoken to her. I was on the point of saying to her that I wanted change for it, when she made a rapid motion toward my hand, intending to kiss it, no doubt on the supposition that I was giving her the rouble. I muttered something and left the kitchen. I felt ashamed, painfully ashamed, as I had not felt for a long time. I had a griping pain, and I felt that I was making faces, and I groaned from shame, as I ran out of the kitchen. This, as I thought, undeserved and unexpected shame startled me, more especially since I had not felt any shame for a long time and because I, as an old man, was living, as I thought, in such a way as not to deserve such shame. I was ver)’ much startled by it. I told this to my family, and to my friends, and all agreed that they would have experienced the same. I began to wonder why I had felt ashamed. An incident which had happened to me in Moscow gave an answer to it.

I reflected on this incident, and I found an explanation for the shame which I had experienced with the cook’s wife, and all those sensations which I had experienced during my Moscow philanthropic activity, and which I now experience every time when I have to give to people something beyond that small pittance to mendicants and pilgrims which I am in the habit of giving and consider the work not of charity, but of decency and politeness. If a man asks you for fire, you must light a match for him, if you have one. If a man asks you for three or for twenty kopeks, or even for several roubles, you must give him that sum, if you have it. This is a matter of politeness, and not of charity.

Here is a case : I have already spoken of the two peasants with whom I used to saw wood two years ago. One Saturday evening, as it was getting dark, I went with them into the city. They were going to their master to receive their wages. As we approached Dragomflov Bridge we met an old man. He asked for an alms, and I gave him twenty kopeks. As I gave them to him, I reflected on how well this must affect Semén, with whom I had spoken of divine things. Semen, that Vladimir peasant, who had a wife and two children in Moscow, himself stopped, turned aside the skirt of his caftan, took out his purse, rummaged in it awhile, and fetched out three kopeks, which he gave to the old man, asking him to give him back two kopeks.

The old man showed him two three-kopek coins and one one-kopek coin. Semen looked at these, and was on the point of taking the kopek, but changed his mind, took off his cap, made the sign of the cross, and went on, leaving the three kopeks with the old man. I knew all about Semén’s financial condition : he had neither a house, nor any property. Up to the day on which he gave those three kopeks he had earned six roubles and fifty kopeks. Consequently six roubles and fifty kopeks represented all his savings. My savings were approximately equal to six hundred thousand roubles. 1 had a wife and children, so had Semén. He was younger than I, and had fewer children ; but his children were little, while I had two of working age, so that our situations, outside of our savings, were the same, — I may say mine was a little more favourable. He gave three kopeks, I gave twenty. What did he give, and what did I give ? What ought I to have done in order to equal Semén ? He had six hundred kopeks ; he gave away one of them, and then two more. I had six hundred thousand roubles. In order to give the same as Semén gave, I ought to have given three thousand roubles, and have asked back two thousand roubles, and, if I could get no change, to have left also these two thousand roubles with the old man, made the sign of the cross, and walked on, talking peacefully about how factory hands live, and how much liver is worth in Smolénsk Market. I thought about the matter then and there, but it was only much later that I drew from this incident the conclusion which inevitably follows from it. This deduction seems so unusual and strange that, in spite of its mathematical accuracy, it takes time to get used to it. One cannot help thinking that there must be some mistake about it, but there is no mistake. There is only a terrible darkness of errors, in which we live.

This conclusion, the moment I arrived at it, and recognized its accuracy, explained to me my feeling of shame in the presence of the cook’s wife and of all the poor to whom I gave money.

Indeed, what is all that money which I give to the poor, and which the cook’s wife thought that I was giving to her ? In the majority of cases it is such a small fraction that it is not even possible to express it intelligibly for Semén and the cook’s wife, — it is generally a millionth, or something like it. I give so little that my giving of money is not, and cannot a deprivation for me ; it is only a pastime which amuses me whenever and however I please. Even so did the cook’s wife understand me. If I give a man from the street a rouble or twenty kopeks, why should I not give her a rouble ? For the cook’s wife this giving of a rouble is the same as the throwing of gingersnaps among the people, in which gentlemen indulge : it is the amusement of people who have a lot of fool’s money. I felt ashamed because the mistake of the cook’s wife immediately showed me the view which she and all who are not well-to-do must have of me : ” He is throwing about fool’s money,” that is, money which he has not worked for.

Indeed, what is this money of mine, and how did I get possession of it ? Part of it I collected from the land which was left me by my father. The peasants sold their last sheep, or cow, in order to give me the money. Another part of my money is what I have received for my works, for writing books. If my books are harmful, they are being bought as a result of the offence which I have committed, and the money which I receive for it is ill-gotten ; but if my books are useful to people, the result is even worse. I do not give them to people, but say : ” Give me seventeen roubles, and I will let you have them.” And as in the other case, a peasant will sell his last sheep, so here a poor student, a teacher, a poor man will deprive himself of what he needs, in order to give me this money. Thus I have collected a lot of money, and what do I do with it ? I take this money to the city and give it to the poor only when they comply with my whims and come to the city to clean for me the sidewalks, the lamps, my boots, and to work for me in factories.

For this money I haggle with them for everything I want, that is, I try to give them as little as possible and to get as much as possible from them. Suddenly I begin without any premeditation, just for the fun of it, to give this same money to the poor, — not to all the poor, but only to those I take a fancy to. How can any poor man help but hype that, perhaps, it will be his luck to be one of those to whom I will take delight in giving away my fool’s money ? Thus all look upon me, and thus did the cook’s wife look at me.

I have been so dreadfully deluded that this taking of thousands with one hand from the poor, and slinging kopeks back to those to whom I take a fancy, I call doing good. AVhat wonder, then, that I felt ashamed ?

Yes, before doing good, I must myself stand outside of evil, and be in such a condition that I can stop doing evil. But my whole life is nothing but evil. If I give away one hundred thousand roubles I shall still fail to be in a situation where it is possible to do good, because I shall have five hundred thousand roubles left. Only when I shall have nothing left shall I be able to do a little good, if it be no more than what the prostitute did who for three days attended on the sick woman and her babe. And this had seemed so little to me ! And I dared to think of the good ! The first inkling I had at the sight of the starving and the freezing at Lyapinski House, as to my being guilty in the matter, and as to its being impossible, impossible, absolutely impossible, to live the way I lived, — this alone was the truth.

So what is to be done ? To this question, if any one needs an answer to it, I shall, God willing, give a detailed answer.

XVI.

It was hard for me to come to the recognition of this, hut when I came to it, I was horrified at the delusion in which I had lived. I was standing up to my ears in the mire and pretending to pull others out of it.

Indeed, what did I mean to do ? I want to do good to others, I want to see to it that men shall not suffer from hunger and from cold, — that they shall live as is proper for men.

This 1 want, and I see that in consequence of violence, extortions, and all kinds of tricks, in which I take part, the necessary things are taken away from the working classes, and that the leisure classes, to whom I belong, make superabundant use of the labours of other men.

I see that this enjoyment of other }»eople’s work is distributed in such a manner that, the more cunning and the more complicated the device which a man practises, or which he practised from whom he gets his inheritance, the more fully does he enjoy the labours of others and the less labour does he himself apply.

First come a Stieglitz, Derviz, Mordzov, Demidov, Yusupov, then the richer bankers, merchants, landed proprietors, officials; then the less wealthy bankers, merchants, officials, landed proprietors, to whom I belong; then the lower order of petty traders, innkeepers, usurers, officers of rural police, teachers, sextons, clerks ; then janitors, lackeys, coachmen, water-carriers, drivers, peddlers ; and finally the working people, factory hands and peasants, who stand in relation to the first as ten is to one.

I see that the life of nine-tenths of the working classes by its essence demands tension and work, like any natural life, but that in consequence of the devices which take the necessities away from these people and put them under oppressive conditions, this life is getting harder and fuller of privations from year to year ; but our life, the life of the men of leisure, thanks to the cooperation of the arts and of the sciences, which are directed to this aim, is getting from year to year more abundant, more attractive, and more secure. I see that in our day the life of the working men, especially of the old men, women, and children of the working population, is simply being ruined by the intensified work, which bears no relation to the nourishment received ; and that this life is not made secure even in its most elementary necessities ; and that, side by side with it, the life of the leisure class, of winch I am a member, is from year to year more and more filled with superabundance and luxury, and becomes more and more secure, and has, finally, in its favourites, to whom I belong, reached such a degree of security as anciently they dreamed about only in fairy tales, — the condition of the owner of the purse of the never-failing rouble, that is, a condition in which a man is not only completely freed from the law of labour for the support of life, but also acquires the ability without labour to enjoy all the benefits of life and to transmit to his children or to whom it may please him that purse with the never-failing rouble.

I see that the products of men’s labour pass more and more away from the mass of the labouring people to those who do not labour, and that the pyramid of the social structure seems to be built in such a way that the stones of the foundation are passing to the apex, the rapidity of this passage increasing in a certain geometric progression. I see that what is taking place is similar to what would take place in an ant-hill, if the society of the ants lost the feeling of the common law, if some of the ants should begin to transfer the products of labour to the top of the hill, narrowing down the base and widening the top, and thus compelling all the other ants to transfer themselves from the base to the top. I see that instead of the ideal of a life of labour there has risen before men the ideal of the purse with the never-failing rouble.

The rich, I among them, employ every device to confirm this state of the never-failing rouble, and to enjoy it, move to the city, where nothing is produced, but everything is swallowed up. The poor labouring man, who is fleeced in order that the rich man may have this magic, never-failing rouble, pushes to the city after him and there also takes up the devices, and either arranges for himself a condition in which he is able to make use of many things, with as little work as possible, thus only making harder the state of the labouring classes; or, without having reached this condition, he perishes or finds his way among the number of the starving and freezing inmates of the doss-houses, which is increasing with unusual rapidity.

I belong to the class of those people who by means of all kinds of devices take from the labouring classes the necessities, and who with these devices have created for themselves the magic never-failing rouble, which tempts these unfortunates. I want to aid the people, and so it is clear that, above all else, I must not fleece them, as I am doing now, and, on the other hand, I must not tempt them. But I, by aid of the most complex, cunning, evil devices, accumulated through the ages, have arranged for myself the condition of the proprietor of the never-failing rouble, that is, a condition in which I can, without doing any work myself, compel hundreds and thousands to work for me, as indeed I am doing ; and I imagine that I pity people and want to help them, ( J^am sitting on a man’s neck, choking him, and demanding that he carry me, and, without getting off him, I assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and want to alleviate his condition by all possible means except by getting ofl’ his neck.

And this is so simple. If 1 want to aid the poor, that is, to cause the poor not to be poor, I must not be productive of them. But as it is, I by my own choice give roubles, tens and hundreds of roubles, to the poor who have departed from the path of life ; and in place of these roubles I take away thousands from people who have not yet departed from this path, and thus make them poor and corrupt them even more.

That is very simple ; but it was terribly difficult for me to understand all this without any compromises and excuses, which might justify my condition. All I had to do was to recognize my guilt, and everything which before had appeared strange, complicated, obscure, insoluble, now became quite intelligible and simple. Above all else, the path of my life which resulted from this explanation, instead of being tangled, and insoluble and agonizing, as it had been before, became simple, clear, and agreeable.

Who am I, the one who wants to help people ? I want to help people, and I get up at noon, after a game of vint, with four candles on the table, all worn out and pampered, demanding the aid and service of hundreds of men, and I go to bring aid, — to whom ? To people who get up at five, sleep on boards, live on cabbage and bread, know how to plough, mow, fasten a helve, dress timber, hitch a horse, sew, — people who in strength, endurance, art, and abstemiousness are a hundred times stronger than I, and I come to aid them ! What else but shame could I have experienced when I entered into communion with these people ? The weakest of them, a drunkard, an inmate of Rzhânov House, whom they call a loafer, is a hundred times more industrious than I ; his balance, so to speak, that is, the relation of what he takes from people

and of what he gives to them, is a thousand times more favourable for him, if I consider what I take from people and what I give them.

And it is these people that I go out to help. I go to help the poor. Who is poor ? There is no one who is poorer than I am. I am a feeble, worthless parasite, who can exist only under the most exclusive of conditions, who can exist only if thousands will labour to support this worthless life. And I, the louse that devours the leaf of a tree, want to be instrumental in the growth and health of this tree and want to cure it.

This is the way I pass my whole life : I eat, talk, and listen ; I eat, write, or read, that is, again talk and listen ; I eat, I play ; I eat, talk again, and listen ; I eat and go to bed ; and thus it is every day, and I can do nothing else. And, in order that I may be able to do so, it is necessary for the janitor, the peasant, the scullion, the cook, the lackey, the coachman, the laundress to work from morning until evening, to say nothing of those labours of people which are necessary to furnish the coachmen, the cooks, the lackeys, and the rest with those tools and objects with which and over which they work for me, — the axes, barrels, brushes, dishes, furniture, glasses, blacking, coaloil, hay, wood, meat. And all these people work hard the whole day long and every day, in order that I may be able to talk, eat, and sleep. And I, this wretched man, imagine that I am able to help others and those very men who are supporting me.

What is surprising is not that I did not help any one and that I felt ashamed, but that such an insipid idea could have occurred to me. The woman who tended the sick old man helped him ; the peasant woman who cut oft* a slice from the bread which was got from the soil through labour helped the mendicant ; Semen who gave three kopeks from his earnings to the beggar helped the beggar, because these three kopeks actually represented his labour : but I had not served any one, had not worked for any one, and knew well that my money did not represent my labour.

And so I felt that in the money itself, in the possession of it, there was something base and immoral, and that the money itself and the fact that I had it was one of the chief causes of all the evils which I saw before me, and I asked myself : ” What is money ? “

XVII.

Money ! What is money ?

Money represents labour. I have met educated people who asserted that money represents also the labour of him who possesses it. I must confess that formerly I in some obscure manner shared this opinion. But I had to go to the bottom of what money was, and so, to find this out, I turned to science.

Science says that there is nothing unjust and prejudicial about money, that money is a natural condition of social life, — necessary: (1) for convenience of exchange, (2) for the establishment of measures of value, (3) for saving, and (4) for payments. The obvious phenomenon that, if I have in my pocket three superfluous roubles which are of no use to me, I need only to whistle in order to collect in every civilized city hundreds of men who are prepared for these three roubles to do at my will the hardest, most detested, and most humiliating work, is not due to money, but to very complex conditions of the economic life of the nations. The control exercised by one set of men over another is not due to money, but to this, that the labourer does not receive the full value of his labour ; and he does not get the full value of his labour on account of the properties of capital, interest, wages, and of the complex relations between them and between the production, distribution, and employment of wealth themselves.

To express myself in Russian fashion, it turns out that people who have money have the right to twist those who have no money into ropes. But science says that this is a different matter. Science says that in all kinds of productions three factors take part: land, stored-up labour (capital), and labour. From the different relations of these factors of production among themselves, — from the fact that the first two factors — land and capital — are not in the hands of the working men, but in those of other people, — from this and from the very complex combinations which arise from it there follows the enslavement of one set of men by another.

What is the cause of that monetary kingdom which startles us all by its injustice and cruelty ? Why does one set of people rule others by means of money ? Science says : this is due to the division of the factors of production and the consequent combinations, which oppress the labourer. This answer has always seemed strange to me, not only in that it leaves out one part of the question, namely, as regards the significance of money in the matter, — but also by that division of the factors of production, which to an unbiassed man always appears artificial and as not corresponding to reality.

It is asserted that in every production three factors take part, — land, capital, and labour, — and in this division it is understood that wealth (or its valuation,— money) is naturally subdivided among those who own this or that factor : the rent — the value of the land — belongs to the landowner, the interest to the capitalist, and the wages for the labour to the working man.

Is this true ? In the first place, is it true that three factors take part in every production ? Here, right about me, the production of hay is taking place, while I am writing this. Of what does this production consist? I am told : of the land which made the grass grow ; of the capital, — the scythes, rakes, forks, wagons, necessary for the making of the hay ; and of the labour. But I see that this is not true. In addition to the land, other factors take part in the production of the hay : the sun, the water, the social order, which kept this grass from being trespassed upon, the knowledge of the working men, their ability to speak and understand words, and many other factors of production, which for some reason are not recognized by political economy.

The power of the sun is just as much a factor of every production as the land, and even more necessary than the land. I can imagine the condition of people in which (say, in the city) one set of men assume the right to shut off the sun from others by means of walls or trees ; why is it not included among the factors of production ? Water is another factor, which is just as important as the land. The same is true of the air. I can again imagine people deprived of water and of fresh air, because other people arrogate to themselves the right to the exclusive possession of the water and the air which others need. Social security is another such factor; food and wearing apparel are for the working men just such factors of production, and this is acknowledged by certain economists. Education, the ability to speak, which gives the possibility of applying a different kind of work, is just such a factor.

I could fill a whole volume with such omitted factors of production. Why, then, have they chosen just those three factors and put them at the basis of science ? The sunlight and the water may, just like the land, be taken as separate factors of production ; the labourer’s food and wearing apparel, knowledge and its transmission may be taken as separate factors of production. Why are the sunbeams, the water, food, knowledge, not taken as separate factors of production, instead of only the land, the tools of labour, and the labour itself ? There can be no other reason than that only in rare cases do men lay claim to the right of using the sunbeams, water, air, food, and the right to speak and listen, whereas in our society people constantly lay claim to the use of the land and the tools of labour.

There is no other basis, and so I see, in the first place, that the division of the factors of production into three factors only is quite arbitrary and does not lie in the essence of things itself. But, perhaps, this division is so characteristic of men that where economic relations form themselves, these three, and only these three, factors of production are immediately pushed to the front. Let us see whether that is so.

I look at those nearest to me, the Russian colonists, of whom there are a million. The colonists come to some new land, settle down upon it, and begin to work, and it does not occur to any one that a man who does not make use of the land could claim any right to it, and the land does not claim any special rights ; on the contrary, the colonists consciously recognize the land as a common possession, and they consider it right for every man to mow and plough wherever he pleases and as much ground as he can take. The colonists procure the tools of labour for the working of the land, for the gardens, for the building of their houses, and it does not even occur to any one that the tools of labour can in themselves bring an income, nor does the capital lay claim to any privileges ; on the contrary, the colonists consciously recognize that all interest for the tools of labour, for grain loaned, for capital is unjust. The colonists work on free land with their own tools or with such as have been loaned to them without interest, each of them working for himself, or all together for the common good, and in such a commune it is impossible to find rents, or interest on capital or wages.

Speaking of such a commune I am not indulging in reveries, but am describing what has always taken place, not only in the case of the Russian colonists, but also everywhere so long as man’s natural quality has not been violated by anything. I am describing what to every man appears natural and sensible. People settle on the land, and each person takes hold of the work which is proper for him, and, having elaborated what he needs for his work, he does his own work. But if it is more convenient for people to work together, they form associations ; but neither in the farming in severalty, nor in the associations will the factors of production be separate, but there will be labour and the necessary conditions of labour : the sun which warms all ; the air which people breathe, the water which they drink, the land on which they work ; raiment on their bodies, food in their bellies ; the crowbar, the spade, the plough, the machine, with which they work,— and it is evident that neither the sunbeams, nor the air, nor the water, nor the earth, nor the raiment on their bodies, nor the crowbar, with which they work, nor the spade, nor the plough, nor the machine, with which they work in associations, can belong to any one but those who make use of the sunbeams, breathe the air, drink the water, eat the bread, cover their bodies, and work with their spades or machines, because all this is needed by those only who make use of it.

When people act in this manner, we all see that they act as is proper for men, that is, sensibly. And thus, as I observe the economic relations of men in the moment of their formation, I do not see that the division into three factors of production is proper to men. I see, on the contrary, that it is improper and senseless. But perhaps the division into three factors fails only in primitive human societies ; perhaps it is inevitable with the increase of the population and the evolution of civilization, and this division has taken place in European society, and we cannot help but acknowledge the accomplished fact.

Let us see whether this is so. We are told that in European society the division of the factors of production has taken place ; that is, that some people own the land, others the tools of labour, and others again are deprived both of the land and the tools of labour. The labourer is deprived of the land and of the tools of labour. We are so accustomed to this assertion that we are no longer startled by its strangeness. In this expression there is an inner contradiction. The concept of a labourer includes the concept of the land on which he lives, and of the tools with which he works. If he did not live on the land, and did not have any tools of labour, he would not be a labourer. There has never been, and there never can be, a labourer who is deprived of the land and of the tools of labour.

There cannot be a farmer without the land on which he works, nor without a scythe, a cart, a horse ; nor can there be a shoemaker without a house on the land, without the water, the air, and the tools of labour, with which he works. If a peasant has no land, no horse, and no scythe, and a shoemaker has no water and no awl, this means that some one has driven him off the land and has taken away from him or cheated him out of his scythe, his cart, his horse, his awl ; but it can nowise mean that there can be farmers without ploughs and shoemakers without tools. As a fisherman is unthinkable on the land and without his tackle unless some one has driven him off the water and has taken the tackle from him ; even so, it is impossible to think of a peasant, a shoemaker, without the land on which he lives, and without instruments of labour, unless, indeed, some one has driven him off the land and has taken the tools away from him.

There may be people who are driven from one plot of earth to another, and who have been deprived of their tools of labour, and who are forcibly compelled with other people’s tools of labour to produce objects which they do not need, but this does not mean that such is the property of the production, but only that there are cases when the natural property of production is violated. But if we accept as factors of production everything of which the labourer may be deprived by another through force, why should we not regard the claims to the slave’s person as a factor of production ? Why should we not regard the claims to the sun’s rays, to the air, to the water, as just such factors ?

There may appear a man who, building up a wall, will screen a man from the sun, or who will lead the river water into a pond and thus poison the water ; there may appear a man who will claim the whole man as bis chattel ; but neither pretension, even if it be put into execution through force, can be recognized as a basis for the division of the factors of production, and so it is just as incorrect to accept the imaginary right to the land and to the tools of labour as special factors of production, as to regard the imaginary right to the use of the sun’s rays, the air, the water, and the person of another man as special factors of production. There may be men who will lay claim to the land and to the tools of a man’s labour, just as there have been men who lay claim to the labourer’s person, and as there may be men who lay claim to the exclusive use of the sun, the water, the air ; there may be men who drive a labourer from place to place, and who by force take away from him the products of his labour as they are manufactured, and even the tools of his labour, and compel him to work for the master and not for himself, as is the case in the factories, — all that is possible : but there can still be no labourer without land and without tools, even as one man cannot be another man’s chattel, although people have asserted for a long time that he can be.

Just as the assertion of the right to another man’s property could not deprive a slave of his inborn property of seeking his own good, and not that of the master, even so now the assertion of the right to the possession of the land and to the tools of other people’s labour cannot deprive the labourer of each man’s innate right to live on the land and work with his own tools or with those of the commune, in order to produce what he considers useful for himself.

All that science, observing the present economic condition, can say is this, that there exist claims, which certain people lay to the land and the tools of working men’s labour, and in consequence of which, for a part of these working men (by no means all), the conditions of production characteristic of man are violated to such an extent that the labourers are deprived of the land and of the tools of labour and are driven to the use of other people’s tools of labour ; but nowise this, that this accidental violation of the law of production is itself the law of production.

In affirming that the division of the factors of production is the basic law of production, the economist does precisely what a zoologist would do, who, seeing a large number of siskins with clipped wings in little houses, should conclude from this that the little house and the small water-pail, winch is lifted on rails, are the most essential condition of the life of the birds, and that the life of the birds is composed of these three factors. No matter how many siskins with clipped wings there may be in little card houses, the zoologist cannot recognize the card houses as a natural quality of the birds. No matter how many labourers may be driven from their place and, deprived of the productions and the tools of their labour, the labourer’s natural property of living on the land and producing with his tools what he pleases will always be the same.

There are pretensions which some people have to the labourer’s land and tools of labour, even as in ancient times there existed the pretensions of some people to the persons of others ; but under no condition can there be a division of men into masters and slaves, such as they wished to establish in the ancient world, and there can under no conditions be a division of the factors of production into land and capital, such as the economists want to establish in modern society.

It is these illegal pretensions which some people have to the liberty of others that science calls natural properties of production. Instead of taking its bases in the natural properties of human societies, science took them in a specific case and, wishing to justify this specific case, recognized one man’s right to the land, which feeds another, and to the tools of labour, with which another works, that is, it recognized a right which never existed and never can exist, and which bears a contradiction in its very expression, because the right to the land claimed by a man who does not work on the land is in reality nothing but the right to make use of the land which I do not use ; and the right to the tools of labour is nothing, but the right to work with tools with which 1 do not work.

By its division of the factors of production, science affirms that the natural condition of the labourer is that unnatural condition in which he is ; just as in the ancient world they affirmed, in dividing people into citizens and slaves, that the unnatural condition of the slaves is a natural property of man. This division, which is accepted by science only in order to justify the existing evil, which is placed by it at the basis of all its investigations, has had this effect, that science tries in vain to give explanations of existing phenomena, and, denying the clearest and simplest answers to questions that present themselves to it, gives answers which are devoid of contents.

The question of economic science is as follows : What is the cause of this, that some men, who have land and capital, are able to enslave those who have no land and no capital ? The answer which presents itself to common sense is this, that it is due to the money, which has the power of enslaving people. But science denies this and says : This is not due to the property of money, but because some have land and capital, and others have not. We ask why people who have land and capital enslave those who have none, and we are told : Because they have land and capital. But that is precisely what we want to know. The privation of the land and of the tools of labour is that very enslavement. The answer is like this : Facit dormirc quia halet virtutem dormitivarii.

But life does not cease putting its essential question, and even science itself sees it and tries to answer it, but is absolutely unable to do so as long as it rests on its fundamental principles, and keeps moving about in its magic circle. In order to be able to do so, it must first of all renounce its false division of the factors of production, that is, the recognition of the consequences of phenomena as their causes, and must seek, at first the nearer, and then the more remote, cause of those phenomena which form the subject of its investigations. Science must answer the question as to what the cause is of the fact that some people are deprived of the land and of the tools of labour, while others own them, or, what cause produces the alienation of the land and of the tools of labour from those who work the land and employ the tools.

The moment science will put to itself this question, there will appear entirely new considerations, which will turn upside down all the propositions of the former quasiscience, which moves in a hopeless circle of assertions that the wretched condition of the labourer is due to its being wretched. To simple people it seems indubitable* that the nearest cause of the enslavement of one class of men by another is money. But science, denying this, says money is only an instrument of exchange which has nothing in common with the enslavement of people. Let us see whether this is so.

XVIII.

Whence does money come? Under what condition does a nation always have money, and under what conditions do we know nations who do not use money ?

A tribe lives in Africa, or in Australia, as anciently the Scythians or Drévlyans lived. The tribe lives, ploughing, raising cattle, planting gardens. We hear of it only when history begins ; but history begins with the incursion of conquerors. The conquerors always do one and the same thing : they take from the tribe everything they can, — its cattle, its grain, its stuffs, and even captives, and carry it all off. A few years later the conquerors return, but the tribe has not yet recovered from its desolation, and there is nothing to take away, so the conquerors invent another, a better method for exploiting the forces of this tribe.

These methods are very simple and occur naturally to all people. The first method is personal slavery. This method has the inconvenience of demanding the management of all the working forces of the tribe, and the feeding of all, and so there naturally presents itself a second method, — of leaving the tribe on its land, but recognizing it as belonging to the conquerors and distributing it to the retainers, in order to exploit the tribe’s labour through the retainers. But this method has also its inconveniences. The retainers have to look after all the productions of the tribe, and a third method, just as primitive as the first two, is introduced : it is the peremptory demand of a term tribute which the conquered have to pay.

The aim of the conquerors consists in taking from the conquered as many productions of their labour as possible. It is evident that, in order to be able to take as much as possible, the conqueror must take such objects as are of the highest value among the people of this tribe, and which, at the same time, are not bulky and inconvenient to store, — pelts, gold. And so the conquerors generally impose a term tribute in pelts or in gold on each family or gens, and by means of this tribute in the most convenient way exploit the tools of labour of this tribe. The pelts and the gold are nearly all taken from the tribe, and so the conquered have to sell to one another and to the conqueror and his retainers everything they have for Zold.

Precisely this took place in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, and is taking place now. In the ancient world, where one nation was frequently conquered by another, and where the consciousness of the human equality of men was absent, personal slavery was the most popular means of enslavement practised by one set of men against another, and in the personal slavery lay the centre of gravity of this enslavement. In the Middle Ages the feudal system, that is, the territorial possession which is connected with it, and the vassalage partially take the place of slavery, and the centre of gravity of enslavement is transferred from the person to the land. In modern times, since the discovery of America and the development of trade and the influx of gold, which is accepted as the universal money standard, the monetary tribute becomes, with the enforcement of the political power, the chief instrument for the enslavement of men, and upon it all the economic relations of men are based. In a volume of literary productions there is an article by Professor Yanzhul, which describes the latest history of the Fiji Islands. If I tried to invent a most telling illustration of how in our time the peremptory demand of money has become the chief instrument for the enslavement of one class of people by another, I could not discover one which would be more glaring and more convincing than this true story, which is based on documentary evidence and took place recently.

On certain islands of the South Sea. in Polynesia, there lives the Fiji nation. The whole group of the islands, says Professor Yanzhul, consists of tiny islands which approximately cover a territory of forty thousand square miles. Only half of the islands are inhabited, by a population of 150,000 natives and fifteen hundred whites. The natives have long since come out of their savage state, excel in ability all the other natives of Polynesia, and represent a nation capable of work and of development, which they have proved by having lately become good farmers and stock-raisers.

The inhabitants were prosperous, but in 1859 the new kingdom found itself in a desperate state. The people of the Fiji Islands and their representative, Cacabo, needed money. The sum of $45,000 was wanted by the Fiji kingdom, in order to pay a contribution or damages, which the United States of North America demanded for certain violence which, it was claimed, the Fijians had shown to some citizens of the American republic. For this purpose the Americans sent a squadron, which suddenly seized a few of the better islands as a pledge, and even threatened to bombard and destroy the colonies, if the contribution should not be handed to the representatives of America at a certain time.

The Americans were among the first colonists to appear, with the missionaries, in Fiji. Selecting or seizing, under one pretext or another, the best plots of ground on the islands, and there laying out cotton and coffee plantations, the Americans hired whole crowds of natives, binding them by contracts, which were not familiar to the savages, or acting upon them through especial contractors or purveyors of live chattel. Conflicts between such planters and the natives, upon whom they looked as slaves, were inevitable, and it was some of these that served as a cause for the demand of a contribution by America.

In spite of its prosperity, Fiji has almost down to our time preserved the so-called system of payment in kind, which in Europe was current only in the Middle Ages. No money was in circulation among the natives, and the whole commerce had exclusively the character of barter ; commodity was exchanged for commodity, and the few public and governmental levies were made in country produce. What were the Fijians and their king Cacabo to do, when the Americans categorically demanded $45,-000, under threat of the most summary consequences in case of their non-compliance ? For the Fijians the figure itself was something inaccessible, to say nothing of the money, which they had never seen in such a large sum.

Cacabo took counsel with the other chiefs, and decided to turn to the Queen of England. At first he asked her to take the islands under her protection, and later simply to annex them. But the English were cautious in reply to this request, and were in no hurry to rescue the semi-savage monarch from his difficulty. Instead of a direct answer, they fitted out a special expedition in I860, for the purpose of investigating the Fiji islands, so as to decide whether it was worth while to annex them to the British possessions, and to spend money in order to satisfy the American creditors.

In the meantime the American government continued to insist on payment, and retained as a pledge several of the best points in its actual possession, and, having gained an insight into the national wealth, increased the former $45,000 to $90,000 and threatened to increase even this sum, if Cacabo did not pay it at once. Hard pressed on all sides, poor Cacabo, who was unacquainted with the European methods of credit trans-actions, began, with the advice of European colonists, to look for money in Melbourne, asking it of the merchants, under any and all conditions, even if he had to yield the whole kingdom to private individuals.

Here, in Melbourne, a commercial company was formed in reply to Cacabo’s appeal. This stock company, which took the name of the Polynesian Company, made a pact with the rulers of the Fiji Islands, upon conditions which were exceedingly favourable to itself. Taking upon itself the debt to the American government and binding itself to pay it off in instalments, the company received for it, according to the first agreement, one hundred thousand, and later two hundred thousand, acres of the best land of its own choice, the freedom for all times from all taxes and revenues for all its factories, plants, and colonies, and the exclusive right for a considerable time to establish banks of issue, with the privilege of an unlimited issue of notes.

From the time of this pact, which was conclusively settled in 1868, the Fijians were confronted, side by side with their local government, with Cacabo at its head, by a powerful commercial organization, with extensive territorial possessions on all the islands, and with a decisive influence in the government. Heretofore Cacabo’s government had been satisfied, for its necessities, with those material means which consisted in all kinds of levies in kind, and an insignificant revenue from customs for imported goods. After the conclusion of the pact and the foundation of the powerful Polynesian Company,its financial condition was changed. A considerable part of the best land in the possessions passed over to the company, and so the taxes were diminished ; on the other hand, as we know, the company had obtained a grant of a free import and export of all commodities, by which the revenue from customs was also reduced. The natives, that is ninety-nine hundredths of the population, had always been poor contributors to the customs revenue, as they hardly used any European commodities, except a few stuffs and metal objects ; but now, since by the grant to the Polynesian Company the wealthier Europeans were freed from the customs revenue, the income of King Cacabo became completely insignificant, and he had to bethink himself of its increase.

And so Cacabo began to take counsel with his white friends as to how he might avert the calamity, and these advised him to introduce the first direct levy in the country, and, no doubt in order to make it as little cumbersome for himself as possible, it was to be in the shape of a monetary contribution. The levy was established in the form of a universal or head tax, to the amount of one pound for each man and four shillings for each woman on all the islands.

As we have said, payment in kind and barter even now persist in the Fiji Islands. Very few natives possess any money. Their wealth consists exclusively in all kinds of raw products and flocks, and not in money. But the new tax demanded that, at certain stated periods of time, money be paid, which, when added up, amounted to a considerable sum for a head of a native family. Heretofore the native had been accustomed to no individual imposts in favour of the government, except personal obligations; all the levies that were made were paid by the Commune or the village to which he belonged from the common fields, from which he received his main income. There was but one way left for him, — to seek money from the white colonists, that is, to turn either to the trader, or the planter, who had what he needed,— money.

To the first he was compelled to sell his products

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To the first he was compelled to sell his products at any price, since the collector of taxes demanded the money by a given time ; or he had to borrow money against some future product, a circumstance which, of course, the trader made use of in order to demand unscrupulous interest ; or he had to turn to the planter and sell him his labour, that is, turn labourer. But the wages, no doubt on account of the great simultaneous supply, turned out to be very low in the Fiji Islands, according to the statements of the present administration, at about one shilling a week, or two pounds twelve shillings a year; consequently, in order merely to pay the tax for himself, to say nothing of his family, a Fijian was compelled to abandon his home, his family, his own land, and his farm, and, often settling far away, on some other island, to sell himself to a planter for at least six months in order to gain the one pound necessary for the payment of the new tax ; but for the payment of the taxes for his whole family he was compelled to look to other means.

The result of this order can be easily imagined. From the 150,000 subjects Cacabo collected only £6,000; and so there begins an intensified extortion of taxes, which was unknown before, and a series of compulsory measures. The local administration, incorruptible before, very soon made common cause with the planters, who began to manage the country. For arrears the Fijians were taken to court, and were sentenced, in addition to the payment of the costs, to incarceration for periods of not less than six months. The rôle of these prisons were played by the plantations of the first white man who was willing to pay the tax and the legal cost for the defendant. In this manner the whites had an abundant supply of cheap labour in any quantity desired. At first this compulsory farming out was permitted for the period of six months, but later on the venal judges found it possible to send a man to work for eighteen months, and then to renew their decree.

Very soon, in the period of a few years, the picture of the economic condition of Fiji was completely changed. Whole prosperous districts were half depleted of their population and extremely impoverished. The whole male population, except the old men and the feeble, were working away from their homes, on the plantations of the whites, in order to provide themselves with the money necessary for the payment of the tax or to satisfy the decree of the court. The women in Fiji do hardly any agricultural labour, and so, in the absence of their husbands, the farms were neglected or entirely abandoned. In a few years half the population of Fiji were turned into slaves of the white colonists.

To alleviate their condition, the Fijians once more turned to England. A new petition, covered with a large number of signatures of the most prominent persons and chiefs, and asking to be annexed to England, made its appearance and was handed to the British consul. By this time England, thanks to its learned expeditions, had had time, not only to study, but also to measure the islands, and in due manner to appreciate the natural wealth of this beautiful corner of the globe. On account of all this the negotiations were this time crowned with full success, and in 1874 England, to the great dissatisfaction of the American planters, entered into possession of the Fiji Islands, by annexing them to its colonies.

Cacabo died, and a small pension was decreed to his successors. The government of the islands was entrusted to Sir Robinson, the governor of New South Wales. In the first year of its annexation to England, Fiji did not have its administration, but was under the influence of Sir Robinson, who appointed an administrator for it. On taking the islands into its hands, the English government had to solve a difficult problem, — to satisfy the various expectations from it. The natives naturally expected first of all the abolition of the hateful head tax ; but the white colonists (the Americans) looked upon the British rule partly with suspicion, and partly (those of British origin) expected all kinds of benefits, for example, the recognition of their rule over the natives, the approval of their land-grabbing, etc.

The English government, however, proved itself to be equal to the task, and its first action was the abolition for ever of the head tax, which had created the slavery of the natives to the advantage of a few colonists. But here Sir Ilobinson was confronted with a difficult dilemma. It became necessary to do away with the head tax, to save themselves from which the Fijians had turned to the English government ; at the same time, according to the rule of the English colonial policy, the colonies were to support themselves, that is, it was necessary to find local means to meet the expenditures of the administration. But, with the abolition of the head tax, all the income of Fiji (from the customs dues) did not exceed <£6,000, whereas the expenditures of the administration demanded at the least <£70,000 a year. And so Ilobinson, after having abolished the money tax, invented the labour tax, which the Fijians had to pay in work, but this did not net the <£70,000 necessary for the support of Ilobinson and his assistants.

The thing did not go until the appointment of a new governor, Gordon, who, to get out of the inhabitants the money necessary for his support and for that of his assistants, took it into his head that he would not demand any money until a sufficient amount of it should be in circulation in the islands, but that he would take the products from the natives and would sell them himself.

This tragic episode from the life of the Fijians is the clearest and best indication of what money is and in what its significance lies. Here everything was expressed: the first fundamental condition of the enslavement — the cannon, menaces, murder, and seizure of land, and the chief means — money, which has taken the place of all the other means. What in the historical sketch of the economic development of the nations has to be followed out in the course of centuries, is here, where the forms of the monetary violence are worked out completely, concentrated in one decade. The drama begins by this, that the American government sends its ships with loaded cannon to the shores of the islands, whose inhabitants it wants to enslave. The pretext of this threat is money, but the beginning of the drama is with the cannon which are directed upon all the inhabitants, — women, children, old men, — people who are not guilty of anything, and this phenomenon is now repeated in America, in China, in Central Asia. The beginning of the drama is this, ” Your money or your life,” which is repeated in the history of all the conquests of all the nations ; $45,000 and then $90,000, or slaughter. But there are no $90,000. The Americans have them. And so the second act of the drama begins: it is necessary to put off, to exchange the bloody, terrible, concentrated slaughter for less noticeable, though more prolonged, sufferings. And the little nation by its representative seeks a means for exchanging slaughter for enslavement to money. It borrows money, and the forms of the enslavement of men by means of money are worked out.

This method begins at once to act like a disciplined army, and in five years the work is done : the people have lost not only the right to use their land, but also their property and their freedom ; the men are slaves.

The third act begins. The situation is exceedingly hard, and the unfortunate people hear the rumour that it is possible to change masters and go into another slavery. (Of liberation from the slavery which the money imposes there is no longer a thought.) And the little nation invites another master, to whom it abandons itself with the request that it improve its condition. The English come and see that the possession of these islands makes it possible for them to feed some drones who have been breeding in too great a quantity, and the English government takes these islands with their inhabitants, but not in the form of personal slaves: it does not even take the land and does not distribute it to its assistants. Those old methods are not needed now. All that is necessary is that they should pay a tribute, one that will, on the one hand, be sufficiently large to keep the labourers in perpetual slavery, and, on the other, will feed well the multitude of drones.

The inhabitants have to pay <£ 70,0 00. This is the fundamental condition under which England agrees to ransom the Fijians from American slavery, and this is at the same time the one necessary thing for the complete enslavement of the inhabitants. But it turns out that the Fijians are not able under their present condition to pay the <£70,000. The demand is excessive. The English for a time modify the demand and take a part in kind, in order, in proper time, when the money shall be in circulation, to increase the demand to its full norm.

England does not act like the former company, whose procedure may be compared with the first arrival of savage conquerors in the country of savage inhabitants, when they have but the one thought of carrying off as much as possible and going away again ; England acts like a more far-sighted enslaver : it does not all at once kill the hen with the golden eggs, but does not mind feeding her, since it knows that she is a good layer. At first it slackens the reins for its own benefit, in order later to pull them tight for all time and to bring the Fijians to that condition of monetary slavery in which all the European and civilized nations are, and from which no liberation is in sight.

Money is a harmless medium of exchange, but certainly not when the shores of the country are lined with loaded cannon, which are directed upon the inhabitants. The moment money is levied by force, under the protection of guns, there is inevitably repeated what took place on the Fiji Islands, and what has taken place everywhere and at all times, — in the case of the princes and the Drévlyans, and of all the governments and their nations. People who have the power to employ force against others will do so by means of the extortion of a sum of money, which compels the people on whom the extortion is practised to become the slaves of the extortioners.

Besides, there will take place what took place in the case of the English and the Fijians, namely, that the extortioners will, in their demand for money, be more likely to transcend the limit at which the sum of money demanded has been set, in order to hasten the enslavement, than not to come up to it. They will reach the limit without crossing it only in case of a moral sentiment, and they will always reach it, even though the sentiment may exist, if they are in want. But the governments will always cross this limit, in the first place, because, as we know, the governments themselves are in extreme need, due to the wars and to the necessity of offering stipends to their accomplices.

All the governments are always in insolvable debt, and, even if they wished to do otherwise, cannot help but carry out the rule promulgated by a Russian statesman of the eighteenth century, that it is necessary to shear the peasant and not give him a chance to grow his hair. All the governments are in insolvable debt, and this debt in its totality (not counting its accidental decrease in England and in America) grows from year to year in a terrifying progression. Even so grow the budgets, that is, the necessity of fighting other extortioners and giving stipends in money and land to the assistants in the extortion, and in a similar way does the land value grow.

The wages do not grow according to the law of rents, but because there exists a state and land tribute, the purpose of which is to take from the people all their surplus, so that for the fulfilment of this demand they may sell their Labour, because the exploitation of this labour is the aim of the imposition of a tribute. Now the exploitation of this labour is possible only when a greater aggregate amount of money is demanded than the labourers can give without depriving themselves of their means of support. The raising of the scale of wages would destroy the possibility of slavery, and so it can never be raised so long as there is any violence. It is this simple and intelligible action of one set of men upon another that the economists call an iron law ; but the instrument with which this action is produced they call a medium of exchange.

Money, this harmless medium of exchange, is needed by men in their relations among themselves. Where there does not exist a violent demand for a monetary tribute, there has never been any money in its modern significance, and there could have been none, but it has always been, and it always will be, as it is with the Fijians, the Kirgizes, the Africans, the Phoenicians, and in general with people who do not pay any taxes : there we have the direct exchange of objects for objects, and there the accidental standards of values are sheep, furs, hides, shells. Λ certain kind of money becomes current among people only when it is forcibly demanded of all. Only then does it become a necessity for each person in order that he may ransom himself from violence, and only then does it receive a constant exchange value. What, then, receives a value is not what is more convenient for exchange, but what is demanded by the government. If gold is demanded, gold will have a value ; if knuckle-bones are demanded, knuckle-bones will have a value. If this were not so, why has the issue of this medium of exchange always formed the prerogative of the government ?

People — let us say the Fijians — have established their medium of exchange ; very well, let them exchange things in any way they please, and you people who have power, that is the means for violence, do not meddle with this exchange. But what you do is to coin this money, prohibiting others from coining the like : then, as is the case with us, you print a lot of bills, representing on them the portraits of kings ; you sign them with special signatures ; determine penalties for the counterfeiting of this money ; distribute them among your assistants, and demand, in the form of state and land taxes, just such coins and scraps of paper, with precisely the same signatures, and so many of them that the labourer has to give up his whole labour in order to obtain these scraps of paper and these coins, and you assure us that this money is necessary as a medium of exchange.

All men are free, and.one set of men does not oppress another, does not keep men in slavery ; all there is, is money in society and an iron law, according to which rents rise and wages decrease to a minimum ! The fact that half (more than half) the Prussian peasants sell themselves to work for landed proprietors and manufacturers, for the sake of their direct and indirect and land taxes, does not at all mean what it obviously means, namely, that the levying of head taxes and of indirect and land taxes, which are paid to the government and to its assistants, the proprietors, in money, compels the labourer to be in the slavery of him who levies the money, but it means that there is money — the medium of exchange — and an iron law !

When the serfs were not free, I was able to compel Vanka to do all kinds of work, and if Vanka refused, I sent him to the rural officer, and the officer flogged him until he submitted. However, if I made Vanka work above his strength, without giving him land or food, the matter reached the ears of the authorities, and I had to be responsible for it. Now men are free, but I can compel Vànka, Sidorka, or Petrushka to do any kind of work, and if he refuses I will not give him any money for his taxes, and they will Ilog him until he submits ; besides, I can compel a German, and a Frenchman, and a Chinaman, and a Hindoo to work for me, by not giving him money, in case of his insubmission, with which to rent land or buy bread, because he has neither land nor bread. And if I make him work without food, above his strength, if I kill him with work, no one will say a word to me ; but if, in addition, I have read books on political economy, I can be firmly convinced that all men are free, and that money does not create any slavery.

The peasants have known for a long time that it is possible to cause more pain with a rouble than with a club ; it is only political economy that does not want to know it. To say that money does not cause any enslavement, is the same as if half a century ago we should have said that the serf law does not produce any enslavement. Political economists say that, although in consequence of the possession of money one man may enslave another, money is a harmless medium of exchange. Why, then, could it not have been said half a century ago that, although it is possible by means of the serf law to enslave a man, the serf law is not a means for enslavement, but a harmless medium of mutual services? Some give their rude work, others attend to the physical and mental welfare of the slaves and to the distribution of the work. It seems to me they used to talk that way.

XIX.

If this imaginary science — political economy — did not busy itself with what all the juridical sciences busy themselves with, — with an apology for violence, it could not help but see that strange phenomenon that the distribution of wealth and the despoliation of land and capital by some, and the enslavement of one set of men by another, are all dependent on money, and that only by means of money one set of men now exploits the labour of others, that is, enslaves others.

I repeat: a man who has money can buy up all the bread and starve another and for the bread enslave him completely. Indeed, so it is done on a large scale in our own sight. One would think that it would be necessary to look for a connection between these phenomena of enslavement and money, but science assures us with absolute confidence that money has no relation whatever to the enslavement of men.

Science says : Money is a commodity like any other which has the value of its production, with this difference, that this commodity is chosen as the most convenient medium of exchange for the establishment of prices, for storing, and for making payments : one man makes boots, another grows grain, a third raises sheep, and, to be able more conveniently to exchange their products, they introduce money, which represents a corresponding share of labour, and by means of it exchange soles for a brisket of mutton and ten pounds of flour.

The men of this imaginary science are very fond of representing to themselves such a state of affairs; but such a state of affairs has never existed in this world. Such a representation of society is the same as the representation of the primeval, uncorrupted, perfect human society, which former philosophers used to make for themselves. There has never existed such a state. In all human societies, where there has been any money as such, there has always existed violence, which is exerted by the strong and the armed over the weak and the unarmed ; but where there has been violence, the standards of values — money, no matter what it may have been, — cattle, furs, hides, metals, — had inevitably to lose their significance and to acquire the meaning of ransom from violence.

Money has unquestionably the harmless properties which science mentions, but it would in reality have these properties in a society where the violence of one man over another has not made its appearance, — in an ideal society ; but in such a society there would be no money as such, as a common standard of values, as it has not existed, and cannot exist, in any society which has not been subjected to the general political violence. Its chief significance is not to serve as a medium of exchange, but to serve for the purpose of violence. Where there is violence, money cannot serve as a regular medium of exchange, because it cannot be a standard of values. It cannot be a standard of values, because, as soon as one man in society can take away from another the products of his labour, this standard is at once impaired.

If horses and cows, raised by farmers and others, are taken by force away from farmers and brought together to the market, it is evident that the value of the horses and cows at this market will no longer correspond to the labour of raising the stock, and the values of all other articles will change in conformity with this change, and money will not determine the values of these articles. Besides, if it is possible by force to acquire a cow, a horse, or a house, it is possible by means of this same violence to acquire the money itself, and with this money to acquire all the other products. But if the money itself is acquired through violence and is used for the purchase of articles, the money loses every semblance of a medium of exchange. The oppressor, who has taken away the money and gives it for the products of labour, does not exchange, but by means of the money takes all he needs.

But even if there existed such an imaginary, impossible society, in winch, without the general political violence being exerted over men, money — silver or gold — had the significance of a standard of values, it would, at the appearance of violence, immediately lose its significance even in such a society. The oppressor makes his appearance in such a society in the form of a conqueror. This oppressor, let us assume, seizes the cows, and the horses, and the houses of the inhabitants ; but it is not convenient for him to possess all this, and so it naturally occurs to him to seize that from these people which among them forms all kinds of values and is exchanged for all kinds of articles, namely, money. Immediately the money, as a standard of values, ceases to have any place in such a society, because the standard of the value of all articles will always depend on the arbitrary will of the oppressor. The article which the oppressor will need most and for which he will give most money, will receive a greater value, and vice versa. Thus in a society which is subjected to violence, the money at once receives the one predominant meaning of a medium of oppression for the oppressor, and will retain its significance as a medium of exchange for the oppressed only to such an extent and in such a relation as is convenient for the oppressor.

Let us imagine the matter in a small circle. The serfs furnish the proprietor with cloth, chickens, sheep, and day labour. The farmer substitutes money for the dues in kind, and determines the price of the various articles of the dues. He who has no cloth, bread, cattle, or work hands, can oiler a certain sum of money. It is evident that in the society of the peasants belonging to this proprietor, the valuation of the articles will always depend on the arbitrary will of the proprietor. The proprietor makes use of the articles collected, and some he needs more, others less, and in accordance with this he determines a higher or lower price for this or that article. It is evident that nothing but the proprietor’s will or his needs decides the prices of these articles among the payers.

If the proprietor needs grain, he puts a high price on the right of not furnishing a given amount of grain, and a low price on the right of not furnishing cloth, cattle, or day labour ; and so those who have no grain will sell to others their labour, their cloth, and their cattle, in order to buy the grain which they have to furnish to the proprietor.

If the proprietor takes it into his head to demand all the obligations in money payments, the price of the articles will again not depend on the value of the labour, but, in the first place, on the amount of money which the proprietor will demand, and, in the second, on the articles produced by the peasants, which the proprietor needs most, and so on this, for what articles he pays more and and for what less. The levy of money, which the proprietor makes on the peasants, would not have an influence on the value of articles among the peasants, unless, in the first place, the peasants of this proprietor lived separately from other people and had no other relations except those between themselves and the proprietor, and, in the second, the proprietor did not use the money for the purchase of articles from his own village, but elsewhere. Only under these two conditions would the value of the articles, though nominally changed, remain relatively true, and the money would have the significance of a standard of values and of exchange ; but if the peasants have economic relations with the surrounding inhabitants, the greater or lesser demand for money made by the proprietor will, in the first place, affect the greater or lesser value of their articles in relation to their neighbours. (If less money is demanded of their neighbours than of them, their products will be sold more cheaply than the products of their neighbours, and vice versa.) And, in the second place, the levy of money made by the proprietor on the peasants could have no influence on the value of the products unless the proprietor did not use the money collected for the purchase of products from his peasants. But if he uses his money for the purchase of his peasants’ products, it is evident that even the relation of prices of various articles among the peasants themselves will constantly change in proportion as the proprietor purchases this or that article.

Let us suppose that one proprietor has set the peasant dues very high, and his neighbour has put them low : it is evident that in the sphere of the first proprietor all the articles will be cheaper than in the sphere of the second, and that the prices in either sphere will depend only on the raising or the lowering of the dues. Such is one of the influences of violence on prices.

Another influence, which results from the first, will consist in the relative values of all articles. Let us suppose that one proprietor likes horses and pays well for them ; another is fond of towels and pays well for them. It is evident that in the possessions of the two proprietors horses and towels will be high, and the price for these articles will not be in proportion to the prices of cows and of grain. To-morrow the one who is fond of towels dies, and his successor is fond of chickens : it is evident that the price of the towels will go down, and that of the chickens will rise.

Where in society there exists the oppression of one man by another, the significance of money as a standard of values is immediately subjected to the arbitrary will of the oppressor, and its significance as a medium of exchange of products of labour gives way to its significance as a most convenient medium for exploiting the labour of others. The oppressor needs the money not for exchange, nor for the establishment of standards of values, — he establishes them himself, — but only as a convenience of oppression, which consists in this, that the money is put away for safe-keeping, and that with money it is much easier to keep in subjection the greatest number of men. It is inconvenient to take away all the cattle, in order that one may all the time have horses, and cows, and sheep, as many as one may need of them, because one has to feed them ; the same is true of the grain, — it may get spoiled. The same is true of the labour, the corvee : at one time a thousand labourers are wanted, and at another not even one. The money, which is demanded of him who does not have it, makes it possible to get rid of all these inconveniences and always to have everything which is needed, and it is for this alone that the oppressor needs it. Besides, the oppressor needs the money for this, that his right to exploit the labour of others may not be limited to certain persons, but may extend over all men who are in need of money. When there was no money, the proprietor could exploit the labour of his serfs alone ; but when two of them agreed to take from their serfs money, which they did not have, they both began indiscriminately to exploit all the forces in the two estates.

And so the oppressor finds it more convenient to make his demands for other people’s labour in the shape of money, and for this alone does the oppressor need the money. But for the oppressed man, for him who is deprived of his labour, the money is not necessary for exchange, — he exchanges without money, as all the nations without governments have exchanged; nor for determining the standards of values, because this determination takes place in spite of him ; nor for safe-keeping, because he who is deprived of the products of his labour cannot save ; nor for payments, because the one who is oppressed will have to pay more than he receives, or, if he has to receive, the payments will not be made to him in money, but in commodities, — if the labourer receives the payment for his work directly from his master’s shop, — and the same is true if for his whole earnings he purchases articles of prime necessity in free shops. Money is demanded of him, and he is told that, if he does not pay it, he will get no land, no grain, or his cow, his house, will be taken from him, and he will be made to work out or will be put in prison. From this he can free himself only by selling the products of his labour and his labour itself at prices which are not established by a regular exchange, but by the power which demands the money of him.

With these conditions that result from the influence of tributes or taxes on the values, which are repeated at all times and everywhere, with the proprietor on a small scale, and in the government on a large scale ; with these conditions, where the causes of the changes of values are as evident, as it is evident to him who looks back of the curtain why and how the marionette raises or lets down a foot ; with these conditions, to speak of money as representing a medium of exchange and a standard of values is, to say the least, astonishing.

XX.

Every enslavement of one man by another is based on nothing but this, that one man may deprive another of life and, without abandoning this menacing state, may compel another to do his will.

It may unmistakably be said that, if there is an enslavement of a man, that is, the fulfilment by one man against his will, at the will of another, of certain acts which are undesirable to him, the cause of it is only the violence which has for its foundation the menace of depriving him of life. If a man gives all his labour to others, gets insufficient nourishment, allows his little children to do hard work, leaves his land, and devotes his whole life to hateful and to him useless labour, as actually takes place in our sight, in our society (which we call cultured only because we live in it), it is safe to say that he does so only in consequence of the fact that for the non-fulfilment of all this he is threatened with the loss of his life. And so, in our cultured society, where the majority of people under terrible privations perform hateful and to them useless labour, the majority of men are in a state of enslavement, which is based on the menace of depriving them of their lives. Wherein does this enslavement consist ? And in what does the menace of depriving them of their lives lie ?

In ancient times the manner of enslavement and the threat of depriving men of their lives were manifest : they employed a primitive method for enslaving people, which consisted in the direct threat of killing by means of the sword. The man in arms said to him who was unarmed : ” I can kill you, as you saw me kill your brother ; but I do not want to do so, — I spare you, most of all, because it is more advantageous for me and for you if you work for me, than if you are killed. And so, do everything which I command you, for if you refuse I will kill you.” And the unarmed man submitted to him who was armed, and did everything commanded by him. The unarmed man worked, the one in arms threatened. That was that personal slavery which is the first to appear among all the nations, and even now may be met with among primitive nations.

This method of enslavement is the first to make its appearance, but with the greater complexity of life this method is modified. In proportion as life becomes more complicated, this method presents great inconveniences to the oppressor. To exploit the labour of the feeble, the oppressor is obliged to feed and clothe them, that is, to maintain them in such a way that they may be able to do work, and thus the number of the enslaved is limited ; besides, this method compels the oppressor all the time to stand over the enslaved with the threat of killing them. And so a second method of enslavement is worked out.

Five thousand years ago, as is noted down in the Bible, this new, more convenient, and broader method was worked out by Joseph the Fair. This method is the same which in modern times is used for the taming of unruly horses and wild beasts in menageries. This method is starvation.

This is the way it is described in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, Chapter XLI. :

48. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities : the food of the field which was round about every city, laid he up in the same.

49. And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.

53. And the seven years of plenteousness that was in the land of Egypt, were ended.

54. And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands ; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.

55. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread : and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph ; what he saith to you, do.

56. And the famine was over all the face of the earth : and Joseph opened all the store-houses, and sold unto the Egyptians ; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.

57. And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn ; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.

Making use of the right of the primitive method of enslaving people with the threat of the sword, Joseph collected the corn in the good years, in expectation of the bad years, which generally follow after the good, a fact which all people know without Pharaoh’s dreams, and by this means — by hunger — he enslaved the Egyptians and all the other inhabitants of the surrounding countries more powerfully and more conveniently for Pharaoh. But when the people began to sutler from hunger, he so arranged it that the people would for ever be in his power, — through hunger. This is described in Chapter XLVII. :

13. And there was no bread in all the land ; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt, and all the land of Canaan, fainted by reason of the famine.

14. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought : and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.

15. And, when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread : for why should we die in thy presence ? for the money faileth.

16. And Joseph said, Give your cattle ; and I will give you for your cattle, if money fail.

17. And they brought their cattle unto Joseph : and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses ; and he fed them with bread, for all their cattle, for that year.

18. When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent ; my lord also hath our herds of cattle : there is not aught left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies and our lands :

19. Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we and our land ? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh : and give us seed, that we may live, and not die that the land be not desolate.

20. And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh ; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them : so the land became Pharaoh’s.

21. And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.

22. Only the land of the priests bought he not ; for the priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them ; wherefore they sold not their lands.

23. Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh : lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land.

24. And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones.

25. And they said, Thou hast saved our lives : let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh’s servants.

26. And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s.

Before this, Pharaoh, to exploit the labours of the people, had to compel them by force to work for him ; but now, since the provisions and the land are all in the hands of Pharaoh, he needs only to watch them by force, and may compel them by hunger to work for him.

The whole land is Pharaoh’s, and the provisions (what can be taken away) are always in his hands, and so, instead of driving each one individually with the sword to work, he needs only guard the provisions by force, and the people are enslaved, not by the sword, but by hunger.

In a year of famine, all may by Pharaoh’s will be starved to death, and in a year of plenty those may be starved who, from some accidental mishaps, have no supply of corn.

And there establishes itself a second method of enslavement, not directly by the sword, that is, by this, that the one who is strong, threatening with death, drives the one who is weak to work, but by this, that the strong man, taking the provisions away and guarding them with the sword, compels the weak man to surrender himself to work for his food.

Joseph says to the hungry : ” I can starve you to death, because I have the corn ; but I spare you, if, for the bread which I give you, you will do what I command.”

For the first method of enslavement the one in power needs only have warriors, who make their rounds among the inhabitants and under the threat of death carry out the demand of the powerful man. With the first method the oppressor need divide only with his warriors. But with the second method, the oppressor needs, in addition to the warriors necessary to guard the stores of corn and the land against the starving, another class of assistants, — big and little Josephs, — managers and distributers of corn. And the oppressor has to divide up with them and to give Joseph a vesture of fine linen, a gold ring, and servants, and corn, and silver for his brothers and relatives. Besides, in the very nature of things, the accomplices in the violence of this second method are not only the managers and their relatives, but also all those who have supplies of corn. As in the first method, which is based on rude force, every one who had arms became a participant in the violence, so in this method, which is based on hunger, every one who has supplies takes part in the oppression and rules over those who have none.

The advantage of this method over the first consists for the oppressor in this: (1) above all else, that he is no longer obliged to exert an effort in compelling the labourers to do his will, but that the labourers come themselves and sell themselves to him ; (2) that a smaller number of men slip away from his oppression. The disadvantage for the oppressor is only this, that in this method he has to divide up with a larger number of men. The advantage in this method for the oppressed is this, that they are no longer subjected to rude violence, but are left to themselves and may always hope to pass over from the oppressed to the oppressor, which in reality they sometimes are able to do under favourable conditions; but their disadvantage is this, that they can never slip away from a certain amount of violence.

This new method of enslavement generally enters into use with the old, and the powerful man reduces the one and expands the other, as the need for it may arise. But even this method of enslavement does not fully satisfy the wishes of the powerful man, — to take away the greatest possible amount of products of labour from the greatest possible number of labourers, and to enslave the greatest possible number of men, — and does not correspond to the more complex conditions of life, and a new method of enslavement is worked out.

The new, and third, method is the method of tribute. This method, like the second, is based on hunger, but to the means of enslaving men by depriving them of bread is added also that of depriving them of the other necessities. The powerful man exacts from his slaves such an amount of monetary tokens, which he himself possesses, that, in order to obtain them, the slaves are obliged not only to sell supplies of corn on a larger scale than that fifth which Joseph determined, but also articles of prime necessity, — meat, hides, wool, garments, fuel, buildings even, and so the oppressor always keeps his slaves in subjection, not only through hunger, but also through thirst, and want, and cold, and all other kinds of privations.

And there establishes itself a third form of slavery, that of money, which consists in this, that the powerful man says to the weak : ” I can do with each of you separately what I please ; I can simply kill you with a gun, or I can kill you by taking away your land which feeds you, or I can, for the monetary tokens, which you must furnish me, buy up all the corn on which you feed, and sell it to strangers, and any moment starve you out ; I can take away everything which you have, — your cattle, your dwellings, your garments, — but that is not convenient and agreeable for me, and so I leave it to you to dispose of your labour and the products of your labour as you please ; only give me so many monetary tokens, which demand 1 distribute either by heads, or according to the land on which you are settled, or according to your food and drink, or your garments, or buildings. Let me have these tokens, and arrange matters among yourselves as you please; but know this much, that I will not defend and protect the widows, nor the orphans, nor the sick, nor the old, nor those who have suffered from fires ; I will defend only the regularity of the circulation of these monetary tokens. Only he who gives me regularly, in accordance with my demand, the established amount of monetary tokens, will be right in my eyes and will receive my protection. It is a matter of indifference to me how these monetary tokens are obtained.”

And the powerful man issues these tokens, as receipts for the fulfilment of his demands.

The second method of enslavement consists in this, that, taking away the fifth part of the crops and laying by stores of corn, Pharaoh, in addition to the personal enslavement by means of the sword, receives, with bis assistants, the possibility of ruling all the workingmen in time of famine and some of them in time of calamities which befall them. The third method consists in this, that Pharaoh demands of the labourers more than the part of corn costs which he took from them, and receives, with his assistants, a new means for ruling the labourers, not only in time of famine and accidental mishaps, but also at all times.

With the second method the people keep supplies of corn, which help them, without surrendering themselves to slavery, to bear small failures of crops and accidental mishaps ; with the third method, when the exactions are greater, the supplies of corn are all taken away, and so are all the other supplies of articles of prime necessity, and with the slightest mishap the labourer, who has no supplies of corn, nor any other supplies, which he might be able to exchange for corn, is subjected to slavery by those who have money. With the first method the oppressor needs only have warriors and divide with them ; with the second method he has to have, in addition to the guardians of the land and of the supplies of corn, collectors and clerks for the distribution of the corn ; with the third method he can no longer himself rule the land, but in addition to the warriors to guard the land and the wealth, he must also have owners of land and collectors of tribute, distributers according to heads or to articles of use, superintendents, customs servants, managers of money, and operators with money.

The organization of the third method is much more complicated than the second ; with the second method, the collecting of the corn may be farmed out, as was done in ancient times and is even now done in Turkey ; but in burdening the slaves with taxes, a complicated administration of men is needed, to watch after this, that the men, or their acts which are taxable, shall not escape the tribute. And so, with the third method, the oppressor has to share with a still greater number of men than with the second method ; besides, in the very nature of things, all the men, either of the same or of a foreign country, who have money, become the participants in this third method. The advantages of this method for the oppressor over the first and the second methods are the following :

In the first place, that by means of this method a greater amount of work may be got out in a more convenient manner, for a money tax is like a screw, — it may be easily and conveniently screwed in to its highest limit, care being taken that the golden hen is not killed, so that it is not even necessary to wait for a year of famine, as in the case of Joseph, because the year of famine is made perpetual.

In the second place, that with this method the violence is now extended over all the people without land, who formerly escaped and gave only part of their labour away, but now are obliged, in addition to the part of their labour which they used to give for the corn, to give also part of this labour as taxes to the oppressor.

The disadvantage for the oppressor consists in this, that with this method he has to share with a greater number of men, not only of his immediate assistants, but also, in the first place, with all those private landowners who generally make their appearance with this third method ; in the second place, with all those men of his own, and even of a foreign, nation, who have the monetary tokens which are demanded of the slaves.

The advantage for the oppressed man, in comparison with the second method, is this : he receives a still greater personal independence from the oppressor; he can live where he pleases, do what he pleases, and sow grain, or not ; he is not obliged to give an account of his work and, having money, may consider himself quite free, and constantly hope to obtain, and actually obtain, for a time at least, if he has surplus money or land bought for it, not only an independent condition, but also that of an oppressor.

Crtie disadvantage to him is this, that in its totality the condition of the oppressed, under this third method, becomes much harder, and they are deprived of the greater part of the products of their labour, since with this third method the number of men who exploit the labour of others is still greater, and so the burden of supporting them falls on a smaller number.

This third method of enslavement is also very old, and enters into use with the other two, without completely excluding them. All three methods of enslavement have never ceased to exist. All three methods may be compared with screws which hold down the plank that is laid over the labourers and is choking them. The chief, fundamental, middle screw, without which the other screws will not hold, which is the first to be screwed in and is never relaxed, is the screw of personal slaver)-, of the enslavement of one set of men by another by means of the threat of execution by the sword ; the second screw, which is screwed in after the first, is the enslavement of people by means of depriving them of the land and of the provisions of food, a seizure which is supported by the personal threat of execution ; and the third screw is the enslavement of people by means of a demand for monetary tokens, which they do not have, again supported by the threat of murder. All three screws are screwed in, and only when one is tightened do the others weaken. For the complete enslavement of the labourer all three screws — all three kinds of enslavement — are needed, and in our society all three methods of enslavement are constantly in use, — all three screws are always screwed in.

The first method of the enslavement of men by means of personal violence and the threat of execution by the sword has never been abolished, and will not be abolished so long as there exists any kind of an enslavement of one set of men by another, because upon it every enslavement is based. We are all very naïvely convinced that personal slavery has been abolished in our civilized world, that its last remnants have been destroyed in America and in Thissia, and that now barbarians alone have slavery, while we do not have it. We all forget about a small circumstance, about those hundreds of millions of a standing army, without which there does not exist a single government, and with the abolition of which the whole economic structure of any government will inevitably go to pieces. What are these millions of soldiers, if not the personal slaves of those who rule over them ? Are not these men compelled to do the whole will of their owners under threat of torments and of death, — a threat which is frequently carried out ? The only difference is this, that the subjection of these slaves is not called slavery, but discipline, and that the others were slaves from their birth to their death, while these are so only for the longer or shorter time of their so-called service.

Personal slavery has not only not been abolished in our civilized societies, but with the universal military service it has of late been strengthened, and it remains at present such as it has always been, only a little changed. It cannot help but be, for, so long as there is any enslavement of one set of men by another, there will be this personal slavery, which with the threat of the sword supports the territorial and tax enslavement of men. It may be that this slavery, that is the army, is very necessary, as they say, for the defence and the glory of the country, but this usefulness is more than doubtful, for we see that in unsuccessful wars it frequently serves for the enslavement and degradation of the country ; but what is quite indubitable is the usefulness of this slavery for the purpose of maintaining the territorial and tax enslavement. Let the Irish or the Russian peasants get possession of the proprietors’ lands, the armies will come and take them back again. Let one build a distillery or brewery and refuse to pay the revenue, and the soldiers will come and stop the plant. Refuse to pay taxes, and the same will happen.

The second screw is the method of enslaving people by depriving them of their land, and so, of their food supplies. This method of enslavement has also existed and will always exist, wherever men are enslaved, and, no matter how much it may be modified, it exists everywhere. At times the whole land belongs to the king, as is the case in Turkey, and one-tenth of the crop is collected for the treasury; at others only part of the land, and a tax is collected from it ; again, the whole land belongs to a small number of men, and a share of the labour is exacted, as is the case io England ; or a greater or smaller part belongs to large proprietors, as in Russia, Germany, and France. But, wherever there is any enslavement, there is also the appropriation of the land by means of enslavement.

The screw of this enslavement of people is loosened or tightened in proportion as the other screws are screwed down ; thus, in Russia, when the personal enslavement was distributed over the majority of the labourers, the territorial enslavement was superfluous ; but the screw of the personal enslavement in Russia was loosened only when the screws of the territorial and tax enslavement were tightened. All were attached to communes, all migration and transposition were discouraged, the land was appropriated or given away to private persons, and then the peasants were set free. In England, for example, the territorial enslavement is most active, and the question of the nationalization of the land consists merely in tightening the tax screw, in order to loosen the screw of the territorial enslavement.

The third method of enslavement — by means of tribute, of taxes — has similarly existed, and, in our time, with the dissemination of uniform monetary tokens in the different countries and the strengthening of the governmental power, has only acquired a special force. This method has been so worked out in our time that it is striving to substitute itself for the second, the territorial method of enslavement. It is the screw which, when tightened down, weakens the territorial screw, as is evident from the economic condition of the whole of Europe. We have within our memory gone in Russia through two passages of slavery from one form into another: when the serfs were emancipated and the proprietors were left with the right to the greater part of the land, the proprietors were afraid that their power over their peasants was escaping from them; but experience showed that they needed only to let out of their hands the old scourge of the personal slavery and take up another, the territorial scourge. The peasant had no corn to feed on, and the proprietor had the land and the supply of corn, and so the peasant was left the same slave he had been.

The second passage was when the government with its taxes screwed down very tightly the other screw, that of the taxes, and the majority of the labourers were compelled to sell themselves into slavery to the landed proprietors and into the factories. And thus a new form of slavery took possession of the people even more thoroughly, so that nine-tenths of the working classes work for the proprietors and in the factories, only because they are compelled to do so by the demand for state and land taxes. This is so obvious that, let the government just try not collecting any direct, indirect, and land taxes for the period of one year, and all the works in other people’s fields and in the factories will come to a standstill. Nine-tenths of the Russian people hire out during the time that the taxes are levied, and for the purpose of paying the taxes.

All three methods of the enslavement of people have never ceased to exist, and exist now ; but people are prone not to notice them, the moment new justifications are · found for these methods. And what is strange is that this very method, on which at the present time everything is based, — this screw which holds everything together, — is not noticed.

When in the ancient world the whole economic structure was based on personal slavery, the greatest minds could not see that it was it. It seemed to Xenophon, and to Plato, and to Aristotle, and to the Romans that it could not be otherwise, and that slavery was the inevitable outcome of wars, without which humanity was unthinkable. Even so in the Middle Ages and down to

our own time men did not see the significance of territorial possession and the consequent slavery, on which the whole economic structure of the Middle Ages was based. Even so no one sees now, nor wants to see, that in our time the enslavement of the majority of people is based on the monetary state and land taxes, which are collected by the governments from their subjects, — taxes which are collected by means of the administration and the army, which are maintained by the taxes.

XXI.

It is not surprising that the slaves themselves, who since antiquity have been subjected to slavery, are not conscious of their condition and consider that condition of slavery in which they have always lived as a natural condition of human life, and see an alleviation in the change of the form of slavery. Nor is it surprising that the slave-owners sometimes sincerely mean to free the slaves, — to loosen one screw, when the other is already tightened. Both are accustomed to their condition, and the first, the slaves, who do not know what liberty is, seek only alleviation or at least a change of the form of slavery ; the others, the slave-owners, who wish to conceal their injustice, try to ascribe a special significance to those new forms of slavery which they impose on the people in the place of the old.

But what is remarkable is how science, the so-called free science, can, in investigating the economic conditions of the people’s life, help seeing what forms the basis of all the economic conditions of the people ? One would think that it is the business of science to discover the connection between phenomena, and the common cause of a series of phenomena. Political economy does precisely the opposite : it carefully conceals the connection of the phenomena and their significance, and carefully avoids all answers to the simplest and most essential questions ; it is like a lazy, restive horse, which goes well only downhill, when there is nothing to pull ; but the moment it is necessary to pull, it prances toward one side, pretending that it has to go somewhere to one side, to attend to its

own business. The moment a serious, essential question presents itself to science, there at once begin scientific discussions about subjects which have nothing to do with the question and which have but one purpose, — to draw the attention away from the question.

You ask what the cause is of that unnatural, monstrous, irrational, and not only useless, but even harmful, phenomenon that certain men can neither eat nor work except by the will of other men. And science answers with a most serious look : Because certain people attend to the work and nourishment of others, — such being the law of production.

You ask what the right of property is, on the basis of which one set of men appropriate to themselves the land, the food, and the tools of labour of others. Science answers with a most serious look : This right is based on the defence of one’s labour, that is, that the defence of labour by one set of men is expressed by the seizure of the labour of other men.

You ask what that money is which is coined and printed everywhere by the government, that is, by the power, and which is in such enormous quantities exacted from the labourers, and which in the form of state debts is imposed on future generations of labourers. You ask whether this money, carried to the farthest limits of possible exaction, in these proportions has not an effect on the economic relations of the people who are paying to the receivers. And science with a most serious look tells you : Money is a commodity, like sugar and chintz, which differs from these only in that it is more convenient for exchange ; but the taxes have no effect at all upon the economic conditions of the people : the laws of production, of exchange, of the distribution of wealth are one thing, and the taxes are another.

You ask whether the economic conditions are not influenced by this, that the government of its own will may raise or lower prices, and may, by raising the taxes, enslave all those who have land. Science with a most serious look answers : Not at all ! The laws of production, exchange, distribution, are one science, and taxes and the management of the state in general are another science, — the law of finance.

You ask, finally, about the whole nation’s being enslaved by the government, about the government being able of its own will to ruin all men, to take away from them all the products of their labour, and even to tear the men away from labour, by putting them into military slavery ; you ask whether this circumstance has any effect upon the economic conditions. To this, science does not even trouble itself to reply : this is an entirely different science, — that of civil government.

Science most seriously analyzes the laws of the economic life of the nation, whose every function and activity depends on the will of the enslaver, and recognizes this influence of the enslaver as a natural condition of the nation’s life ; science does the same that the investigator of the economic condition of the life of personal serfs belonging to various masters would do, if he did not take into consideration the influence upon the lives of the slaves which is exerted by the will of the master, who by his arbitrary will compels them to do this or that work, according to his will drives them from one spot to another, and according to his will feeds them, or does not feed them, kills them, or lets them live.

One is inclined to think that science does so out of stupidity ; but it is enough to grasp and analyze the propositions of science in order to become convinced that it is not due to stupidity, but to great ingenuity.

This science has a very definite aim, which it attains. This aim is to keep people in superstition and deception, and thus to prevent humanity from moving toward the truth and the good. There has long existed a terrible superstition which has done almost more harm to people than the most terrible superstitions. And it is this superstition which the so-called science sustains with all its might and main.

This superstition is very much like religious superstitions : it consists in the assertion that, in addition to the obligations which man has to man, there exist still more important obligations to an imaginary being. For theology this imaginary being is God, and for political sciences it is the state. The religious superstition consists in this, that the sacrifices, sometimes of human lives, which are brought to the imaginary being, are necessary, and men can and must be brought to them by all means, not even excluding violence. The political superstition consists in this, that, in addition to the obligations of man to man, there exist more important obligations to the imaginary being, and the sacrifices, very frequently of human lives, which are brought to the imaginary being, the state, are also necessary, and men can and must be brought to them by all means, not excluding violence. This superstition, which formerly was sustained by priests of various religions, is now sustained by the so-called science. Men are thrust into a more terrible and a worse slavery than any other; but science tries to assure people that this is necessary and cannot be otherwise.

The state must exist for the good of the people and must do its business, — rule the people and defend them from the enemy. For this the state needs money and an army. The money is to be supplied by all the citizens of the state, and so all the relations of men must be viewed under the necessary conditions of political existence.

” I want to help my father in his farm work,” says a simple, untutored man, ” I want to marry, and they take me and send me for six years to Kazan to be a soldier. I leave the army, want to plough the land and support my family, but for a hundred versts about me I am not permitted to plough, unless I pay money, which I do not have, to those people who do not know how to plough and demand so much money for it that I am compelled to give them all my labour. I manage to earn something and want to give my surplus to my children ; but the rural officer comes to me and takes away my surplus in the shape of taxes ; again I earn some, and everything is taken from me. My whole economic activity, all of it, without any residue, is dependent on the demands of the state, and it appears to me that the improvement of my condition and of that of my brothers must come from our liberation from the demands of the state.”

But science says : Your judgments are due to your ignorance. Learn the laws of production, exchange, and distribution of wealth, and do not mix up economic questions with questions of state. The phenomena to which you point are not restrictions of your freedom, but those necessary sacrifices, which, together with others, you bring for your freedom and your good.

” But they have taken my son from me and promise to take all my other sons as soon as I see them grow up,” again says the simple man. ” They take them forcibly from me and drive them under bullets into another country, of which we have never heard, and for purposes which we cannot understand. But the laud, which we are not permitted to plough and the lack of which causes us to starve, is owned by a man whom we have never seen and whose usefulness we are not able even to comprehend. But the taxes, to satisfy which the officer took the cow away from my children, by force, for all I know will go back to this officer who took the cow away from me, and to various members of commissions and ministries, whom I do not even know, and in whose usefulness I do not believe. How, then, can all these violences secure my liberty, and how can all this evil do me any good ? “

It is possible to make a man be a slave, and do what he considers to be evil, but it is impossible to make him think that, while suffering violence, he is free, and that the obvious evil which he is suffering is for his good. That seems impossible; but that is precisely what has been done in our day with the help of science.

The government, that is, armed people doing violence, decides what it needs from those to whom it offers violence ; like the English in respect to the Fijians, it decides how many assistants it needs for the collecting of this labour, organizes its assistants in the form of soldiers, in the form of landed proprietors, and in the form of collectors of taxes. And the slaves give up their labour and at the same time believe that they give it up, not because their masters want it, but because for their freedom and their good they must serve and bring bloody sacrifices to the divinity called ” the state,” but that, outside of this divinity, they are free. They believe this, because formerly religion and the priests talked that way, and because science and the learned say so. But we need only stop believing blindly in what other people, calling themselves priests and learned men, say, in order that the insipidity of such an assertion may become evident. People who do violence to others say that this violence is necessary for the government, and that the government is necessary for the freedom and for the good of the people: it turns out that oppressors oppress the people for the sake of their freedom, and do them evil for their good. But people are rational beings that they may understand in what their good lies, and that they may be free to do it.

But the deeds, the goodness of which is incomprehensible to people, and to which they are urged on by force, cannot be good for them, for a rational being can regard as good only that which presents itself as such to his mind. If people from passion or ignorance are drawn toward the evil, all that people can do, who do not act thus, is to persuade men to do what constitutes their real good. It is possible to persuade people that their good will be greater if they all become soldiers, be deprived of land, give up all their labour for taxes ; but, so long as people will not consider this as their good, and will not do it voluntarily, this matter cannot be called the general good of men. The only sign of the goodness of a deed is that all people do it of their own free will, and of such deeds the lives of men are full.

Ten labourers provide themselves with cooper’s tools in order to work together, and, in doing this work, they unquestionably do a common good to themselves ; but it is absolutely impossible to imagine that the labourers, compelling an eleventh man by force to take part in their association, could assert that their common good will also be a good for the eleventh man.

The same is true of gentlemen who give a dinner to a friend of theirs : it is just as little possible to assert that the dinner will be a good thing for him from whom they will take ten roubles by force. The same is true of peasants who decide to dig a pond for their convenience. For those who will regard the existence of this pond as a greater good than the labour expended upon it, the digging of it will be a common good ; but for him who considers the existence of this pond a lesser good than the harvesting of the field, to which he has come too late, the digging of this pond can be no good. The same is true of roads which people lay out, and of churches, and museums, and of the greatest variety of social and political matters. All these matters can be a good only for those who regard them as such and so do them freely and willingly as in the case of the purchase of the tools for the association, the dinner given by the gentlemen, the pond which the peasants dig. But all works to which people have to be driven by force are, in consequence of this violence, no longer common, nor good.

All this is so clear and so simple that, if people had not been deceived for so long a time, it would not be necessary to explain anything. Let us suppose that we are living in the country and that we, all the villagers, have decided to build a bridge across a swamp into which we sink. We have agreed or promised to give from each farm so much money, or timber, or so many days. We have agreed to do so, only because the building of this bridge is of greater importance to us than the expense which we incur upon it. But among us there are some people for whom it is more convenient not to have a bridge than to spend money upon it, or who at least think that this is more advantageous for them. Can the compulsion of these men to build the bridge make it an advantage for them ? Evidently not, because these men, who regarded their free participation in the building of the bridge as unprofitable, will regard it as even more unprofitable, when it becomes compulsory.

Let us even suppose that we, all of us without exception, have agreed to build this bridge and have promised so much money or labour from each farm ; but it so happens that a few of those who promised a share have not furnished it, because their circumstances have changed, causing them to find it more advantageous to be without the bridge than spend money on it ; or they have simply changed their mind ; or they simply calculate that the others will build the bridge without their contributions, so that they also will be able to drive over it : can compelling these people to take part in the building of the bridge make these compulsory sacrifices a benefit to them ? Evidently not, because, if these men have not carried out what they promised, on account of circumstances which have changed, so that the contributions for the bridge have become harder for them than the absence of the bridge, their compulsory contributions will only be a greater evil to them. But if those who refuse have a mind to make use of the labours of others, their compulsion to contribute will only be a punishment for their intention, and their intention, completely unexpressed, will be punished before it is carried into effect ; in neither case can their compulsion to take part in an undesirable work be a good for them.

Thus it will be when the contributions are received for a work that is comprehensible, obvious, and unquestionably useful for them, like the bridge over the swamp, through which all travel. How much more unjust and senseless will be the compulsion exerted on millions of people to make sacrifices, the aim of which is incomprehensible, intangible, and frequently unquestionably harmful, as is the case with military service and with the taxes. But according to science it turns out that what to all appears as an evil is a common good ; it turns out that there are people, a tiny minority of men, who alone know wherein the common good lies, and, although all other men consider this common good to be evil, this minority, compelling all other men to do this evil, is able to consider this evil to be a common good.

In this consists the chief superstition and the chief deception, which retards the motion of humanity toward truth and the good. The maintenance of this superstition . and this deception forms the aim of the political sciences in general and of the so-called political economy in particular. Its aim is to conceal from people that condition of subjection and of slavery in which they are. The means which it employs for this purpose consist in this, that, in analyzing the violence which conditions the whole economic life of the enslaved, it intentionally recognizes this violence as natural and inevitable, and thus deceives people and veils their eyes from the real cause of their wretchedness.

Slavery has long been abolished. It was abolished in Rome, and in America, and in our country, but what has been abolished is words, and not facts.

Slavery is the liberation of self from labour (necessary for the gratification of one’s needs), which by means of violence is transferred to others ; and where there is a man who does not work, not because other people work for him for love’s sake, but because he is able not to work himself, but to compel others to work for him, there is slavery. But where there are people, as in all European societies, who by means of violence exploit the labours of thousands of men, and who regard this as their privilege, and other people, who submit to the violence and recognize it as their obligation, there slavery exists in terrible proportions.

Slavery exists. In what does it consist ? In that in which it has always consisted, and without which it can never exist: in the violence of the strong and armed exerted over the weak and the unarmed.

Slavery with its three fundamental methods of personal violence, — of militarism, taxation of land, supported by the militarism, and the tribute which is imposed on all the inhabitants by means of direct and indirect taxes, and winch is supported by the same militarism, — exists today as it has always existed. The only reason why we do not see it is this, that each of the three forms of slavery has received a new justification, which shields from us its meaning. The personal violence of the armed done to the unarmed has received the justification of a defence of the country against its imaginary enemies ; in reality it has the old meaning, namely, that of the subjection of the vanquished by the oppressor. The violence exerted in taking the land from those who work upon it has received the justification of a reward for deserts respecting the imaginary common good and is confirmed by the right of inheritance ; in reality it is the same despoliation of the land and enslavement of the people which was produced by the army (the power). The last, the monetary violence, the violence of taxation, — the most powerful and most important in modern times,— has received the most remarkable justification, namely, this : people are deprived of their property and freedom, and of their whole good in the name of freedom, of the common good. In reality it is nothing but the same slavery, except that it is impersonal.

Where violence is exalted into a law, there slavery also will exist. Whether the violence is expressed in this way, that the princes make incursions with their retinues, killing women and children, and giving the villages to fire; or whether the slave-owners exact work or money from the slaves for the land, and, in case of arrears, call in the aid of armed men ; or whether certain people put others under tribute, travelling armed from village to village ; or whether the ministry of the interior collects money through governors and rural officers, and, in case of refusal to pay, sends out companies of soldiers, — in short, so long as there is violence, supported by bayonets, there will be no distribution of wealth among people, but the whole wealth will go to the oppressors.

George’s project of the nationalization of the land serves as a striking illustration of the truth of this proposition. George proposes that all the land be regarded as the property of the state, and so all imposts, whether direct or indirect, are to be replaced by a ground rent, that is, that every man who makes use of the land shall pay to the state the value of its rent.

What would happen ? Land slavery would be destroyed within the limits of the state, that is, the land would belong to the state : England would have its land, America its own, and so forth, — that is, there would be a slaver)’ which would be determined by the amount of land under exploitation.

Maybe the condition of some of the labourers (on the land) would improve ; but so long as there was left a violent levy of taxes for the rent, slavery would be left.

The agriculturist, who after a failure of crops would be unable to pay the rent, which is exacted of him by force, would be compelled, in order not to lose everything, to sell himself to the man who had the money.

If a bucket is leaky, there is certainly a hole in it. As we look at the bottom of the bucket, it may appear to us that the water is leaking out of several holes ; but, no matter how much we may stop up these imaginary holes, the water will continue to flow. In order to stop the flow, it is necessary to find the place where the water escapes from the bucket and stop it from the inside. The same has to be done with the proposed measures for stopping the irregular distribution of wealth, in order to stop the hole through which the wealth of the people leaks out. They say : “ Form labour unions ; turn the capital into public property ; turn the land into public property ! ” All this is nothing but an external stoppage of the places through which the water seems to leak. In order to stop the leakage of the working men’s wealth, which passes into the hands of the leisure class, it is necessary to find the inside hole through which this leakage takes place.

This hole is the violence exerted by an armed man over one who is not armed ; it is the violence of the army, which takes the men away from their labour, or which despoils them of the land and of the products of their labour. So long as there shall exist a single armed man who arrogates to himself the right to kill another, there will exist the irregular distribution of wealth, that is, slavery.

What led me into the error that I could help others was that I imagined that my money was the same kind of money as Semén’s. But that was not true.

There exists a common opinion that money represents wealth ; but money is the product of labour, and so money represents labour. This opinion is as correct as that other opinion that every political organization is the result of a pact (contrat social).

All want to believe that money is only a medium of the exchange of labour. I have made some boots, you have raised some grain, he has fattened some sheep ; in order to be able more conveniently to exchange our articles, we introduce money, which represents a corresponding share of labour, and by means of it we exchange some soles for a brisket of mutton and ten pounds of flour. We exchange our products through the medium of the money, and the money of each of us represents our individual labour. That is quite true, but only so long as in society, where this exchange takes place, there has not appeared the violence of one man over another, not only violence to another man’s labour, as is the case in war and slavery, but also violence in the defence of one’s labour against others. It will be true only in a society whose members fully execute the Christian law, in a society where he who asks receives what he asks for, and where they do not ask the aggressor to give back what he has taken. But as soon as any violence is exerted in society, the money at once loses for the owner its significance as a representative of labour, and assumes the meaning of a right which is not based on labour, but on violence.

The moment there is war, and one man takes anything away from another, the money can no longer be a representative of labour ; the money which the warrior gets for the booty which he sells, and which the chief of the warrior gets, is by no means a product of their labour, and has an entirely different meaning than the money received for work put into making boots. So long as there are slave-owners and slaves, as has always been the case in the whole world, it is just as impossible to say that money represents labour. The women have woven some linen, and this they sell, and they receive money for it ; the serfs have woven for the master, and the master sells the linen, and receives money for it. Either money is the same ; but the first is the product of labour, the second is the product of violence. In the same way a stranger or my father has made me a present of money, and my father, giving it to me, knew, and I, too, know, and everybody else knows, that nobody can take this money away from me ; that if any one should try to take it from me, or even not to return it to me by a set time, at which he promised to return it to me, the authorities would take my part and compel him by force to return the money to me. And so it is again obvious that this money can in no way be called a representative of labour on a par with the money which Semén received for sawing wood. Thus in a society in which there is the least violence which takes possession of other people’s money, or which defends the possession of money from others, the money cannot always be a representative of labour. In such a society it is sometimes a representative of labour, and sometimes of violence.

Thus it would be if there appeared even one case of violence exerted by one man over others among absolutely free relations ; but now, when for the accumulation of money there have passed centuries of the most varied forms of violence ; when this violence merely changes forms and does not cease ; when, as is acknowledged by everybody, the money itself in its accumulation forms violence ; when money, as the product of direct labour, forms but a small part of the money formed from every description of violence, — now to say that money represents the labour of him who possesses it is an obvious delusion or a conscious lie. We may say that it ought to be so, or that it is desirable that it should be so, but by no means that it is so.

Money represents labour. Yes. Money represents labour ; but whose ? In our society money is only in the very rarest cases a representative of the labour of the owner of the money, and is nearly always a representative of the labour of other people, past or future. It is a representative of other people’s obligations to do work, as established through violence.

In its most precise and, at the same time, most simple definition, money is a conventional token which gives the right, or, more correctly, the possibility, to exploit the labour of other people. In its ideal significance, money ought to give this right or possibility only when it itself serves as a representative of labour, and money could be that in a society where there is no violence. But the moment there is any violence in society, that is, the possibility of exploiting another man’s labour without one’s own work, this possibility of exploiting another man’s labour, without the determination of the person over whom this violence is exerted, is also expressed by money.

A proprietor imposes upon his serfs certain obligations in kind, a certain number of bolts of linen, corn, cattle, or a corresponding sum of money. One farm furnishes cattle, but pays money in lieu of the linen. The proprietor takes a certain sum of money only because he knows that for this money they will make just as many bolts of linen for him (as a rule he will take a little more so as to be sure that they will always produce the exact amount) and to the proprietor this money obviously represents the obligation of other people to do work.

The peasant gives the money as a claim against some unknown person, and there are many persons who will be willing for the money to produce so and so many bolts of linen. The reason that the people will undertake to produce the linen is this, that they have not had time to fatten their sheep, and they have to pay money for the sheep, and the peasant who will take the money for the sheep will take it because he has to pay for the corn which did not grow well this year. The same thing takes place in the state, in the whole world.

A man sells the product of his present, past, or future labour, sometimes his food, as a rule not because the money is for him a convenience of exchange, — he would gladly exchange without money, — but because they exact the money from him by force, as a claim to his own labour.

When the King of Egypt demanded labour from his slaves, the slaves gave it all, but they gave only their past and their present labour, — they could not give their future labour. But with the dissemination of monetary tokens and the consequent credit, it became possible to give up money for future labours. With the existence of violence in society, money represents only the possibility of a new form of an impersonal slavery, which takes the place of the personal slavery. A slave-owner has the right to Peter’s, Ivan’s, Sidor’s labour. But the owner of money, where money is demanded of all, has the right to the labour of all those nameless men who are in need of money. Money does away with all that hard side of slavery, when the owner knows Iris right to IvLn; at the same time it does away with all the human relations between the owner and the slave, which softened the hardness of personal slavery.

I do not say that such a condition is, perhaps, necessary for the evolution of humanity, for progress, and so forth. I have only tried to make clear to myself the concept of money and of that common error into which I had fallen when I regarded money as the representative of labour. I convinced myself by experience that money is not the representative of labour, but in the majority of cases a representative of violence, or of especially complex devices based on violence.

Money has in our time completely lost that desirable significance as a representative of labour ; such a significance it has only exceptionally, for as a general rule it has become a right or a possibility for exploiting the labour of others.

The dissemination of money, of credit, and of all kinds of monetary tokens more and more confirms this meaning of money. Money is the possibility or the right to exploit the labours of others. Money is a new form of slavery, which differs from the old only in being impersonal, and in freeing people from all the human relations of the slave.

Money is money, a value winch is always equal to itself, which is always considered absolutely regular and legal, and the use of which is not considered immoral, as the use of the right of slavery was considered to be.

In my youth it became fashionable in clubs to play lotto. Everybody rushed to play it, and, as they said, many persons were ruined, families were made unfortunate, other people’s Crown money was gambled away, and men shot themselves, and the game was prohibited and is prohibited until this day.

I used to see, 1 remember, unsentimental old gamblers, who would tell me that this game was particularly agreeable in that a person did not see whom in particular he was beating, as is the case in other games ; the lackey did not even bring money, but only chips, and each person lost but a small stake, and his grief could not be observed. The same is true of roulette, which is everywhere prohibited for good reasons.

The same is true of money. I have a magic never-failing rouble ; I cut off the coupons and am removed from all the affairs of the world. Whom am I harming ? I am a most innocuous and kindly man. But this is only playing lotto or roulette, where I do not see the man who shoots himself on account of his losses, while it furnishes me those little coupons which I regularly cut off at a right angle from the bonds.

I have done nothing and will do nothing but cut off those little coupons, and I believe firmly that money is a representative of labour. How strange! And they talk of insane persons ! What madness can be more terrible than this ? A clever and learned man, who in all other things is sensible, lives senselessly and eases his conscience by not enunciating the one word which it is necessary to say that there may be a meaning to his reflection, and considers himself righteous. The little coupons are representatives of labour ! Of labour ! Yes, but whose labour ? Obviously not his who owns it, but his who works.

Money is the same as slavery ; it has the same aims and the same consequences. Its aim is the liberation of self from the original law, as a profound writer from the masses has correctly said, — from the natural law of life, as we call it, from the law of personal labour for the gratification of one’s wants. The consequences of money are the same as those of slavery were for the owner : the breeding and invention of new and endlessly new wants, which can never be satisfied, pampered wretchedness, debauch ; and for the slaves : the oppression of man, his reduction to the level of an animal.

Money is a new and terrible form of slavery, and, like the old form of personal slavery, it corrupts both the slave and the slave-owner, but it is even much worse because it frees the slave and the slave-owner from personal human relations.

XXII.

I have always to marvel at the words frequently repeated : ” Yes, that is so in theory, but how is it in practice ? ” Just as though theory were a series of fine words which are needed for conversation, but not that practice, that is, all activity, should inevitably be based upon it. There must have existed a terrible lot of stupid theories in the world, if such a remarkable reflection has passed into use. Theory is what a man thinks about a subject, and practice is what he does. How, then, can a man think that it is necessary to do something in a certain way, and do the opposite ? If the theory of bread-baking is this, that the dough has first to be made and then be left to rise, then, outside of crazy men, no one who knows the theory will do the opposite. But it has become a fashion with us to say that this is a theory, and how is it in practice ?

In the subject which interests me there has been confirmed what I have always thought, that the practice inevitably follows from the theory : not that it justifies it, but that it cannot be anything else ; that, if I have come to understand the matter of which I have been thinking, I cannot do it otherwise than in the manner in which I understand it.

I wanted to help the poor only because I had money and because I shared the general confidence that money was a representative of labour, or in general something lawful and good. But, when I began to give the money, I saw that what I was giving was the notes against the poor which I had collected, and that I was doing what many proprietors used to do when they compelled certain serfs to serve others. I saw that every use of money — whether it be the purchase of something, or the transmission of the money to another for nothing — was the sending to protest of a note against the poor, or the transference of the same to another person for the purpose of sending it to protest against the poor. And so I clearly saw the insipidity which I was trying to commit, — to help the poor by exacting from the poor. I saw that money in itself not only failed to be good, but was also an obvious evil which deprived people of their chief good, of labour, and of the use of this, their own labour, and that I was unable to transmit this good to any one, because I was myself deprived of it : I have no labour and am not so fortunate as to make use of my own labour.

One would think that there was nothing peculiar in this reflection as to what money is. But this reflection, which I made not for the mere sake of reflecting, but in order to solve the question of my life, my suffering, was for me an answer to the question as to what should be done.

The moment I understood what wealth was, what money was, it not only became clear to me what I had to do, but it also became clear and indubitable to me what all others ought to do, and that they inevitably would do it. In reality I understood nothing but what I had known long ago, — the truth which had been transmitted to men since the most remote times by Buddha, and Isaiah, and Lao-tse, and Socrates, and was particularly clearly and indubitably transmitted to us by Jesus Christ and his predecessor, John the Baptist. In reply to men’s questions as to what they should do, he answered simply, briefly, and clearly, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise (Luke iii. 10, 11).

The same, with greater clearness and frequently, was said by Christ. He said, Blessed are the poor, and woe to the rich. He said that one could not serve God and Mammon. He forbade his disciples to take, not only money, but even two coats. He said to the rich young man that he could not enter into the kingdom of God because he was rich, and that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. He said that he who would not leave everything, his house, and children, and fields, in order to follow him, was not his disciple. He spoke a parable about the rich man who did no wrong, like our own rich, but dressed himself well and ate and drank good food, and who thus lost his soul, and about poor Lazarus, who did no good, but who saved himself merely by being poor.

That truth was sufficiently well known to me, but the fallacious teachings of the world had dimmed it so that it had become for me a theory, in the sense which people are fond of ascribing to the word, that is, idle words. But as soon as I succeeded in destroying in my consciousness the sophisms of the worldly teaching, the theory blended with the practice, and the reality of my life and of the life of all men became its inevitable consequence.

I understood that man, in addition to his life for his personal good, must inevitably also serve the good of other men; that, if we are to take an example from the life of animals, as certain people are fond of doing, defending violence and struggle by the struggle for existence in the animal kingdom, the comparison ought to be taken from among the social animals, such as the bees, and that, therefore, man, to say nothing of his innate love for his neighbour, by reason and by his own nature is called to serve other people and the common human ends. I understood that the natural law of man was only that which made it possible for him to fulfil his destiny, and so be happy. I understood that this law had been

impaired by this, that men, like the plunderer bees, free themselves through violence from labour, and exploit the labour of others, directing this labour, not to a common aim, but to the personal gratification of multiplying passions (lusts), and that, like the plunderer bees, they perish from this. I understood that men’s misfortune was due to the slavery in which one set of men held other men. I understood that the slavery of our time was produced by the violence of militarism, by the appropriation of land, and the exaction of money. And, having come to understand the meaning of all three instruments of the new slavery, I could not help but wish to be freed from a participation in it.

When I was a slave-owner, possessing serfs, and comprehended the immorality of this situation, I tried at that time, in company with other people who understood it, to free myself from that situation. My liberation consisted in this, that, as I considered myself immoral, I tried, so long as I was not able to free myself completely from this situation, to urge as little as possible my rights as a slave-owner, and to live and let the people live in such a way as though these rights did not exist, and at the same time to use every effort in impressing the other slave-owners with the lawlessness and inhumanity of their imaginary rights.

I cannot help but do the same in respect to the present slavery : as little as possible urge my rights, so long as I am not able completely to renounce these rights, which are given to me by land-ownership and by money, and which are supported by the violence of militarism, and at the same time with all my means impress upon other people the lawlessness and inhumanity of these imaginary rights. The participation in slavery on the side of the slave-owner consists in the exploitation of other people’s labour, no matter whether the slavery is based on my right to the slave, or on my ownership of land, or on money.

And so, if a man indeed dislikes slavery and does not wish to be a participant in it, the first thing he will do will be this, that he will not make use of other people’s labour, either through the ownership of land, or through serving the government, or through money.

But the refusal to employ any of the means in use for the purpose of exploiting other people’s labour will inevitably bring such a man to the necessity, on the one hand, of curtailing his needs, and, on the other, of doing for himself what formerly others did for him.

This simple and inevitable inference enters into all the details of my life, modifies it all, and at once frees me from those moral sufferings which I used to experience at the sight of the suffering and the debauchery of men, and at once destroys all those three causes of the impossibility of helping the poor, at which I arrived in seeking the causes for my failure.

The first cause was the crowding of people into the cities and the swallowing up in the cities of the wealth of the country. A man need but have the desire not to exploit the labours of others by means of serving the government and owning land and money, and therefore to satisfy his needs himself to the best of his strength and ability, in order that it should never occur to him to leave the village (in which it is easiest of all to satisfy one’s wants) for the city, where everything is the product of somebody else’s labour, where everything has to be bought; and then, in the country, a man will be able to help the needy, and he will not experience that feeling of helplessness which I experienced in the city, when I tried to help people, not by means of my own labour, but by that of others.

The second cause was the disunion between the rich and the poor. A man need but wish not to exploit other people’s labour by means of service, of ownership of land, and of money, in order to be put to the necessity of

satisfying his own wants, and immediately the wall will be destroyed which separates him from the working people, and he will blend with them, and will stand shoulder to shoulder with them, and will have the possibility of helping them.

The third cause was shame, which was based on the consciousness of the immorality of my possession of that money with which I wanted to help others. We need but wish not to exploit other people’s labour by means of service, of ownership of land, and of money, and we shall never have that superfluous fool’s money, the presence of which with me has provoked in people who have no money certain demands which I could not satisfy, and in me — a feeling of the consciousness of my unrighteousness.

XXIII.

I saw that the cause of men’s suffering and debauchery was this, that certain people were in slavery to others, and so I drew the simple conclusion that, if I wished to help others, I must first of all stop causing those misfortunes which I wish to assist, that is, not take part in the enslavement of men. But what had been urging me to enslave people was the fact that I had been accustomed from childhood not to work, but to make use of the labours of other people, and that I had been living in a society which not only was used to this enslavement of other people, but also justified this enslavement with all kinds of clever and insipid sophisms. I drew the following simple conclusion that, in order that I might not cause people’s suffering and debauchery, I must as little as possible make use of the work of others, and myself work as much as possible. By a long path I came to the inevitable conclusion which a thousand years ago was made by the Chinese in this utterance : ” If there is one idle man, there is another who is starving.” I came to this simple and natural conclusion that, if I pitied that worn-out horse which I was riding, the first thing I ought to do, if I really was sorry for it, was to get off and walk.

This answer, which gives such complete satisfaction to the moral feeling, begged for my recognition, and begs for the recognition of all of us, but we do not see it and look aside.

In our search after a cure for our social diseases we look about on all sides, — in governmental, and anti—

governmental, and scientific, and philanthropic superstitions, and we do not see what strikes our eyes.

We use the vessel in the house, and want others to carry it out, and pretend that we suffer for them, and want to make it easier for them, and invent all kinds of devices, except the simplest one, that of carrying it out ourselves, if we wish to use it in the house, or else going back of the barn.

For him who sincerely suffers in seeing the men who surround us suffer, there is a very clear, simple, and easy means, the only possible one for the cure of the evils which surround us and for the recognition of the lawfulness of our life, — the same that John the Baptist gave to the question, What shall we do then ? and which Christ confirmed : not to have more than one garment and not to have money, that is, not to make use of the labours of others, and so first of all to do with our own hands what we are able to do.

That is so simple and so clear. But that is simple and clear when the wants are clear and simple, and when a man himself is fresh and not corrupted to the core through laziness and idleness. I live in the village, lying on the oven, and order my debtor next door to chop wood and make a fire in the oven. It is very clear that I am lazy and am taking my neighbour away from his work ; and I shall feel ashamed, and it will be tiresome for me to He all the time, and if my muscles are strong and I am accustomed to work, 1 shall go and chop the wood myself.

But the offence of slavery in all kinds of forms has existed so long; so many artificial wants have grown up on it ; so many people in various stages of habits as regards these wants are interrelated ; men have been so spoiled and so pampered for generations; such complex temptations and justifications in their luxury and their idleness have been invented by people, that for a man who is at the top of the ladder of idle people it is far from being so easy to understand his sin, as for a peasant who compels his neighbour to make a fire in his oven.

For people who are on the uppermost rung of this ladder it is terribly hard to understand what it is that is demanded of them. Their heads are dizzy from the height of that ladder of lie on which they stand, when they behold that spot on the earth to which they must descend in order to begin their life, not well, but only not entirely inhumanely ; and it is from this that the simple and clear truth seems so terrible to them.

To a man with ten servants, liveries, coachmen, a chef, pictures, pianos, it will appear strange and even ridiculous to do what is the simplest and the first action of each man, not necessarily a good man, but one who is not an animal: to chop his own wood, with which his food is prepared and which furnishes him heat ; to clean his own overshoes or boots, with which he has carelessly stepped into the mud; to fetch his own water, with which he makes his ablutions, and to carry out the dirty water in which he has washed himself.

But, besides the very remoteness of people from the truth, there is also another cause which keeps people from seeing the obligatoriness for them of the simplest and most natural personal physical work : it is the complexity, the interworking of the conditions, of the advantages of all people who are connected with one another, in which a rich man lives.

This morning I went out into the corridor where the fires are made in the stoves. A peasant was making a fire in the stove which heats my son’s room. I went in to see him : he was asleep. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. It was a holiday, and so the excuse, — there were no lessons.

The smooth-looking, eighteen-year-old lad with a beard, having eaten a great deal in the evening, is sleeping until eleven o’clock, but the peasant, who is of his age, got up in the morning, has finished a lot of work, and is making a fire in the tenth stove, but he is asleep. ” If only the peasant did not make a fire in his stove, in order to warm up his sleek, lazy body ! ” I thought. But immediately I recalled that this stove warmed also the room of the stewardess, a woman of forty years of age, who the night before had worked until three o’clock in the night, in order to get everything ready for the supper, which my son also ate, and had cleaned away the dishes, and still had got up at seven o’clock. The peasant is making the fire for her, too. And the lazy fellow is getting his heat, which is to be put down to her account.

It is true, the advantages of all men are interwoven, but even without any prolonged calculation the conscience of each man tells him on whose side is the labour, and on whose the idleness. But it is not merely conscience that tells ; it is the ledger that shows it in the clearest manner possible. The more money one spends, the more he causes others to work for him ; the less he spends, the more he works.

And industry, and public undertakings, and finally the most terrible of words, — culture, and the evolution of the sciences and arts ?

XXIV.

In March of last year I returned home late in the evening. As I turned from Zubov Lane into Khamovnicheski Lane, I saw some black spots in the snow of Virgin Field. Something was moving about in that place. I should have paid no attention to this, if a policeman who was standing at the entrance of the lane had not called out in the direction of the black spots :

” Vasili, why don’t you come along ? “

” She won’t go ! ” a voice answered from there, and thereupon the black spots moved toward the policeman.

I stopped to ask the policeman what it was. He said :

“They took in the girls of Bzhanov House and led them to the station, but this one fell behind, and will not move.”

A janitor in a sheepskin coat was leading her. She was walking in front, and he kept pushing her from behind. All of us, the janitor, the policeman, and I, were wearing our winter furs, but she had only a skirt on. In the darkness I could make out a brown dress, and a kerchief on her head and neck. She was small of stature, like an abortion : her legs were short, and her figure was out of proportion, broad and unshapely.

” You, wench, keep us standing here. Go on, I say ! I’ll teach you ! ” shouted the policeman.

He was evidently getting tired, and annoyed at her. She made a few steps, and stopped again. The old janitor, a good-natured man (I know him), pulled her hand.

” Come now, go on ! ” he pretended to be angry.

She tottered and began to speak with a wheezing voice. In every sound there was a false note, a snoring, and a squeak.

” Don’t push me ! I’ll get there ! “

” Vou will freeze to death,” said the janitor.

” The kind I am do not freeze, — I am of the warm kind.”

She meant to be jesting, but her words sounded like scolding. Near a lamp-post which is not far from the gate of our house she stopped again, leaning, almost throwing herself on the fence, and began to rummage in her skirts with her awkward, frosted hands. Again they shouted to her, but she only gurgled, and continued doing something. In one hand she held a cigarette bent into an arc, and in the other she had some matches. I stopped behind her ; I felt ashamed to pass by her, and yet ashamed to stand and gaze. Finally I made up my mind and went up to her.

She was lying with her shoulder against the fence, and uselessly kept striking matches against the fence, and throwing them away. I scanned her face. She was indeed an abortion, but, as 1 thought, an old woman, — I gave her thirty years. The colour of her face was sallow ; her eyes, small, turbid, bloodshot ; her nose knob-shaped ; her lips crooked, slavering, and sunken at the corners ; and a short strand of dry hair peeped out from underneath her kerchief. Her waist was long and flat, and her arms and legs were short. I stopped opposite her. She looked at me and smiled, as though she knew everything I was thinking about.

I felt that I had to say something to her. I wanted to show her that I was sorry for her.

“ Have you any parents ?” I asked.

She laughed hoarsely, then suddenly stopped, and raising her eyebrows, gazed at me.

” Have you any parents ?” I repeated.

She smiled with an expression which seemed to say : ” What makes him trouble himself to ask me?”

” I have a mother,” she said. ” What is that to you ? ”

” And how old are you ? ”

” Going on sixteen,” she said, replying readily, evidently to a habitual question.

” March ! Yon make me freeze, — the devil take you ! ” shouted the policeman ; and she tottered away from the fence, and, swaying to and fro, went down Khamovnicheski Lane to the station, while I turned into the gate and went home, where I asked whether my daughters had returned. I was told that they had been to an evening entertainment, had had a good time, and were back home, asleep.

The next morning I wanted to go to the police station to find out what became of that unfortunate woman, and I got ready to go quite early, when I received the visit of one of those unfortunate men of the gentry who in their weakness stray from their lordly life and now rise and now fall again. I had known him for three years. During these three years he had several times squandered everything he had, even the garments on his back ; just such a misfortune had befallen him lately, and for the time being he passed his nights in Rzhanov House, in a night lodging apartment, and in the daytime came to see me. He met me as I was going out, and, without listening to what I had to say, began to tell me what had happened

* in the night in Rzhanov House. He did not half finish his story ; he, an old man who had seen all manner of people, suddenly burst out weeping and sobbing, and, when he stopped, he turned his face to the wall. Everything he told me was an absolute truth. I verified his story on the spot, and learned some new details, which I shall not give with the story.

In the night lodging apartment, in the lower story, Number 32, in which my friend stayed, there was, among the number of transient inmates, men and women, wfio

come together with one another for five kopeks, a laundress, of about thirty years of age, a blond, quiet, orderly, but sickly woman. The landlady is the paramour of a boatman. In the summer her cohabiter keeps a boat, and in the winter they make a living by letting the room to night lodgers, — three kopeks without a pillow, and five kopeks with a pillow. The laundress had lived there for several months, and was a quiet woman ; but of late they began to dislike her, because she coughed and did not let the inmates sleep. Especially a half-crazy old woman of eighty years, who was also a constant inmate of this apartment, took a dislike to the laundress, and nagged her to death, because she would not let her sleep and kept clearing her throat all night long, like a sheep. The laundress kept quiet,— she was in debt for her lodging and felt guilty, and so she had to be quiet.

She went less and less frequently to work, her strength gave out, and so she could not pay the landlady ; the last week she did not go to work at all, and with her coughing only poisoned the lives of all, especially of the old woman, who did not go out herself. Four days before, the landlady had refused to give her lodging: she was owing six dimes, did not pay her rent, and there was no hope that she would pay it ; and the cots were all occupied, and the lodgers complained of her coughing.

When the landlady refused to give lodging to the laundress and told her to leave the room, if she did not ‘ pay, the old woman was glad and pushed the laundress out-of-doors. The laundress went away, but came back an hour later, and the landlady did not have the heart to drive her away again. ” Where shall I go ? ” said the laundress. But on the third day the landlady’s paramour, a Muscovite who knew what was what, went for a policeman. The policeman, with a sabre and a pistol on a red cord, came to the apartment and, politely uttering civil words, led the laundress out-of-doors.

It was a clear, sunshiny, but cold March day. Runlets were flowing, and janitors were chopping wood. The public sleighs leaped over the crusted snow and screeched over the stones. The laundress went up-hill on the sunny side, reached a church, and sat down at the portals of the church, on the sunny side. But when the sun began to go down behind the houses and the puddles were sheeted with ice, the laundress began to feel cold and chilly. She got up and pulled herself along. Whither? Home, to that only home in which she had lived of late. Before she reached the house, resting on her way, it grew dark. She went up to the gate, turned into it, slipped, groaned, and fell down.

A man, another passed. “No doubt drunk.” Another passed. He stumbled over the laundress, and said to the janitor : ” A drunken woman is wallowing at the gate, — I almost broke my head falling over her ; take her away, or do something ! “

The janitor went. The laundress was dead. That was what my friend told me. People may think that I have picked out the facts, — the meeting with a fifteen-year-old prostitute and the story of this laundress ; but you must not think so: that actually happened in one night in March of 1884, though I do not remember the date.

And so, after hearing my friend’s story, I went to the police station in order to go from there to Rzhanov House, to find out the details of the story about this laundress. The weather was fine, the sun shone, and again could the running water be seen through the stars of the night frost in the shade, while in Khamovnicheski Square everything melted in the sun, and the water ran. A noise came up from the river. The trees of Neskuchni Garden could be seen in the blue distance across the river; the browned sparrows, unnoticeable in winter, struck one’s eyes with their mirth ; men, too, seemed to wish to be merry, but they had all too many cares. One could hear the ringing of bells, and against the background of these blending sounds could be heard the sounds of firing in the barracks, the whistling of rifle-balls, and their pinging against the target.

1 came to the police station. Here a few armed men, policemen, took me to their chief. He, too, was armed with a sabre and a pistol, and was busy giving orders about a tattered, shivering old man, who was standing before him and from weakness was unable to answer the questions put to him. Having finished his business with the old man, he turned to me. I asked him about the girl of the evening before. At first he listened attentively to me, and then smiled, both because I did not know the regulation about taking them to the police station, and especially because I was surprised at her youth.

“Why, there are some of twelve years, and lots of thirteen and fourteen,” he said, cheerfully.

In reply to my question about the girl of the evening before, he explained to me that they had all of them been sent to the committee (I think I am right). In reply to my question as to where they had passed the night, he answered indefinitely. He did not remember the one I was talking about, — there were so many of them each day.

In Rzhanov House I found, in Number 32, the sexton reading the prayers over the deceased woman. She had been placed on what had been her cot, and the lodgers, all of them people without means, had collected among themselves money for the mass, the coftin, and the shroud, and the old women had dressed and prepared her. The sexton was reading in the darkness ; a woman in a cloak was standing with a wax taper, and another taper was held by a man (one would think a gentleman) in a clean overcoat with an astrakhan collar, shining galoshes, and a starched shirt. This was her brother. They had found him.

I went past the deceased woman to the landlady’s corner, and asked her all about it.

She was frightened at my questions; she was apparently afraid lest she should be accused of something ; later she talked more freely, and told jne everything. As I went back I looked at the dead woman. All dead persons are beautiful, but this one was especially beautiful and invited sympathy in her coffin : her face was clean and pale, with closed, bulging eyes, sunken cheeks, and soft blond hair on her high brow; her face looked weary, kind, and not sad, but surprised. Indeed, if the living do not see, the dead are surprised.

On the day on which I noted this down a grand ball was given in Moscow.

That night I left home at nine o’clock. I live in a locality which is surrounded by factories, and I left the house after the whistles of the factory had blown, which after a week of unceasing work dismissed the people for a free day.

Factory hands rushed by me, and I walked past factory hands who were making for the inns and restaurants. Many were already drunk, and many were with women.

I live among factories. Every morning at five o’clock I hear a whistle, another, a third, a tenth, and so on and on. That means that the work of the women, children, and old men has begun. At eight o’clock there is a second whistle: this is a half-hour intermission. At noon — a third : this is an hour for dinner ; and at eight — a fourth : the end of work.

By a strange coincidence all three factories in my neighbourhood produce nothing but articles for balls.

In the one nearest to me they manufacture stockings ; in another — silk stuffs; in the third — perfumes and pomatum.

It is possible to hear these whistles, and not connect with them any other idea than the definition of time. ” Ah, there is the whistle, and so it is time to take a walk ! ” But it is also possible to connect with these whistles what there is in reality, namely, that the first whistle at five in the morning means, that people who have slept in a damp basement, frequently men and women indiscriminately together, are getting up in the dark and are hastening to the plant where the machines whir, to take their places at their work, the end and personal use of which they do not see, and work, frequently in a hot and stilling atmosphere, and in the dirt, with a very short intermission, an hour, two, three, twelve, and more hours in succession. They fall asleep and again wake up, and again and again continue the same senseless labour, which want alone compels them to do.

Thus passes one week after another, with the interruption of holidays, and even now I see the labourers who are dismissed for one of these holidays. They come out into the street: everywhere are restaurants, the Tsar’s inns girls. And they are drunk and drag one another by the hand, and take along girls, such as the one who the day before was taken to the station, and hire cabs, and ride in them, and go from restaurant to restaurant, and curse, and loaf, and talk, themselves not knowing what. I had seen such loafing of the labourers before, and had shunned them with a feeling of loathing, and had almost rebuked them; but ever since I have been hearing these whistles every day and known their meaning, 1 have been wondering how it is that all the men do not join those gangs of which Moscow is full, and that all the women do not fall to the condition of the girl whom I met near my house.

I walked about, watching these labourers, who loafed in the streets until eleven o’clock. After that the animation began to die down Here and there a few drunken persons were left, and here and there men and women were being taken to the station. Then carriages began to make their appearance, all of them moving in the same direction.

On the box of each carriage there is a coachman, frequently in a sheepskin coat, and a lackey, a dandy with a cockade. The well-fed trotters in housings fly through the frost at a rate of twenty versts an hour ; in the carriages are ladies, who are wrapped in capes and who are guarding their flowers and their coiffures. Everything, from the harness on the horses, the carriages, the rubber tires, the cloth of the coachman’s coat, to the stockings, shoes, flowers, velvet, gloves, and perfume, — all that is made by those people who are lying drunk on their cots in sleeping apartments, or are passing their nights with prostitutes in doss-houses, or are locked up in jails. And the visitors to the ball ride past them in everything of theirs, and it does not occur to them that there is any connection between the ball to which they are hastening and these drunkards at whom the coachmen shout.

These people enjoy themselves at the ball, in the calmest manner possible and with the fullest conviction that what they are doing is not bad, but very good. They enjoy themselves ! They enjoy themselves from eleven until six in the morning, through the deepest night, while these people are tossing with empty stomachs in lodginghouses, and some of them die, like the laundress.

Their enjoyment consists in this, that women and girls, baring their breasts and attaching bustles behind, get themselves up in an indecent manner in which no uncorrupted woman or girl would want to appear before a man ; and in this half-naked condition, with protruding bare breasts, arms bare to the shoulder, artificial bustles, and prominent hips, in the most glaring light, the women and the girls, whose first virtue has always been modesty, appear amidst strange men, who themselves wear indecently close-fitting garments, and they embrace them and circle around with them to the sounds of intox-icating music. Old women, who frequently are as much bared as the younger women, sit and watch, and eat and drink what tastes good ; old men do the same. No wonder all this takes place in the night, when all those people are asleep, and no one can see them. But this is not done in order to conceal anything : it seems to them that there is nothing to conceal, that it is very good, and that with this enjoyment, in which the painful labour of thousands of people is used up, they not only do not offend any one, but even support the poor people.

It may be very merry at balls ; but how did this come about ? AV hen we see in society and about us even one man who has not eaten or is suffering cold, we feel ashamed to make merry, until that man gets something to eat and is warmed up, to say nothing of this, that it is impossible to imagine people making merry at an entertainment which causes suffering to others. We loathe and cannot understand the merriment of bad boys who pinch a dog’s tail with a forked stick and find fun in doing it.

How is it, then, that here, in these our entertainments, we are so blind as not to see the· forked stick with which we are pinching the tails of all those people who suffer for the sake of our entertainment ?

Not a woman who goes to this ball in a dress costing 150 roubles was born at a ball or at Madame Minan-guoit’s, but each one has lived in the country, has seen peasants, and knows her nurse and chambermaid, who have poor fathers and brothers, for whom the earning of 150 roubles with which to build a hut is the aim of a long life of hard labour ; she knows this ; how, then, can she make merry, knowing that at this ball she is wearing on her bared body that hut which is the dream of the brother of her good chambermaid ?

But, let us suppose that she may not have made this reflection ; one would think she could not help knowing that the velvet and the silk, the confectionery and the flowers, and the lac^, and the dresses do not grow of their own accord, but are made by men ; she cannot help knowing what kind of people make all these things, under what conditions, and why. She cannot help knowing that the seamstress, whom she scolded, did not make that dress for her out of love for her ; and so she cannot help knowing that all this was done for her from want, that, like her dress, the laces, and the flowers, and the velvet were done in the same way. But, maybe, they are so befogged that they do not see this ; but the woman certainly cannot fail to have observed that five or six respectable, often sickly, old lackeys and maids lost sleep while busy with her. She saw their gloomy faces. She cannot help knowing that this night the frost reached 28 degrees Reaumur, and that the old coachman passed the whole night on the box. But I know that they, indeed, do not see any of these things. And if they, these young women and girls, who on account of the hypnotism produced on them by this ball do not see all this, they cannot be condemned. These poor women do everything which is regarded as good by their elders ; but how will the elders explain their cruelty to the people ?

The elders will always give this one explanation : “ I do not force a soul ; I buy the things, and I hire the servants, the maids, and the coachmen. There is nothing bad in buying and hiring. I do not force a soul, — I hire them, — so where is the wrong ? ”

The other day I called on an acquaintance of mine. As I passed through the first room, I was surprised to find two women there at the table, for I knew that my acquaintance was a bachelor. A lean, sallow, old-looking woman, of about thirty years of age, with a kerchief thrown over her shoulders, was doing something very rapidly on the table, jerking her body nervously, as though in a fit. Diagonally across from her sat a little girl, who was doing something in the same way, jerking all the time.

Both women seemed to be subject to the St. Vitus’s dance. I went up to them, and took a glance at what they were doing. They cast their eyes up at me, but continued their work in the same concentrated manner. Before them lay a loose heap of tobacco and paper shells : they were making cigarettes. The woman rubbed the tobacco in the palms of her hands, tilled the mould with it, stuck a shell over it, pushed the tobacco in, and threw the cigarette to the girl. The girl rolled up a piece of paper, and stuck the wad into the cigarette, which she threw down, to pick up another. All this was done with such rapidity and with such tension that it is impossible to describe it to a man who has not seen it. I expressed my surprise at their rapidity.

” Have been doing nothing else for fourteen years,” Ο O v 9

said the woman.

” Well, is it hard ? “

” Ves. It hurts in the chest, and the odour is hard to bear.”

Indeed, she did not have to tell me so. It was enough to look at her and at the girl. The girl has been working at it for more than two years ; but any one who sees her at her work will say that it is a strong organism which is beginning to decompose. My acquaintance, a good and liberal man, hired them for two roubles and fifty kopeks per thousand. He has money, and he pays them for their work, so where is the harm ? My acquaintance gets up at noon. The evenings, from six until two, he passes playing cards, or at the piano, and he eats and drinks savoury food; all his work is done by others. He is trying a new pleasure, smoking. He began to smoke within my memory.

There are a woman and a girl who can barely support themselves by changing themselves into machines and all their lives inhaling tobacco, and who thus ruin their lives. He has money, which he has not earned, and he prefers to play vint to making cigarettes for himself. He gives these women money on condition that they continue to live just as wretchedly as before, that is, that they make cigarettes for him.

I love cleanliness and give money on this condition alone, that the laundress shall wash the shirt which I change twice a day, and this shirt has worn out the laundress, and she has died.

Where is the wrong here ? People who buy and hire will continue without me to compel others to make velvet and confections, and will buy them, and without me men will hire people to make cigarettes and wash shirts. Why, then, should I deprive myself of velvet, and confections, and cigarettes, and clean shirts, if such is the order of things ? I frequently, almost always, hear this reflection. It is the same kind of a reflection that a maddened crowd makes when it destroys something. It is the same kind of a reflection that dogs are guided by, when one of them knocks down another, and all the others rush upon the under dog and tear it to pieces. ” If the others have begun to ruin the thing, why can’t I do it also? Well, what will happen if I wear a dirty shirt and make my own cigarettes ? Will anybody be better off from it ? ” ask people who want to justify themselves. If we were not so far from the truth, it would be a shame to answer such a question ; but we are so mixed up that this question seems very natural to us, and so, though we feel ashamed, we must answer it.

What difference will there be if I wear a shirt a week, and not a day, and make my own cigarettes, or stop smoking altogether ?

It will be this, that some laundress and some maker of cigarettes will strain themselves less, and this, that what before I spent for laundry and the making of cigarettes, I can give to the laundress, or to other laundresses and labourers, who are tired by their work, and who, instead of working above their strength, will be able to rest and to have some tea. But I have heard objections to this. (Rich and elegant people are so ashamed to understand their position.) To this they say : « If I wear dirty linen and stop smoking, and give this money to the poor, the poor will none the less be despoiled of everything, and your drop in the ocean will do no good.”

One feels even more ashamed to answer this objection, but the answer has to be given. It is such a common objection. The answer to it is simple.

If I come to savages, and they treat me to cutlets, which seem savoury to me, and I on the following day learn (perhaps I see it myself) that the savoury cutlets are made of the flesh of a captive man, who was killed for the purpose of furnishing savoury cutlets, and I find it wrong to eat men, — then, no matter how good the cutlets may taste, no matter how common the custom of devouring men may be among my fellows, no matter how little the captives who are prepared as food may profit from my refusal to eat the cutlets, I shall not and cannot eat them again. Maybe I shall devour human flesh when driven to it by hunger, but I shall not feast any one and shall not take part in a feast at which human flesh is eaten, and shall not look for such feasts, or be proud of taking part in them.

XXV.

But what shall we do ? We certainly did not do this ? If not we, who did ? We say that we did not do it ; it just did itself, as children say, when they break something, that it just broke itself. We say that so long as cities exist and we live in them, we support people by buying their labour for the purpose of serving them.

But that is not true, and that is the reason why we need only look at ourselves, to see how we live in the country, and how we there support people.

The winter is past in the city, and Easter week comes. In the city the same orgy of the rich is continued : in the boulevards, the gardens, and the parks, and on the river there are music, theatres, rides, promenades, all kinds of illuminations, and fireworks ; but in the country it is better: the air is better, and the trees, the fields, the Lowers, are fresher. We must go where all this is budding and flowering. And the majority of the rich people, who exploit the labours of others, go into the country, to breathe this better air and to look at these better fields and woods.

And so the rich people settle in the country, amidst dirty-looking peasants, who live on bread and onions, work eighteen hours a day, go nights without getting enough sleep, and wear coarse clothes. Here no one has tempted the people: there have been no factories here, and there are none of those unemployed hands, of whom there are so many in the city, and whom we are supposed to be feeding by giving them work. Here the people never get enough time in the summer to do all their work, and not only are there here no unemployed hands, but much property goes to ruin from lack of working hands, and a mass of men, children, old men, and women with children perish from overstraining themselves. How do the rich arrange their lives here ?

Like this. If there was an old house, which was built in the days of serfdom, it is renovated and beautified ; if there is none, a new one, two or three stories high, is built. The rooms, of which there are from twelve to twenty, and more, are all about six arshins in height. The floors are of parquetry, the windows have large panes ; there are costly carpets, costly furniture, and a buffet costing from two hundred to six hundred roubles.

The walks near the house are made with gravel, the ground is levelled off and provided with garden beds, and croquet grounds are laid out; they put up reflecting globes, frequently greenhouses, hotbeds, and high stables, always with ornaments on the ridge-piece. Everything is painted with oil-colours, the oil being what the old men and the children do not get in their porridge.

If the rich man is able, he settles in such a house ; if not, he hires one ; but no matter how poor or how liberal a man from our circle may be, when he settles in the country, he settles in a house, for the building and cleanliness of which it is necessary to take dozens of people away from their work, though they have not time enough to attend to the corn for their own sustenance.

It is impossible to say here that there are factories and that it will be all the same, whether I make use of them or not. Here we directly introduce factories of things which we need, and directly, by exploiting the want of the people who surround us, tear them away from the work which is necessary for them and for us and for all men, and thus we corrupt one set of men and ruin the lives and the health of other men.

Let us say, a cultured and honourable family from the gentry or from the official classes is living in the country.

All the members of the family and the guests come down there in the middle of June, because until then they have been studying and passing examinations, that is, they arrive in the beginning of mowing-time. The members of this family (like nearly all people of this circle) stay in the country from the beginning of the busy season, the haying-time, not to its end, for in September the sowing and the potato-digging is still going on, but to the time of slackening the intensity of the labour.

During the whole time of their stay in the country there is going on around them, by their side, that summer work of the peasants, of the tension of which we cannot form any idea, no matter how much we may have heard of it, or how much we may have read about it, or looked at it, unless we experience it ourselves.

The members of the family, about ten of them, live as badly as in the city, even worse, if such thing is possible, than in the city, because here in the country it is assumed that the members of the family are resting (from doing nothing) and so have no similitude of work, no excuse for their idleness.

About St. Peter’s Day, — during hungry Lent, when the peasants’ food consist·’ of kvas, bread, and onions,— the mowing begins. The gentlemen who live in the country see this work, partly order the men about, partly enjoy looking at it, smelling the odour of the wilting hay, hearing the songs of the women and the clanking of the scythes, and seeing the rows of mowers and raking women.

They see this near the house, and when the younger people and the children, who have been doing nothing the whole day, are sure to be driven on well-fed horses, a distance of half a verst, in order to bathe in the river.

The work which is being done at the mowing is one of the most important in the world. Nearly every year the lack of hands and of time causes the mowings to remain partly unmown, and for the same reason the meadows are liable to be spoiled by the rain ; the more or less tense work decides the question whether twenty or more per cent, of hay will be added to the wealth of the people, or whether this amount will rot, or harden on the root. If there is more hay, the old men will get meat to eat, and the children milk to drink. Thus it is in general, and in particular the question is here being solved for every mower as to the bread and milk for himself and the children in the winter. Every labouring man and woman knows this, and even the children know that this is an important work and that it is necessary for them to work with all their might and main, — to carry the pitcher with kvas to their fathers in the field, and, changing the heavy pitcher from hand to hand, to run with bare feet and as fast as possible the two versts from the village, in order to get there in time, and keep their fathers from scolding. Everybody knows that from mowing-time until the harvest there will be no interruption in the work and no time for resting.

And it is not the mowing alone, for everybody has, in addition to the mowing, other work to do; the ground has to be turned up and harrowed ; the women have to attend to the making of the linen, and the bread, and the washing ; and the men have to go to mill, and to the city, and to attend to the business of the Commune, and go to the judge and to the captain, and look after the wagons, and feed the horses at night, — and all, the old, and the young, and the sick, work with all their might. The peasants work so hard that, before the end of the day’s work, the weak, the striplings, and the old walk the last rows with great difficulty, tottering as they walk, and with difficulty get up after a rest; similarly work the women, who are often pregnant or nursing babies.

The work is tense and incessant. All work with all their might, and during this work not only eat up all the supplies of their scanty food, but also all their former supplies : all of them, never any too stout, grow lean after their summer’s work.

Here is a small company working a-mowing : three peasants, — one old man, another, his nephew, a young married lad, and a shoemaker of the manor, a muscular man. This mowing decides the fate of the winter for them all, whether they can keep a cow, and pay their taxes. They have been working without cessation and without rest for two weeks. The rain has retarded their work. After the rain, when the grass dried in the wind, they decided to finish the work and, to do the work more quickly, they determined to have two women to each scythe. With the old man comes out his wife, fifty years of age, worn out from work and eleven childbirths, and deaf, but still a good worker, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, a rather small, but strong and quick girl. With the nephew comes out his wife, a powerful and tall woman, as strong as any peasant, and his sister-in-law, the pregnant wife of a soldier. With the shoemaker comes his wife, a good worker, and her mother, an old woman, finishing her eighth decade, who otherwise is out begging alms. They start out in a row and work from morning until night, in the sweltering heat of the June sun. They hate to stop their work to fetch some water or kvas.

A tiny boy, the old woman’s grandchild, fetches the water. The old woman, who seems to be worrying lest she be driven away from the work, holds on to the rake and moves on with difficulty, but still keeps up with the rest. The boy is all bent up, and ‘takes short steps with his bare feet, dragging along the pitcher of water, which is heavier than he himself, and changing it from hand to hand. The girl shoulders a load of bay, which is also heavier than she ; she takes a few steps, and stops, and throws down the load, unable to carry it any longer. The fifty-year-old woman is raking without cessation and, with her kerchief knocked to one side, is dragging along the hay, breathing heavily and tottering in her walk ; the eightyyear-old woman does nothing but rake, but even that is above her strength ; she slowly shuttles her bast shoe covered feet and, scowling, looks gloomily in front of her, like a dangerously sick or dying man. The old man purposely sends her away from the rest to rake near the cocks, so that she may not keep in a row with the rest, but she does not give up, and with the same dead, gloomy face works while the others work.

The sun is setting behind the forest, and the cocks are not yet all cleared away : there is still much work ahead.

All feel that it is time to take a rest, but nobody speaks, waiting for the others to say it is. Finally the shoemaker, feeling that he has no more strength, proposes to the old man to leave the cocks until the next day, and the old man consents to it, and immediately the women run after their clothes, after the pitchers, and after the forks, and the old woman sits down at once, and then lies down, still looking ahead of her with the same dead glance. But the women walk away, and she gets up, groaning, and drags herself away after them.

And here is the gentleman’s house. That same evening, while from the village are heard the sounds of the whetstones of the weary mowers, returning from the mowing, the sounds of the hammer against the scythe-blade, the shouts of the women and girls who, having barely put down their rakes, are already running to drive the cattle home, — in the house of the gentleman other sounds are heard : the banging of the piano is heard, there resounds a Hungarian song, and now and then, through the song, one catches the sound of the mallets striking the croquet balls. At the stable stands a carriage drawn by four well-fed horses. It is the carriage of the foppish driver.

Guests have arrived: they paid ten roubles for being driven fifteen versts. The horses, standing at the carriage, tinkle with their little bells. There is hay in their trough, and they trample it under foot, that hay which the peasants gather with such difficulty there in the field. There is a commotion in the yard of the manor : a healthy-looking, well-fed lad in a pink shirt, given him by the janitor for his service, is calling to the coachmen to hitch and saddle the horses. Two peasants, who live here as coachmen, come out of the coachmen’s room and walk leisurely, swaying their arms, to saddle the horses for the gentlemen.

Still nearer to the house the sounds of another piano are heard. A conservatory graduate, who is living with the gentlefolk, to teach the children music, is practising Schumann. The sounds of one piano break in on those of the other. Near the house two nurses are walking: one of them is young, the other old. They are leading and carrying children, of the same age as those who were carrying the pitchers from the village, to put them to bed. One of the nurses is an Englishwoman, who cannot talk Russian. She was imported from England, not because she is supposed to have any special qualifications, but because she cannot talk Russian. Farther down a peasant and two women are watering the flowers near the house, while another is cleaning a gun for the young master.

Here two women are carrying a basket with clean underwear ; they have washed the linen of the family and of the English and the French assistants. In the house two women with difficulty manage to wash all the dishes for the gentlefolk, who have just had their meal, and two peasants in dress coats are running up and down on the staircase, passing coffee, tea, wine, Seltzer. On the porch a table is set : they have just finished eating, and soon they will eat again until cockcrow, until midnight, until three o’clock, often until daybreak.

Some sit and smoke, playing cards ; others sit and smoke, carrying on liberal conversations ; others walk from place to place, eating and smoking, and, not knowing what to do, decide to go out riding. There are fifteen able-bodied men and women there, and they are served by about thirty able-bodied men and women servants.

And this is taking place where every hour, every lad, is valuable. And this will take place in July, when the peasants, without getting enough sleep, will mow the oats at night, to keep them from shelling out, and the women will get up at night in order to thresh the straw for sheaf ropes, when the old women, and the pregnant women, and the young children will overwork and get sick from too much drinking, and when there will not be enough hands, nor horses, nor wagons, to take to the barn the corn which feeds all men, of which millions of puds are needed a day in Russia, in order that people may not die ; and at this time this life of the gentlefolk will be continued, — there will be theatres, picnics, hunts, drinking, eating, pianos, singing, dancing, — an unceasing orgy.

O O7 O7 O U v

Here it is impossible to give the excuse that such is the order of things : nothing of the kind is the case. We ourselves introduce this life, taking the bread and the labour away from the men who are worn out by labour. We live as though there were no connection between the dying laundress, the fourteen-year-old prostitute, the women who are fagged out by the making of cigarettes, and the old women and children about us who work intensely, above their strength, without sufficient food ; we live, — enjoying ourselves in luxury, as though there were no connection between that and our life ; we do not want to see this, that, if it were not for our idle, luxurious, and debauched life, there would be none of this work above their strength, and if there were none of that work, there would not be our life.

It seems ft) us that sufferings are one thing, and our life another thing, and that we, living as we do, are as innocent and pure as doves.

We read the descriptions of the lives of the Romans and marvel at the inhumanity of the soulless Luculli, who stuffed themselves with food and drink, while the people died of hunger ; we shake our heads and marvel at the savagery of our ancestors, the serf-owners, who introduced domestic theatres and orchestras, and who appointed whole villages to maintain their gardens, and from the height of our greatness we marvel at their inhumanity.

We read the words of Isaiah, Chapter V. :

8. Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth !

11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink ; that continue until night, till wine inflame them !

12. And the harp and the viol, the tabret and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts : but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands.

18. Woe unto them that-draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:

20. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter !

21. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight !

22. Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink :

23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him î

We read in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter III., 10 :

And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

And we are absolutely convinced that we are the good

tree which brings forth fruit, and that these words are not said to us, but to somebody else, to some bad people.

We read the words of Isaiah, Chapter VI. :

10. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

11. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate.

We read this, and are absolutely convinced that this remarkable work was not done to us, but to some other people. The reason why we do not see it, is because this remarkable work has been done to us: we do not hear, nor see, nor comprehend with our hearts. How did this happen ?

XXVI.

How can a man who considers himself, I shall not say a Christian, nor even a cultured or humane man, but simply a man who is not completely deprived of reason and of conscience, live in such a way that, without taking part in the struggle for the life of all humanity, he only swallows the labours of the men who are struggling for life, and by his demands increases the labour of those who struggle and of those who perish in this struggle ? Our so-called Christian and cultured world is full of such people. Not only is our world full of such men, but the ideal of the men of our Christian cultured world is the acquisition of the greatest possible possessions, that

is, of the possibility of wealth which gives comfort and idleness, that is, a liberation from the struggle for life, and the greatest possible exploitation of the labour of one’s brothers, who are perishing in this struggle. How could people have fallen into such a remarkable delusion ?

How could they have reached such a point as not to see, to hear, and to comprehend with their hearts what is so clear, so obvious, and so indisputable ?

We need but stop for a moment and think, in order to be frightened at that remarkable contradiction between our life and what we profess, we, I do not say the Christians, but the humane and cultured people.

I do not know whether that God, or that law of Nature, by which the world and people exist, is good or bad ; but the position of men in the world, from the time we know

it, is such that naked men, without wool on their bodies, without holes in which to hide themselves, without food

which they may find in the fields, like Robinson on his island, are all put to the necessity of struggling with Nature constantly and without cessation in order to cover their bodies, make clothes for themselves, defend themselves, put a roof over their heads, and work for their food, with which two or three times a day to still their hunger and the hunger of their children and old men who cannot work.

Wherever, at whatever time, and in whatever numbers we may observe the life of people, whether in Europe, in China, in America, or in Russia, whether we shall view all humanity, or a small part of it ; whether in ancient times, in the nomad state, or in our time, with steam motors, sewing-machines, electric light, and perfected agriculture, we shall see one and the same thing, — that people, working constantly and intensely, are not able to acquire food, protection, and clothing for themselves and for their little ones and their old men, and that a considerable part of men is now perishing, as it perished before, from a want of the means of life and from their excessive labour to obtain them.

No matter where we may live, — if we draw about us a circle of one hundred thousand, or of one thousand, or of ten versts, or of one verst, and look at the lives of those whom this circle takes in, — we shall see in this circle : children born before their time, old men and women, sick lying-in women, and weak persons, who have not enough food and rest to be able to live and so die before their time ; we shall see people who in the full strength of their growth are killed outright by perilous and harmful work.

Ever since the world has existed, we see men with terrible tension, privations, and sufferings struggling with their common want, unable to vanquish it. AVe know besides that each of us, no matter where he may live and how he may live, every day, every hour involuntarily absorbs for himself part of the labours which are worked out by humanity. No matter where and how he may live, the house and the roof have not grown over him of their own accord. The wood did not walk into his stove, nor did the water come, nor did the baked bread, the dinner, the clothes, the footgear fall down from the sky : all that was done for him not only by the men of the past, but is being also done by the men of the present, hundreds and thousands of whom are wasting away and dying in vain endeavours to earn for themselves and for their children the necessary roof, food, and clothing,— the means for saving themselves and their children from sufferings and premature death. All men struggle with want. They struggle with so much tension that every moment their like, their fathers, mothers, children, are perishing all around them.

People arc in this world as in a sea-washed ship with a small supply of food : all are placed by God, or by Nature, in such a situation that they are compelled, while economizing on their food, constantly to struggle against want. Every stoppage of each of us in this labour, every absorption of the labours of others, which is useless for the common good, is ruinous for ourselves and for our kind.

How, then, does it happen that the majority of the cultured people of our time, though doing no work, calmly absorb other men’s labours, which are necessary for life, and regard such a life as most natural and rational ?

In order that men may free themselves of the labour which is proper and natural to all, may transfer it to others, and with all that not consider themselves traitors and thieves, two suppositions only are possible : first, that we, the men who do not take part in the general labour, are beings distinct from the labouring men and have a special purpose in society, like the drones or queen bees, which have a different purpose than the working bees ; and second, that the work which we, the men who are freed from the struggle for life, are doing for the other men is so useful for all men that it certainly redeems the harm which we do to other people by making their situation harder.

In former days people who exploited the labours of others asserted that, in the first place, they were a special breed, and, in the second, were specially designated by God to care for the good of individual men, that is, to govern them and teach them, and so they assured others and frequently believed themselves that the work which they were doing was more important and more necessary for the people than the labours which they exploited. And so long as there was no doubt as to the immediate interference of the Divinity in human affairs and in the distinction of races, this justification was sufficient. But with Christianity and the consequent consciousness of the equality and unity of all men, this justification could not be advanced in its older form. It was impossible to assert that men are born of different breeds and distinctions and with different destinies, and the old justification, though supported by some people, has slowly been abolished and hardly exists now.

The justification of the distinctness of the human breeds was destroyed ; but the fact itself of the liberation of self from labour and of the exploitation of the labour of others has remained the same for those who have the power to do so, and for the existing fact they have always invented new justifications, with which, even without the acknowledgment of the distinctness of the breeds of men, the liberation of self from work, as practised by those who could do so, might appear just. They have invented very many such justifications. However strange it may appear, the chief activity of what at a given time was called science, of what formed the ruling tendency of science, has been and even now continues to consist in the discovery of such justifications. This has been the aim of the activity of the theological sciences ; this has been the aim of the juridical sciences ; this has been the aim of the so-called philosophy, and this has become of late (however strange it may appear to us contemporaries, who make use of tins justification) the aim of the activity of the contemporary experimental science.

All the theological finesses, which try to prove that a given church is the one true successor of Christ, and so has full and infinite power over the souls and even the bodies of men, has this aim for the chief motive of its activity.

All the juridical sciences, the political, the criminal, the civil, the international laws, have this one purpose ; the majority of the philosophical theories, especially Hegel’s theory, which has been reigning for so long a time, with its thesis of the rationality of everything which exists, and that the state is a necessary form of the perfection of personality, have the same purpose.

A very poor English publicist, whose works have all been forgotten and acknowledged to be the most insignificant of the insignificant, writes a treatise on population, in winch he invents a law about the increase of the population which is out of proportion with the means of existence. This imaginary law the writer decks out mathematically with baseless formulas and lets out into the world. To judge from the frivolity and vapidity of this work, one would suppose that it would not attract anybody’s attention and would be forgotten, like all the subsequent writings of this author ; but something quite different takes place. The publicist who has written this work at once becomes a learned authority and is kept on this height for almost half a century. Malthus ! Malthus’s theory, — the law of the increase of the population in a geometric, and of the means of existence in an arithmetical proportion, and the natural and sensible means for limiting the population, all that became scientific, unquestionable truths, which were not verified and were used as axioms, for the purpose of building further deductions upon them. Thus acted learned, cultured men ; but among the masses of idle men there was expressed a respectful confidence in the newly discovered great laws of Malthus.

Why did that happen ? One would think that those were scientific deductions which had nothing in common with the instincts of the crowd.

But this can only appear so to him who believes that science is something original, like the church, which is not subject to errors, and not simply the inventions of feeble, erring men, who only for importance’ sake substitute the word ” science ” in the place of men’s thoughts and words.

It was sufficient to make practical deductions from Malthus’s theory, in order to see that this theory was most human, with most definite aims.

The deductions which resulted directly from this theory were as follows: the wretched condition of the labouring people is not due to the cruelty, egotism, and ignorance of the rich and of those in power, but it is so in consequence of an unchangeable law, which is independent of men, and if any one is to blame for it, it is the starving working men themselves: why are these fools born, if they know that they will have nothing to eat ? And so the rich and the classes in power are not to blame for anything, and may continue to live as before.

And this deduction, so valuable to the crowd of idle men, had this effect, that all the scientists overlooked the baselessness, irregularity, and complete arbitrariness of the deductions, and the crowd of the learned, that is, idle men, knowing instinctively to what these deductions would lead, enthusiastically hailed this theory, imposed upon it the stamp of truth, that is, of science, and held on to it for half a century.

Kant’s positive philosophy and the resulting doctrine about humanity being an organism, — Darwin’s doctrine of the law of the struggle for existence, which is supposed to govern life, and of the consequent distinction of the human races, — the now favourite anthropology, biology, and sociology, have the same purpose. All these have become favourite sciences, because they all serve for the justification of the existing self-liberation of one set of men from the human obligation of labour, and of their absorption of the labour of others.

All these theories, as is always the case, are worked out in the mysterious sanctuaries of the high priests and are in indefinite, obscure expressions disseminated among the masses, which accept them. As in antiquity all the theological intricacies, the justifications of ecclesiastic and political violence, remained a special knowledge of the priests, while among the masses there were current the ready deductions, taken on faith, that the power of the kings, the clergy, and the nobility was sacred ; even so later the philosophical and juridical intricacies of the so-called science were the possession of the priests of this science, while among the masses were current the deductions, taken on faith, that the structure of society has to be such as it is, and cannot be otherwise.

Even so now the laws of life and of the evolution of the organisms are analyzed only in the sanctuaries of the priests ; but among the masses are current the deductions, taken on faith, that the division of labour is a law which is confirmed by science, and that so it must be : that some should die from starvation, and work, while others must eternally be idle, and that this perdition of some and idleness of others are an unquestionable law of humanity, to which we must submit.

The current justification of this idleness among the mass of all so-called cultured people, with their various activities, from the railroad man to the writer and artist, is now as follows :

We, who have freed ourselves from the universal human obligation of participating in the struggle for existence, serve progress, and so benefit the whole society of men, thus redeeming the whole harm which is done to the same people by exploiting their labour.

This reflection seems to the men of our time quite dissimilar to those reflections by which the former leisure classes used to justify themselves; just as the reflection of the Roman emperors and citizens as to this, that without them the cultured world would perish, seemed to them quite apart from the reflection of the Egyptians and the Persians, and just as a similar reflection of the mediaeval knights and clergy seemed to them quite distinct from the reflection of the Romans.

Rut that only seems so. It is enough to enter into the comprehension of the essence of the justification of our time, in order to become convinced that there is nothing new in it.

It is only a little differently clothed, but it is the same, being based on the same. Every justification of a man who, without working, absorbs the labour of others — the justification of Pharaoh and the priests, of the Roman and mediaeval emperors and their citizens, the knights, priests, and the clergy — is always composed of two propositions : (1) we take the labour of the rabble because we are special people, predetermined by God to govern the rabble and to teach them the divine truths ; (2) the people of the masses cannot be the judges of the measure of the labours which we take from them for the good which we do them, because the Pharisees said long ago (John vii. 49), This people who knoweth not the law are cursed. The people do not understand wherein their good lies, and so they cannot be the judges of the benefit conferred on them.

The justification of our time, in spite of its seeming peculiarity, is by its essence composed of the same two propositions: (1) we, the special people, the cultured people, are serving progress and civilization, and so confer a great benefit on the masses ; (2) the uneducated masses do not understand the benefit which we are conferring upon them, and so cannot be the judges of it.

We free ourselves from labour, make use of the labour of others, and thus burden the condition of our brothers, and we affirm that in place of the labour we confer upon them a great benefit, of which they cannot be the judges.

Is it not the same ? The only difference is this, that formerly it was the Roman citizens, the priests, the knights, the nobility, that had the right to other people’s labour ; now it is only the caste of people who call themselves cultured. The lie is the same, for the proposition of the men who justify themselves is equally false. The lie consists in this, that before reflecting on the benefit conferred on the people by the men who are freed from labour, certain people, the Pharaohs, the priests, or we, the cultured men, put ourselves in this position and maintain it, and only then invent a justification for it.

This condition of violence, which one set of men exerts upon others, as before, so even now serves as a foundation for everything.

The difference between our justification and the most ancient one is only this, that it is more fallacious and less substantial than the former.

The ancient emperors and the Popes could, if they themselves and the people believed in their divine calling, explain simply why they were those people who should make use of the labours of others: they said that they were destined for it by God, and that God had also prescribed to them to transmit to the people the divine

truths which were revealed to them, and to govern the people.

But the cultured people of our time, who do not work with their hands, by recognizing the equality of men, can no longer explain why they and their children (for education is obtained only by means of money, — of power) are those chosen fortunate people who are called to confer a certain light benefit, and not other people among the millions who perish by the hundred and the thousand, while supporting the possibility of their culture.

Their only justification is this, that they — the men of the present time, in place of the evil which they do to the people by freeing themselves from labour and absorbing theirs, confer on the people a benefit which is incomprehensible to them, and which redeems all the harm that is done to them.

XXVII.

The proposition by which men who have liberated themselves from labour justify their liberation, will in its simplest and at the same time its most precise expression be like this : we, the people who are in a position, by having freed ourselves from labour, to make use through violence of the labour of other men, in consequence of this position of ours confer a benefit on them, those other people; or, in other words: certain people, in return for the palpable and comprehensible harm which they do to others in forcibly making use of their labours and thus increasing the difficulty of their struggle with Nature, confer upon them a benefit, which is impalpable and incomprehensible to them. This proposition is very strange ; but the people of former times and of the present, who sit on the necks of the working people, believe in it and ease their consciences with it.

Let us see in what manner this proposition is in our day justified among the various classes who have emancipated themselves from labour.

I serve people by my political or ecclesiastic activity, as a king, a minister of state, a bishop; I serve people by my commercial or industrial labour ; I serve people by my scientific or artistic activity. We are all with our activity as indispensable to the masses as they are indispensable to us.

Thus say the various men of our time, who have emancipated themselves from labour.

Let us successively analyze the bases on which they assert the usefulness of their activities.

There can be but two signs of the usefulness of one man’s activity for another: the external one, — the recognition of the usefulness of the activity by him who is benefited, and the internal one, — the desire of being useful to another, which lies at the base of the activity of him who confers the benefit.

The men of the state (I include among this number the ecclesiastics who are established by the government) are useful to those men whom they govern.

An emperor, king, president of a republic, prime minister, minister of justice, minister of war, of education, a bishop, and all their subordinates, who serve the state, live, by having freed themselves from the struggle of humanity for life and by imposing the whole burden of the struggle on the other people, on the ground that their activity redeems them.

Let us apply the first sign : is the benefit conferred by this activity recognized by those labouring people upon whom the activity of the men of state is directly exerted ?

Yes, it is : the majority of men regard the political activity as indispensable to themselves, — the majority recognize the usefulness of this activity in principle ; but in all its known manifestations, in all the known special cases, every one of the institutions and of the actions of this activity meets, in the midst of those men for whose benefit it is exercised, not only a denial of a benefit conferred, but also the assertion that this activity is harmful and disastrous.

There is no political and no social activity which by many men is not considered harmful : the courts, banks, County Councils, township offices, police, clergy, every political activity from that of the highest power down to that of the rural officer and policeman, from that of the bishop to that of the sexton, is by one part of men considered useful, and by the other harmful. And this does not take place in Russia alone, but in the whole world also, in France, and in America.

The whole activity of the Republican party is considered harmful by the Radical party, and vice versa, the whole activity of the Radical party, if the power is in its hands, is considered harmful by the Republican party and by others.

And not only is the whole activity of the men of state never considered useful by all men, — this activity has also this property, that it has always to be exerted by the use of violence, and that, to obtain this benefit, there are necessary murders, capital punishments, jails, compulsory taxes, and so forth.

And so it turns out that the usefulness of the political activity is not recognized by all men and is always denied by one part of men, and that moreover this usefulness has the property of always finding its expression in violence. And so the usefulness of the political activity cannot be confirmed by the fact that it is recognized by those men for whom it is intended.

Let us apply the second sign. Let us ask the men of state, from the king down to the policeman, from the president down to the secretary, and from the patriarch down to the sexton, inviting their sincere answer, whether they, in holding their offices, have in view the benefit which they wish to confer on people, or whether they have other aims ; whether, in their desire to occupy the post of king, president, minister, or rural officer, of a sexton, or a teacher, they are impelled by a striving for other people’s benefit or for their own personal advantage.

The answer of conscientious men will be that their chief impulse is their personal advantage.

And so it turns out that one class of men, which exploits the labours of others, who perish in this labour, is redeeming this unquestionable harm with an activity which by many people is always regarded as harmful, and not useful, which cannot be freely received by the people, but must always be enforced by violence, and the aim of which is not the benefit of others, but the personal advantage of those men who exert it.

What, then, is confirmed by the assumption that the political activity is useful to men ?

Only this, that those men who exert it are firmly convinced that it is useful, and that this activity has always existed; but there have always existed, not only extremely useless, but even harmful institutions, such as slavery, prostitution, and wars. Industrialists — including in this term merchants, manufacturers, railroad men, bankers, and agriculturists — believe in this, that they confer a benefit which unquestionably redeems the harm done by them.

On what grounds do they think so ?

In reply to the question as to who and what people recognize the usefulness of their activity, the men of state, with the inclusion of the clericals, could point to thousands and millions of working people, who in principle recognize the usefulness of the political and clerical activity ; but who will be pointed out to us by the bankers, manufacturers of whiskey, velvet, bronzes, mirrors, to say nothing of cannon ? Who will be pointed out by the merchants, agriculturists, when we ask these whether the benefit which they confer is recognized by public opinion ?

If some people are found who recognize the production of cottons, rails, beer, and similar articles as useful, there will be found an even greater number of men who recognize the production of these articles as harmful. The activity of the merchants, who advance the price of articles, and of the landed proprietors, will not even be defended by any person. Besides, this activity is always connected with harm to the labourers and with violence, which, though less direct than the political violence, is as cruel in its consequences, since the industrial and commercial activities are all based on the exploitation of want in every form : on its exploitation for the purpose of compelling the labourers to do hard and undesirable work ; on the exploitation of the same want for the purpose of purchasing commodities at a low price and selling articles of necessity to the people at the highest price; on the exploitation of this want for the purpose of exacting interest on money. No matter from what side we may view their activity, we shall see that the benefit exerted by the industrialists is not recognized by those for whom it is exerted, either in principle, or in special cases, and in general is directly recognized as harmful.

But if we apply the second sign, and ask what the impelling cause of the activity of the industrialists is, we shall receive an even more definite answer than in respect to the activity of the men of state.

If a man of state says that in addition to his personal advantage he has in view the common good, it is impossible to disbelieve him, and each of us knows such men, but an industrialist by the very essence of his business cannot have in view the common good, and will be considered ridiculous in the eyes of his fellows if in his business he shall pursue any other aim than the increase of his wealth or its maintenance.

Thus the labouring people do not consider the activity of the industrialists useful to themselves.

This activity is connected with violence against the labourers, and the aim of this activity is not the benefit of the working people, but always personal advantage, and suddenly — strange to say — these industrialists are so convinced of the benefit which they confer on people by their activity that in the name of this imaginary benefit they do undoubted, obvious harm to these labourers by emancipating themselves from labour and absorbing the labour of the working classes.

The men of science and of art have freed themselves from labour and have imposed this labour on others and live with a calm conscience, being firmly convinced of this, that they confer on others a benefit which redeems all that.

Ou what is their conviction based ?

We shall ask them, as we asked the men of state and the industrialists, whether the labouring people, all of them, or even a majority of them, recognize the benefit which art and science confer upon them.

The answer will be a very lamentable one.

The activity of the men of state and of the church is recognized as useful in principle by nearly everybody, and in application by the greater half of those working people upon whom it is directed ; the activity of the industrialists is recognized by a small number of working people ; but the activity of the men of science and of art is not recognized as useful by anybody among the labouring people. The usefulness of this activity is recognized only by those who exert it or wish to exert it. The working people — those who carry on their shoulders the whole labour of life and feed and clothe the men of science and of art — cannot recognize the activity of these men as useful for themselves, because they cannot even have any conception about this activity which is so useful to them. This activity presents itself to the labouring people as useless and even corrupting.

Thus the labouring people look without exception upon the universities, libraries, conservatories, picture-galleries, museums, and theatres, which are built at their expense. A labouring man looks so definitely upon this activity as harmful that he does not send his children to school, and, to compel the masses to take part in this activity, it became necessary everywhere to introduce the law of compulsory school attendance. A labouring man always looks inimically upon this activity, and will stop looking upon it in such a way only when he himself ceases to be a labourer and, by means of his earnings and later by the means of the so-called culture, passes from the labouring class into that of men who live by sitting on the shoulders of others. And although the activity of the men of sciences and of arts is not recognized and cannot be recognized by any one among the labouring people, the labourers are none the less compelled to bring sacrifices in favour of this activity.

A man of state sends another directly to the guillotine or to jail ; an industrialist, making use of the labours of another, takes the last away from him, leaving him the choice between starvation and pernicious work ; but a man of science or of art apparently does not compel, but only offers bis wares to those who want to take them ; but, in order to produce his wares, which are undesirable to the working people, he takes from them by force, through the men of state, the greater part of their labour for buildings and their maintenance, for academies, universities, gymnasia, schools, museums, libraries, conservatories, and for the support of the men of science and of art.

And if we ask the men of science and of art about the aim which they pursue in their activities, we get the most remarkable answers. A man of state could have answered that his aim is the common good, and there is in this a grain of truth which is confirmed by public opinion. But the answer of the men of science and of art at once startles us by its groundlessness and impudence.

The men of the sciences and of the arts say, without adducing any proof for it, just as the priests used to say in antiquity, that their activity is most important and most necessary for all men, and that without this activity all humanity would perish. They affirm that it is so, although no man but they themselves understands or recognizes their activity, and although true science and true art, by their own definition, ought to have no aim of usefulness. The wen of science and of art abandon themselves to their favourite occupation, without caring what benefit people will derive from it, and are always convinced that they are doing a most important and necessary work for humanity ; so that, while a sincere man of state, in recognizing the fact that the chief motive of his activity is his personal impulses, tries as much as possible to be useful to the labouring people, and the industrialist, in recognizing the selfishness of his activity, tries to give it the character of a common good, the men of the arts and the sciences do not even consider it necessary to cloak themselves with a tendency for what is useful : they even deny the aim of the useful ; so convinced are they, not of the usefulness, but of the sacredness, of their occupation.

And so it turns out that a third division of men, who have emancipated themselves from labour and have imposed it upon others, are busying themselves with subjects which are completely incomprehensible to the labouring people, and which the masses regard as trifles and frequently as harmful trifles; and they busy themselves with these subjects without the least consideration of their usefulness to men, but only for their own amusement, being for some reason completely convinced that their activity will always be such that the labouring people cannot live without it.

Men have emancipated themselves from labour for life and have unloaded this labour on people who are perishing in this labour; men exploit this labour, and affirm that their occupations, which are incomprehensible to all other men and are not directed upon the usefulness of men, redeem all the harm which they do to men by emancipating themselves from the labour for life and by absorbing the labour of others.

To redeem that unquestionable and obvious harm which the men of state do to people by their emancipation from the struggle with Nature and the exploitation of the labour of others, they do to people another obvious, unquestionable harm, — all kinds of violence.

To redeem that unquestionable and obvious harm which the industrialists do to people by exploiting their labour, they strive to acquire for themselves, consequently to take away from others, as much wealth as possible, that is, as much of the labour of others as possible.

The men of science and of the arts, in return for that unquestionable and obvious harm which they do to the labouring people, busy themselves with matters which are incomprehensible to the labouring people, and which, according to their own assertion, to be real, must not have usefulness in view, but that toward which they feel themselves drawn. And so all these men are fully convinced that their right to exploit other people’s labour is unshakable.

It would seem to be obvious that all those people who have emancipated themselves from the labour of life have no grounds for this. But strange to say, these people believe firmly in their righteousness and live as they do with a calm conscience.

There must be some foundation, there must be some false creed, at the basis of such a terrible delusion.

XXVIII.

Indeed, at the basis of the position in which people are who live by the labour of others, lies not only a belief, but a whole creed, and not one, but three creeds, which during the ages have grown up by superposition and have been compacted into one monstrous deception, — humbug, as the English say, — which conceals from men their unrighteousness.

The oldest creed in our world, which justified men’s defection from their fundamental duty of the labour of life, was the church-Christian creed, according to which men are by God’s will differentiated from one another, as the sun differs from the moon and the stars, and the stars among themselves ; some people are commanded by God to have power over all men, others over many, others again over a few, while others are commanded by God to obey.

This creed, though now tottering on its foundations, still continues to act on people from inertia, so that many, who do not recognize the doctrine itself, none the less are guided by it.

The second justificatory creed of our world is the one which I cannot call otherwise than the politico-philosophical creed. According to this creed, which was perfectly expressed in Hegel, everything which exists is rational, and the order of things which was established and is maintained by people was not established and is not maintained by people but is the one possible form of the manifestation of the spirit, or in general of the life of humanity. And this creed is in our time no longer shared by men who guide public opinion, and maintains itself only through inertia.

The last, now reigning creed, the one on which the justification of the leading men of state, of industry, of science, and of art is based in our day, is the scientific creed, not in the simple meaning of this word, which designates knowledge in general, but in the sense of one special kind of knowledge, both as to form and to contents.

On this new creed, which is called science, is mainly based the justification which in our day conceals from the idle people their defection from their calling.

This new creed made its appearance in Europe simultaneously with the appearance of a large class of rich and idle people, who serve neither the church, nor the state, and who needed a justification corresponding to their position.

Not very long ago, previous to the French Revolution, all the leisure people in Europe, to have the right to exploit the labours of others, were compelled to have some very definite occupations: they had to serve the church, the government, and the army. The men who served the government ruled the people; those who served the church taught them the divine truths ; those who served the army defended the people.

Only three classes, the clergy, the rulers, the military, regarded themselves as having the right to make use of the labours of the masses, and could always bring forward their service to the people ; all the other rich people, who did not have this justification, were despised and, feeling their unrighteousness, were ashamed of their wealth and idleness.

But the time came when this class of the rich, who were subject neither to the clergy, nor to the government, nor to the army, multiplied, thanks to the vices of the three estates, and became a power, and these men needed a justification. And the justification made its appearance.

Less than a century passed, when all these men, who serve neither the government, nor the church, and who take no part in these matters, not only acquired the same rights for the exploitation of the labours of others, as the former estates had possessed, and so stopped being ashamed of their wealth and idleness, but also began to consider their position fully justified. There has in our day evolved an enormous number of such men, and their number is all the time growing. And what is remarkable is this, that these new men, the legality of whose emancipation from labour was even recently not recognized, now are the only ones who consider themselves fully justified, and they attack the three former classes, the servants of the church, of the state, and of the army, recognizing their liberation from labour as irregular and their activity even as harmful.

And what is still more remarkable is this, that the former servants of the state, the church, and the army no longer fall back on their divine election or even on the philosophical significance of the state, which is supposed to be necessary for the manifestation of individuality, but even throw down these supports, which have held them up for so long a time, and seek those supports on which stands the now ruling class, which has discovered this new justification, and at the head of which stand the learned and the artists. If now a man of state occasionally through his old reminiscence defends his position by saying that he was destined for it by God, or that the state is a form of the evolution of the individual, he docs so because he has fallen behind the times, and be feels himself that nobody believes him. In order firmly to defend himself, he has now to find, not theological or philosophical, but new scientific supports. It is necessary to advance the principle of the nationalities or of organic evolution, — it is necessary to keep on the good side of the ruling class, as in the Middle Ages it was necessary to keep on the good side of the clergy, as at the end of last century it was necessary to keep on the good side of the philosophers (Frederick, Catherine).

If a rich man now at times, from old habit, speaks of the divine providence which chose him to become a rich man, or of the significance of aristocracy for the good of the state, he speaks so because he is behind the times. In order firmly to justify himself, he must advance his cooperation with the progress of civilization by the perfection of the means of production, the cheapening of the necessary commodities, the establishment of international amity. A rich man must think and speak in scientific language, and, as formerly sacrifices were brought to the clergy, so now he brings them to the ruling class, — he must publish periodicals and books, found galleries, musical societies, or a kindergarten, or technical schools.

But the ruling class is that of the learned and the artists of a given tendency : they have the complete justification of their emancipation from labour, and on their justification, as formerly on the theological and later on the philosophical justification, is now based every justification, and they now distribute to the other classes the diplomas for justification.

The class which now has a full justification in its emancipation from labour is the class of the men of science, especially of experimental, positive, critical, evolutionary science, and the class of artists who work in the same direction.

If a learned man or an artist from old habit now speaks of prophecy, revelation, or the manifestation of the spirit, he does so because he has fallen behind the times, and he does not justify himself : in order to stand firmly, he must in some way articulate his activity with the experimental, positive, critical science, and place this science at the foundation of his activity.

In that case alone will the science or the art with which he busies himself be real, and he himself in our day be able to stand on imperturbable foundations, and no doubt exist any longer as to the benefit which it confers on humanity.

On the experimental, critical, positive science is now based the justification of all men who have emancipated themselves from labour.

The theological and philosophical justifications have outlived their usefulness, and they diffidently and bashfully make themselves known and try to give way to the scientific justifications; but the scientific justification boldly overturns and destroys what is left of the former justifications, everywhere takes their place, and, with the conviction of its imperturbability, raises its head high.

The theological justification said that men according to their destination are called, some to command, others to obey, some to live in abundance, others in want ; and so he who believes in the revelation of God cannot doubt the legality of the state of those men who by the will of God are called to command and be rich.

The philosophico-political justification said : “ The state with all its institutions and different classes of men according to privileges and to property is that historic form which is necessary for the regular manifestation of the spirit in humanity, and so the position by privilege and property, which one occupies in the state and in society, must be such for the regular life of humanity.”

The scientific theory says : ” All that is nonsense and superstition ; one is the fruit of the thought of the theological period of the life of humanity, the other is that of the metaphysical period. For the study of the laws of the life of human societies there is only one unquestionable method, — the method of the positive, experimental, critical science. Nothing but sociology, which is based on biology, which in its turn is based on all the other positive sciences, can give us the laws of the life of humanity. Humanity, or the human societies, are organisms, all ready or in the act of formation and subject to all the laws of the evolution of the organisms. One of these chief laws is the division of the functions of labour among the particles of the organs. If some people command and others obey, if some live in abundance and others in want, this takes place, not by the will of God, not because the state is a form of the manifestation of the individual, but because in the societies, as in the organisms, takes place the division of labour which is indispensable for the life of the whole: some men perform in societies the muscular labour, while others do the mental labour.”

On this creed is based the reigning justification of our time.

XXIX.

A new teaching is preached by Christ and is recorded in the gospels. This teaching is persecuted, and is not accepted, and they invent the history of the fall of the first man and of the first angel, and this invention is accepted as Christ’s teaching. This invention is insipid, has no foundation, but from it inevitably results the conclusion that a man may live badly and yet consider himself justified by Christ, and this conclusion is so opportune for those feeble men who do not like any moral labour, that this invention is immediately accepted as a truth and even as a divine, revealed truth, although nowhere in what is called revelation is there even a hint concerning this, and the invention is put at the base of the millennial labour of the learned theologians, who upon it construct their theories.

The learned theologians break up into sects and begin to deny the structures of one another, and they begin to feel that they themselves are becoming entangled and do not understand what they say ; but the crowd demands of them a confirmation of their favourite doctrine, and they pretend that they understand and believe what they say, and continue to preach. But the time comes when the arguments prove useless, the crowd looks into the sanctuaries of the priests, and to its astonishment sees, in place of the solemn and undoubted truths that the theological mysteries seemed to it to be, that there has never been there anything but the grossest deception, and marvels at its blindness.

The same has happened with philosophy, not in the sense of the wisdom of a Confucius, a Socrates, an Epictetus, but with the professorial philosophy, whenever it pandered to the instincts of the idle rich.

Not long ago there reigned in the learned world the philosophy of the spirit, according to which it appeared that everything which existed was rational, that there was neither bad nor good, and that a man must not struggle with evil, but only manifest his spirit, — one in military service, another in a court, a third on the violin.

There have been many different expressions of human wisdom, and these manifestations have been known to the men of the nineteenth century. They have known Rousseau, and Pasqual, and Lessing, and Spinoza, and all the wisdom of antiquity, but nobody’s wisdom has taken possession of the crowd. It cannot even be said that the success of Hegel’s philosophy depended on the harmony of his theories. There have been other harmonious theories, such as those of Fichte and Schopenhauer. There was but one reason why this teaching for a short time became the creed of the whole world ; the reason was, like the reason of the success of the theory of the fall and redemption of man, that the deductions from this philosophical theory pandered to the weaknesses of men. They said: everything is rational, everything is good, nobody is to blame for anything. And just as the theologians did with the theory of redemption, so the philosophers built their tower of Babel on Hegelian foundations (and even now a few men who are behind the times are sitting on it), and in the same way their tongues became confused, and they felt that they themselves did not know what they were saying, and, without carrying the dirt out of their house, tried just as carefully to maintain their authority before the crowd, and the crowd asked as much as before for a confirmation of what was opportune for it, and believed that what to it appeared obscure and contradictory was as clear as day up there, on the philosophical heights. And again the time came when even this theory was worn out, and in its place there appeared a new theory, and the old one became useless, and the crowd peeped into the mysterious sanctuaries of the priests, and saw that there was nothing there, and never had been anything but very obscure and senseless words. This took place within my memory.

When I began to live, Hegelianism was the foundation of everything : it was in the air, found its expression in newspaper and periodical articles, in novels, in treatises, in art, in history, in sermons, in conversations. A man who did not know Hegel bad no right to speak : he who wanted to know the truth studied Hegel. Everything leaned on him, and suddenly forty years have passed, and nothing is left of him, and there is no mention even made of him, as though he had never existed. And what is most remarkable is that, like pseudo-Christianity, Hegelianism fell, not because somebody overthrew it, — no, as it was, so it still is, — but because it suddenly became evident that the learned, cultured world had no use for either.

If we now talk to a modern cultured man about the fall of the angel and of Adam, and about the redemption, he will not even try to dispute and prove the injustice of it, but will ask in perplexity : ” What angel ? Why Adam ? What redemption ? What do I want with it ? ” The same is true of Hegelianism. The modern man will not dispute, but will only marvel. “ What spirit ? Where does it come from ? Why is it manifested ? What do I want with it ? “

” Yes,” the learned men of the present will say, « that was due to the fact that it was the delirium of the theological and of the metaphysical periods ; now we have the critical, positive science, which will not deceive us, because it is all based on induction and experience. Now our knowledge is not shaky as it used to be, and only on our path lies the solution of all the questions of humanity.”

But it is precisely what the theologians used to say, and they were certainly no fools ; — we know that there were among them people of very great intellect; and precisely the same, and not with less conviction, and not with less recognition on the part of the crowd of the so-called cultured people, did the Hegelians say within my memory. And certainly such men as our Hertzen, Stan-kévich, and Byelinski were no fools. Why, then, has this remarkable phenomenon happened that clever people have with the greatest conviction preached, and the crowd has with awe received, such unfounded and barren doctrines ? There is just one reason for it, and it is this, that the doctrines preached justified the people in their bad lives.

Is not the same the reason of the self-confidence of the men of the positive, critical, experimental science, and of the awed relation of the crowd to what they preach ? At first it appears strange how the theory of evolution (like the redemption in theology, it serves for the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their unrighteousness, and it seems that the scientific theory has to do with facts only, and does nothing but observe facts.

But that only seems so. Even so it seemed in the case of the theological doctrine that the theology busied itself only with dogmas and had no relation to the life of men : even so it seemed in philosophy : it seemed to be occupied only with its transcendental ratiocinations.

But that only seemed so. Even so it seemed in the case of the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale, and in particular in the case of the Malthusian theory.

Hegelianism seemed to be occupied only with its logical constructions and to have no relation to the life of men ; the same seemed to be the case with the Malthusian theory : it seemed to be occupied only with the facts of statistical data. But that only seems so.

Modern science investigates facts. But what facts ? Why such facts, and no others ?

The men of modern science are very fond of saying with solemnity and conviction : ” We investigate nothin” but facts,” imagining that these words have some meaning.

It is impossible to investigate nothing but facts, because of the facts which are subject to our investigation there is an infinite number (in the exact sense of the word). Before investigating facts it is necessary to have a theory, on the basis of which such or such facts are chosen out of the endless number. And this theory exists, and is even very definitely expressed, though many of the men of modern science either ignore it, that is, do not want to know, or indeed do not know it, or pretend that they do not know it. Even so it has always been with all the reigning, guiding creeds, — with theology and with philosophy.

The foundations of every creed are always given in the theory, and the so-called learned men only invent the further deductions from the original data, sometimes without knowing them. But there is always a fundamental theory. Even so modern science now chooses its facts on the basis of a very definite theory, which at times it knows, at times does not want to know, at times indeed does not know ; but that theory exists.

This theory is : all humanity is an undying organism, and men are the particles of the organism, each of whom has his special calling in order to serve the whole.

Just as the cells, composing the organism, divide the labour among themselves for the struggle for existence of the whole organism, strengthen one quality and weaken another, and form themselves into one organ in order the better to satisfy the needs of the whole organism, and just as with the social animals, with the ants and bees, the separate individuals divide the labour among themselves,— the queen laying eggs, the drone fertilizing them, the bees working for the life of the whole, — even so in humanity and human societies takes place the same differentiation and integration of the parts.

And so, in order to find the law of man’s life, it is necessary to study the laws of life and of the evolution of the organisms ; in the life and evolution of the organisms we find the following laws : the law that every phenomenon is accompanied by something more than the immediate consequences; another law about the instability of the homogeneous ; and a third law about heterogeneity and homogeneity, and so forth. All this seems very innocent, but it is enough to make the deductions from all these investigations of facts in order to see at once whither these facts tend. All these facts tend to one tiling, namely, to recognizing humanity or human society as an organism, and so to recognizing the division of activities which exists in human societies as organic, that is, as necessary ; and since in human societies there are manifested very many cruelties and abominations, these phenomena are not to be regarded as cruel and abominable, but to be viewed as undoubted facts, which confirm the general law, namely, the law of the division of labour.

The philosophy of the spirit also justified every cruelty and abomination ; there it was philosophical, and so — irregular ; but according to science it all turns out to be scientific, and so — unquestionable.

How can one help accepting such a beautiful theory ! It is enough for me to view human society as an object of observation, in order calmly to devour the labours of others who are perishing, consoling myself with the thought that my activity as a dancer, lawyer, doctor, philosopher, actor, investigator of mediumism and of the

form of atoms is a functional activity of the organism of humanity, and so there cannot even be a question as to the justice of my exploiting the labours of others, — 1 am only doing what is pleasant for me, — as there can be no question as to the justice of the activity of the brain cell which is making use of the muscular labour.

We cannot help but admit such a practical theory, in order that we may for ever hide our conscience in our pocket, and live a completely unbridled animal life, feeling under our feet the imperturbable support of our modern science. It is on this new creed that the justification of the idleness and the cruelty of men is now based.

XXX.

This creed began but recently, some fifty years ago. Its chief founder, the French savant Comte, a systématiser and at the same time a religious man, was, under the influence of the then new physiological investigations of Bichat, struck by an old idea, which had been expressed long ago by Menenius Agrippa, that human societies, even all humanity, might be considered as one whole, as an organism, and men as the living particles of separate organs, each of which had its definite purpose to serve the whole organism. Comte took such a liking to this idea that he began upon it to construct a philosophic theory, and this theory so carried him away that he entirely forgot that his point of departure was nothing more than a pretty comparison, which is proper in a fable, but in no way can serve as a foundation for science. As often happens, he accepted his favourite assumption as an axiom, and imagined that his whole theory was based on the firmest and most experimental foundations. According to his theory it turned out that, since humanity is an organism, the knowledge of what a man is, and what his relation to the world ought to be, is possible only through the knowledge of the properties of this organism. In order to discover these properties, man is able to make observations on other, lower organisms, and from their life to make his inferences.

And so, in the first place, the only true method of science, according to Comte, is the inductive, and all science is only that which has experiment for its foundation ; in the second, the aim and apex of science now is

the new science of the imaginary organism of humanity, or of the superorganic being, humanity : this new imaginary science is sociology. From this view of science in general it appeared that all former knowledge had been false, and all history of humanity in the sense of its self-knowledge was divided into three, or really two, periods,

(1) the theological and the metaphysical period, which lasted from the beginning of the world until Comte, and

(2) the present period of the one, true science, the positive, which began with Comte.

All that was very nice ; there was but one mistake here, namely, this, that the whole building was reared on the sand, on the arbitrary assertion that humanity is an organism.

This assertion was arbitrary, because we have just as little right to acknowledge the existence of an organism of humanity, which is not subject to observation, as to assume the existence of a triune God and similar theological propositions.

This assertion was irregular, because to the concept of humanity, that is, of men, there was irregularly added the definition of an organism, whereas humanity lacks the essential sign of an organism, a centre of sensation and of consciousness. We call an elephant or a bacterion an organism, only because from analogy we assume in these beings the same unification of sensation and of consciousness which we know in ourselves ; but in human societies and in humanity this essential sign is absent, and so, no matter how many other common signs .we may find in humanity and in the organism, without this essential sign the acknowledgment of humanity as an organism is irregular.

But in spite of the arbitrariness and irregularity of the fundamental proposition of positive philosophy, it was accepted by the so-called cultured world with the greatest sympathy, on account of its justification of the existing order of things, so important for the crowd, by acknowledging the legality of the existing violence in humanity. What is remarkable in this respect is this, that of Comte’s works, which consist of two parts, of positive philosophy and of positive politics, the learned world accepted the first only, the one which justified on the new experimental principles the existing evil of human societies ; but the second part, which dealt with the moral obligations of altruism which resulted from acknowledging humanity as an organism, was considered not only unimportant, but even insignificant and unscientific.

The same was repeated as with the two parts of Kant’s teaching. The critique of sound reason was accepted by the learned crowd ; but the critique of practical reason, the part which contains the essence of the moral teaching, was rejected. In Comte’s teaching they recognized as scientific what pandered to the reigning evil. But even the positive philosophy which the crowd accepted, being based on an arbitrary and irregular proposition, was in itself too groundless and therefore unstable, and so was unable to hold itself for any length of time.

Suddenly, among the many idle speculations of the men of the so-called science, there appears again a new, and just as arbitrary and irregular an assertion that living beings, that is, organisms, have been derived one from the other, — not only one organism from another, but one organism from many, that is, that in a very long interval of time, in a million years, a fish and a duck, for example, may have not only been derived from one and the same ancestor, but that also one organism may have been derived from many separate organisms, so that, for example, a whole swarm of bees may produce one animal. This arbitrary and incorrect assertion was accepted by the learned world with still greater sympathy. This assertion was arbitrary, because no one has ever seen how one organism is produced from others, and so the assumption about the origin of species will always remain an assumption, and not an experimental fact. And this assumption was incorrect, because the solution of the question about the origin of species by saying that they originated in consequence of the law of heredity and adaptation during an infinitely long period of time, is not at all a solution, but only a repetition of the question in a new form.

According to the solution of the question by Moses (the whole significance of the theory consists in a polemic with him) it turns out that the diversity of the species of living beings is due to God’s will and infinite power ; but according to the theory of evolution it turns out that the diversity of the living beings originated from itself in consequence of infinitely diversified conditions of heredity and surroundings in an infinite period of time. The theory of evolution, speaking in simple language, asserts only that in an infinite period of time anything you please may originate from anything you please.

There is no answer to the question, but the same question is differently put: instead of the will, accident is put, and the coefficient of the infinite is transferred from power to time. But this new assertion, intensified by Darwin’s followers in the sense of arbitrariness and incorrectness, strengthened the former assertion of Comte, and so it became the revelation of our time and the foundation of all the sciences, even of history, philology, and religion, and, besides, according to the naïve confession of the founder of the theory himself, of Darwin, his idea was called forth by Malthus’s law and so advanced the theory of the struggle of the living beings and of men for existence as the fundamental law of everything living. But that was all the crowd of idle people needed for their justification.

Two unstable theories, which could not stand on their legs, supported one another and assumed a semblance of stability. Both theories bore in themselves a meaning which was precious to the crowd, namely, that men arc not to blame for the existing evil of human societies, but that the existing order is precisely what it ought to be ; and the new theory was accepted by the crowd in the sense in which it was needed, with full faith and unheard of enthusiasm. And on these two arbitrary and incorrect propositions, which were accepted as dogmas of faith, the new scientific creed was firmly grounded.

In subject and in form this new creed has an unusual resemblance to the Christian creed of the church.

In subject this resemblance consists in this, that in either an unreal, fantastic meaning is ascribed to reality, and this unreal meaning is made a subject for investigation.

In the church - Christian creed the real Christ has assumed the fantastic meaning of God himself ; in the positive creed the fantastic meaning of an organism is ascribed to an actual being, — to living men.

In form the resemblance of the two creeds is striking in this, that in either a certain comprehension of one set of men is acknowledged to be the one infallibly correct and true comprehension.

In the Christianity of the church the comprehension of divine revelation by the people who called themselves the church is recognized as sacred and exclusively true ; according to the positive creed the comprehension of science by the men who call themselves scientific is recognized as unquestionable and true. Just as the Christians of the church recognized the beginning of the true knowledge of God only from the foundation of their church, and only, as it were, out of civility, said that the former believers were also the church ; even so the positive science, according to its assertion, began only with Comte, and the men of science, again only out of civility, admit the existence of science before their day, but only in the person of some of its representatives, such as Aristotle ; just like the church, so the positive science completely excludes the knowledge of all the rest of humanity, recognizing all such knowledge as erroneous.

The resemblance goes even farther : just as to the aid of the fundamental dogma of theology, of the divinity of Christ and of the trinity, there comes the old dogma of man’s fall and of his redemption through Christ’s death, which receives a new meaning, and of these two dogmas the popular ecclesiastic doctrine is composed, — so in our time, to the aid of Comte’s fundamental dogma about the organism of humanity comes the old dogma of evolution, which receives a new meaning, and from both the popular scientific creed is composed.

In either creed the new dogma is necessary for the support of the old one, and is comprehensible only in connection with the fundamental dogma. If to the believer in Christ’s divinity it is not clear and not comprehensible why God came down upon earth, the dogma of redemption gives this explanation.

If to the believer in the organism of humanity it is not clear why an aggregate of individuals may be considered an organism, the dogma of evolution furnishes this explanation.

The dogma of redemption is necessary in order to harmonize the contradiction with the actuality of the first dogma.

God came down upon earth in order to save men, and men are not saved, — how is this contradiction to be harmonized ? The dogma of redemption says : ” If you believe in the redemption, you are saved.”

Similarly the dogma of evolution is necessary in order to solve the contradiction with the actuality of the first dogma : humanity is an organism, and yet we see that it does not answer the first sign of an organism, — how is this to be harmonized ? And so the dogma of evolution says : ” Humanity is an organism in formation. If you believe in this, you can view humanity as an organism.”

And just as for a man who is free from the superstition of the trinity and the divinity of Christ it is even impossible to comprehend wherein the interest and meaning of the doctrine of redemption lies, and this meaning is explained only by acknowledging the fundamental dogma about Christ being God himself, — even so for humanity, which is free from the positive superstition, it is even impossible to comprehend in what lies the interest of the teaching about the origin of species of evolution, and this interest is explained only when one knows the fundamental dogma about humanity being an organism.

And just as all the finesses of theology are comprehensible to him only who believes in the fundamental dogmas, even so all the finesses of sociolog)’, which now occupy all the minds of the men of the very latest and profoundest science, are comprehensible to the believer only.

The resemblance of the two creeds consists further in this, that the propositions once accepted on faith and no longer subject to investigation serve as a foundation for the strangest of theories, and the preachers of these theories, having appropriated to themselves the method of asserting their right to recognize themselves as holy in theology and as scientific in knowledge, that is, infallible, reach the most arbitrary, incredible, and groundless assertions, which they express with the greatest solemnity and seriousness, and which with the same seriousness and solemnity are disputed in detail by those who do not agree on particular points, but equally recognize the fundamental dogmas.

The Basil the Great of this creed, Spencer, for example, in one of his first writings expresses these creeds as follows : societies and organisms, he says, differ in this :

(1) That, beginning as small aggregates, they imperceptibly grow in mass, so that some of them reach a size which is ten thousand times as large as the original.

(2) That, while in the beginning they are of such a simple structure that they may be regarded as deprived of all structure, they during the time of their growth acquire a constantly increasing complexity of structure.

(3) That, although in their early, undeveloped period there exists between them hardly any mutual relation of the particles between themselves, this relation finally becomes so powerful that the activity and the life of each particle becomes possible only with the activity and the life of the rest.

(4) That the life and the development of society are independent and more prolonged than the life and the development of any of its component units, which are born, grow, act, reproduce, and die separately, while the body politic, which is composed of them, continues to live generation after generation, developing in the mass, on account of the perfection of the structure and the functional activity.

After that follow the points of difference between organisms and society, and it is proved that these differences are only seeming ones, and that organisms and societies are completely alike.

To a fresh man there presents itself the direct question : ” What are you talking about ? Why is humanity an organism ? or why does it resemble it ?

” You say that societies according to these four signs are like organisms, but there is nothing of the kind. You only take a few of the signs of the organism, and classify human societies according to them.

” You adduce four signs of resemblance, then take the signs of difference, but only the seeming ones (as it appears to us), and you conclude that human societies may be viewed as organisms. But this is an idle play of dialectics and nothing else. On such a foundation it is possible to classify anything you please according to the signs of the organism.”

I shall take the first thing that occurs to me, let us say the forest, as it is sowed in the field and grows up :

(1) Beginning as a small aggregate, etc. ; precisely the same takes place in the fields, when the seeds slowly take root in them, and the forest grows up.

(2) In the beginning the structure is simple, then the complexity grows, etc. ; precisely the same is true of the forest : first there are nothing but little birches, then willows and hazel bushes are added ; at first they grow straight, and later their branches intertwine.

(3) The interrelation of the particles increases to such an extent that the life of each particle depends on the life and the activity of the rest ; precisely the same is true of the forest : the hazel bushes warm the trunks (cut them out, and the other trees will freeze), the border underbrush guards it against the wind, the seed trees continue the species, the tall and leafy trees furnish shade, and the life of one tree depends on the other.

(4) The separate parts may die, but the whole lives ; the same is true of the forest : as the proverb says, The forest does not lament a tree.

Precisely the same is true with the example generally adduced by the advocates of the theory, that if the arm is chopped off, the arm will die; plant a tree beyond the shade and the forest soil, and it will die.

There is also a remarkable resemblance between this creed and the Christian dogma of the church and ’any other which is based on dogmas that are taken upon faith, on account of its impermeability against the proofs of logic. Having shown that the forest may, according to this theory, with equal right be considered an organism, you think that you have proven to them the incorrectness of their definition, — but that is where you are mistaken.

The definition which they give to the organism is so inexact and so extensible that they can classify under their definition anything they please.

” Yes,” they will say, “ a forest may be regarded as an organism. A forest is a peaceful interaction of individuals which do not destroy one another,— an aggregate,— and its parts may also come into a closer union and, like a bee swarm, may become an organism.”

Then you will say that if it is so, the birds, and the insects, and the grasses of this forest, which interact and do not destroy one another, may also be viewed with the trees as one organism.

They will agree even to that. Every aggregate of living beings which interact and do not destroy one another may, according to their theory, also be viewed as an organism. You may assume a union and cooperation between any things you please, and from evolution you may aifirm that out of anything you please there will in a very long time be produced anything you please.

It is impossible to prove to those who believe in the trinity of God that that is not so, but it is possible to show them that their assertion is an assertion not of knowledge, but of faith, and that if they assert that there are three Gods, I with the same right may assert that there are seventeen and a half of them ; the same, with even greater assurance, may be proved to the followers of the positive and evolutionary science. On the basis of this science I will undertake to prove anything you please. And what is most remarkable is this, that this same positive science recognizes the scientific method as a sign of true knowledge, and has itself defined what it calls a scientific method. What it calls the scientific method is common sense, and it is this common sense which accuses it at every step.

The moment those who occupied the places of the saints began to feel that there was nothing saintly left in them, and that they were all cursed, like the Pope and our Synod, they immediately called themselves, not only holy, but also most holy. The moment science felt that there was nothing of common sense left in it, it called itself the science of common sense, that is, scientific science.

XXXI.

The division of labour is the law of everything in existence, and so it must be also in human societies. It is very likely that it is so, but the question still remains whether the division of labour which is now in human societies is that division of labour which there ought to be. And if people consider a certain division of labour irrational and unjust, no science can prove to people that that which they regard as irrational and unjust ought to exist.

The theological theory has proved that the power is from God, and it is very likely that it is, but the question is still left : whose power is from God, Catherine’s or Pugachév’s ? And no finesses of theology have been able to solve this doubt.

The philosophy of the Spirit has proved that the state is a form of the evolution of individuals ; but the question was still left : can the state of a Nero or of a Dzhingis-khan be regarded as a form of the evolution of individuals ? And no transcendental words have been able to solve this.

The same is true of the scientific science.

The division of labour is a condition of the life of organisms and of human societies ; but what is it in these human societies that must be regarded as an organic division of labour ? And no matter how much science may study the division of labour in the cells of rainworms, all these observations will not make a man regard as correct a division of labour which is not recognized as such by his reason and his conscience.

No matter how convincing the proofs may be in the case of the division of labour of the cells in organisms under observation, a man, if he is not yet deprived of reason, will none the less say that it is not right for a man to be weaving cottons all his life, and that this is not a division of labour, but an oppression of men.

Spencer and the rest say that there are whole settlements of weavers, and that, therefore, the weavers’ activity is an organic division of labour, — but saying this, they say precisely what the theologians have said.

There is a power, and so it is from God, no matter what it may be. There are weavers, consequently such is the division of labour. It would be well to say so, if the power and the population of the weavers were made by themselves, but we know that they are not made by themselves, but by us. And so we have to find out whether we made this power by God’s will or by our own, and whether we made these weavers according to an organic law or according to something else.

People live and support themselves by agriculture as is proper for all men : a man puts up a blacksmith’s forge and mends his plough, and his neighbour comes and asks him to mend his, and promises labour or money for it. A third, a fourth come, and in the society of these men the following division of labour takes place : a blacksmith is created. Another man teaches his children well, and his neighbour brings his children to him, and asks him to teach them, — and a teacher is created. But the smith and the teacher became and still are such because they were asked, and they remain such only so long as they are asked to be a smith or a teacher. If it should happen that there should be many smiths and teachers, or that their labour is not wanted, they would, as common sense demands, and as always happens where there are no causes for violating the regularity of the division of labour, at once give up their professions and return to agriculture.

People who act in this manner are guided by their reason and their conscience, and so we, the men who are endowed with reason and conscience, assert that such a division of labour is regular. But if it should happen that the smiths could compel others to work for them, and should continue to make horseshoes, when they were not needed, and the teachers should teach when there was no one to teach, every fresh man, as a man, that is, as a being endowed with reason and with conscience, would plainly see that that would not be a division, but a seizure of somebody else’s labour, because such an activity would depart from that one measure by which we can tell the regularity of the division of labour : the demand for this labour by other men, and a freely offered remuneration for this labour. And yet just such activity is what according to the scientific science is called division of labour.

People do what others do not even think of demanding, and demand to be fed for it, saying that this is just, because it is a division of labour.

What forms the chief public calamity of the masses, — not in our country alone, — is the government, the numberless officials ; what forms the cause of the economic wretchedness of our time is what the English call overproduction (the manufacturing of a mass of articles which cannot be got rid of, and which nobody wants) : all this comes from the strange comprehension of the division of labour.

It would be strange to see a shoemaker, who thought that people were obliged to support him, because he never stopped making boots, which people have long stopped wanting ; but what is to be said of those men of the government, the church, science, the arts, who do not make boots, who do not produce anything tangible or useful for the people, for whose commodities there is no demand, and who, on the basis of the division of labour, demand just as boldly that they should be given palatable food and drink, and be comfortably clothed ?

There may be, and there are, wizards for whose activity there is a demand, and to whom people carry for this pancakes and half-stoups ; but it is hard to imagine that there should be wizards whose witchery is not wanted, and who none the less demand boldly to be given good food, because they would practise their magical art.

And yet it is this that happens in our world with the people of the government, the church, science, and art.

And all this takes place on the basis of that false comprehension of the division of labour, which is not determined by one’s conscience, but by observation, which with such unanimity is professed by the men of science.

The division of labour has indeed existed at all times, but it is regular only when man decides by his reason and his conscience what it is to be, and not when he shall observe it ; but the conscience and the reason of all men decide this question in a very simple, unquestionable, and unanimous manner.

They decided that the division of labour is regular only when the special activity of a man is so necessary to men that they, asking him to serve them, themselves offer to support him for what he will do for them. But when a man can from childhood to his thirtieth year sit on the neck of others, promising, after he has learned it, to do something useful, which nobody asks him to do, and when he later, from his tliirtieth year until his death, can proceed living in the same way, all the time with only the promise to do something which nobody asks him to do, that will not be any division of labour (as, indeed it does not exist in our society), but, what it really is, only a seizure by the strong of the labour of others ; it is the same seizure of other men’s labour by the strong which formerly the theologians used to call divine destination, and the philosophers later called necessary forms of life, and now the scientific science calls organic division of labour.

The whole significance of the reigning science is only in this.

It-has now become a distributer of diplomas for idleness, because it alone analyzes and decides in its sanctuaries which is a parasitical and which an organic activity of man in the social organism, — as though a man could not find out this same thing much more correctly and more quickly by consulting his reason and his conscience.

And as formerly for the clergy and later for the men of the State there could have been no doubt as to who were most useful to others, so it seems now to the scientific science that there can be no doubt as to the fact that its activity is unquestionably organic : they, the scientific and the artistic actors, are the most precious brain cells of the org* nism. But God be with them ! Let them reign, eat and drink what is good, and live idly, as lived and reigned the priests and the sophists, if only, as priests and sophists, they did not corrupt people.

Ever since there have been people, rational beings, they have distinguished between good and evil and have made use of what the men before them have distinguished in this respect: they have struggled against the evil, sought the true and best path, and slowly but unyieldingly advanced on this path. And always, barring this path, there have risen before men all kinds of deceptions which have for their aim to show that this must not be done, and that it is necessary to live the best way one can. There arose the terrible, old deceptions of the ecclesiastics ; with a terrible struggle and labour men slowly emancipated themselves from them, but before they managed to free themselves, a new deception, the politico-philosophical, took the place of the old ones. Men freed themselves even from this.

And a new, a still worse, deception grew out on the path of men, — the scientific deception.

This new deception is just like the older ones : its essence consists in substituting something external for the activity of our reason and of our conscience and of those who have lived before us: in the church teaching this external matter was revelation, in science it is observation.

The trap of this science consists in this, that, pointing out to men the grossest deviations of the activity of men’s reason and conscience, it destroys in them their faith in reason and conscience, and, concealing its deception, which is clothed in a scientific theory, it assures them that they, studying the external phenomena, are studying undoubted facts, such as will reveal to them the law of man’s life. But the mental demoralization consists in this, that, by acquiring the belief that the objects, which in reality are subject to the conscience and to reason, are subject to observation, these people lose the consciousness of good and evil and become incapable of understanding those expressions and definitions of good and evil which have been worked out by the whole preceding life of humanity. All this in their jargon is conventional and subjective. All this has to be abandoned, they say ; it is impossible through reason to understand the truth, because it is possible to err, and there is another path which is faultless and almost mechanical: it is necessary to study facts. But facts have to be studied on the basis of scientific science, that is, of two groundless propositions, — of positivism and of evolution, — which are given out as most unquestionable truths.

And the reigning science declares, with a not less deceptive solemnity than does the church, that the solution of all the questions of life is possible only through the study of the facts of Nature and especially of the organisms.

The credulous multitude of youths, overcome by the novelty of this authority, which is not only not yet destroyed, but even not yet touched by criticism, throws itself with avidity on the study of these facts in the natural sciences, on that only path which, according to the assertion of the reigning doctrine, can lead to the elucidation of the questions of life.

But the farther the disciples move in this study, the farther and farther removed from them becomes, not only the possibility, but even the idea itself of the solution of the questions of life, and the more and more do they become accustomed, not so much to observe, as to take on trust the observations of others (to believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth state of matter, and so forth) ; the more and more does the form shield the contents from them ; the more and more do they lose the consciousness of good and evil and the ability to understand those expressions and definitions of good and evil which are worked out by the whole preceding life of humanity ; the more and more do they acquire a special scientific jargon of conventional expressions, which has no universal human significance ; the more and more do they enter into ravines of unenlightened observations ; the more and more are they deprived of the ability, not only to think independently, but even to understand a fresh, human thought which is found outside their Talmud ; and, above all else, they pass their best years in becoming dissociated from life, that is, from labour, get accustomed to regard their condition as justified, and grow even physically to be worthless parasites. And just like the theologians and Talmudists, they completely wrench their brains and become eunuchs of thought. And just like them, in proportion with their * dulling, they acquire a self-confidence which deprives them for ever of the possibility of a return to the simple, clear, and universally human manner of thinking.

XXXII.

The division of labour in human society has always existed and, no doubt, will always exist ; but for us the question is not whether it is and will be, but what we must be guided by, in order that the division may be regular. Now if we take observation as a standard, we shall in this manner at once renounce all standards, and then every division of labour which we shall see among people, and which will appear regular to us, will be regarded as regular by us, — and to this indeed the reigning scientific science leads us.

Division of labour ! Some busy themselves with mental, spiritual labour, others with muscular, physical labour. With what assurance these people speak! They want to believe so, and it seems to them that there is indeed taking place a completely regular exchange of services, where in reality it is only a very simple and old form of violence.

” Thou, or rather you ” (for it is always a number of people who feed one), “ feed and clothe me and do for me all the coarse labour which I shall demand, and which we are accustomed to receive from childhood, and I will do for you that mental labour which I can and to which I am accustomed. You give me the physical food, and I will furnish you with your spiritual pabulum.” (The calculation seems quite correct, and it would be quite correct, if this exchange of services were voluntary, if those who furnish the physical food were not compelled to furnish it before they receive the spiritual pabulum.)

The producer of the spiritual food says : ” In order that I may be able to give you the spiritual food, feed aud clothe me, aud carry out my impurities.”

The producer of the physical food is compelled to do this, without uttering any demands, and has to give the physical food, though he may not receive any spiritual food. If the exchange were voluntary, the conditions of the two would be the same.

We agree to this, that the spiritual food is as necessary for man as the physical food. The savant, the artist, says : “ Before we can begin to serve men by means of the spiritual food, it is necessary for men to provision us with the physical food.” But why should not the producer of physical food say that before he is to serve them with the physical food he needs the spiritual food, and that, if he does not receive it, he is unable to work ?

You say: “I need the work of the ploughman, smith, shoemaker, carpenter, mason, privy cleaner, and others in order that I may be able to prepare my spiritual food.” Every labourer ought equally to say : “ Before I go out to work in order to prepare the physical food for you, I must possess the fruits of the spiritual food. To have strength for the work there are indispensable to. me : the religious teaching, the order in the social life, the application of knowledge to labour, the joys and the consolations which the arts give. I have no time to work out my teaching about the meaning of life, — give it to me. I have no time to think out statutes of social life, such that justice would not be impaired, — give it to me. I have no time to busy myself with mechanics, physics, chemistry, technology,— give me the books with the indications of how to improve my tools, my methods of work, my dwelling, my heating, my lighting. I have no time to busy myself with poetry, plastic art, music, — give me the necessary incitements and consolations for life ; give me the products of the arts. You say that you cannot busy yourself with your important and necessary works, if you shall be deprived of the labour which the labouring people are bearing for you, but I say,” the labourer will say, ” that I cannot possibly busy myself with my not less important and necessary labours, — ploughing, hauling manure, and cleaning up your impurities, — if I shall be deprived of the religious guidance aud of what corresponds to the demands of my mind and conscience, of a rational government which will make my labour secure, of the indications of knowledge for the alleviation of my work, of the joy of art for the ennoblement of my labour. Everything which you heretofore have offered me in the form of spiritual food is not only of no use to me, but I even fail to understand to whom it can be of any use. And so long as I do not get this food, which is proper for me, as it is for any man, I cannot feed you with the physical food, which I produce.”

What if the labourer should say so?

If he should, it would not be a conceit, but the simplest justice.

If a labourer should say this, there would be more justice on his side than on the side of the man of mental labour. There is more justice on his side, because the labour which is supplied by the labourer is more important, more indispensable, than the labour of the producer of mental labour, even for this reason, that nothing keeps a man of the mental labour from giving to the labourer that spiritual food which he has promised him ; but what keeps the labourer from giving the physical food is the fact that he himself has not enough of this physical food.

What are we, the men of the mental labour, going to answer, if such simple and lawful demands are made on us ? How do we satisfy them ? With Filarét’s Catechism, with Sokolov’s Sacred History, with sheets from all kinds of monasteries and from the Cathedral of St. Isaac,— for the gratification of his religious demands ; with the code of laws, with cassation decrees of all kinds of departments, and with all kinds of statutes of committees and commissions, — for the gratification of the demands for order ; with spectral analysis, the measurement of the milky ways, imaginary geometry, microscopic investigations, disputes about spiritism and mediumism, the activity of the academy of sciences, — for the gratification of his demands for knowledge. With what shall we satisfy his artistic demands ? With Pushkin, Dostoevski, Turgénev, L. Tolstoy, with pictures of the French Salon and of our artists, representing nude women, satin, velvet, landscapes, and genre, with Wagner’s music and our musicians ; none of these things are any good, or can be any good, because we, with our right to exploit the labour of the masses and with the absence of all obligations in our preparation of the spiritual food, have entirely lost from view that one purpose which our activity ought to have. We do not even know what the working people need, we have even forgotten their manner of life, their view of things, their language ; we have even forgotten the labouring people, and we study them as an ethnographic rarity or as a newly discovered America.

And so we, demanding the physical food for ourselves, have undertaken to furnish the spiritual food ; but in consequence of that imaginary division of labour, which entitles not only us to dine first, and work later, but also whole generations to dine sumptuously without working at all, we have prepared, in the shape of a retribution to the masses for our sustenance, what, as we imagine, is good only for us, for science, and for art, but useless and quite incomprehensible and disgusting, like Lim-burger cheese, to those people whose labours we devour under the pretext of furnishing them with spiritual food.

In our blindness we have to such an extent let out of view the obligation which we have taken upon ourselves that we have even forgotten in the name of what our labour is produced, and have made the people, whom we undertook to serve, a subject for our scientific and artistic activity.

We study and represent them for our amusement and distraction, and we have entirely forgotten that we are not to study and represent them, but to serve them.

We have to such an extent let out of sight this obligation which we have taken upon ourselves that we have not even noticed that what we have undertaken to do in the sphere of the sciences and arts has been done not by us, but by others, and our place seems to be occupied. It turns out that while we have been disputing — as the theologians did about the germless generation — about the spontaneous generation of the organisms, or about spiritism, or about the form of the atoms, or about pangenesis, or about what there is in the protoplasm, and so forth, the failures and apostates of the sciences and arts have begun, by order of the business men, who have in view nothing but their own gain, to furnish this spiritual food to the masses. It is now forty years in Europe and ten with us in Russia that there have been circulated millions of books and pictures and song-books, and shows have been opened, and the people look on and sing and receive their spiritual food, but not from us who have undertaken to furnish it, and we, who justify our idleness by the spiritual food which we are supposed to be furnishing, sit and flap our eyes. But we ought not to flap our eyes, for the last justification is slipping out from underneath us.

We have specialized ourselves. We have our special functional activity. We are the brain of the people. They feed us, and we have undertaken to teach them. Only in the name of this have we emancipated ourselves from labour. Now what have we taught them ? They waited a year, tens, hundreds of years. And still we discuss and teach and amuse one another, and have entirely forgotten them. We have forgotten them to such an extent

that others have undertaken to teach and amuse them, and we have not even noticed with how little seriousness we spoke of the division of labour, and how obvious it is that what we say of the benefit which we confer on the masses has been nothing but a shameless excuse !

XXXIII.

There was a time when the church guided the spiritual life of the people of our world ; the church promised the good to people, and for this freed itself from participation in humanity’s struggle for life. And the moment it did so, it departed from its calling, and people turned away from it. It is not the errors of the church that have ruined it, but the departure of its servants from the law of labour, which was secured in the time of Constantine with the help of the temporal power ; their privilege of idleness and luxury has begot the errors of the church. With this privilege began the church’s care for the church, and not for the people whom it undertook to serve, and the servants of the church abandoned themselves to idleness and debauch.

The state undertook to guide the lives of men. The state promised men justice, peace, security, order, gratification of general spiritual and material needs, and for this the people who served the state emancipated themselves from participation in humanity’s struggle for life. And the servants of the state, the moment they acquired the possibility of exploiting the labour of others, did the same that the servants of the church did. Their end was no longer the people, but the state, and the servants of the state, — from the kings down to the lowest officials, — in Rome and in France, and in England and in Russia and in America, abandoned themselves to idleness and debauch.

And people lost their faith in the state, and anarchy consciously presents itself as an ideal.

The state has lost its enchantment for the people, only

because its servants recognized their right to exploit the labours of the people.

The same was done by science and by art, with the aid of the power of the state, which they undertook to support. And they stipulated for themselves the right to be idle and exploit the labours of others, and similarly became false to their calling.

And similarly their error was due only to this, that the servants of science, by advancing the falsely raised principle of the division of labour, recognized the right to exploit the labours of others and lost the meaning of their calling, making as their aim not the benefit of the people, but the mysterious benefit of science and of the arts, and, like their predecessors, they abandoned themselves to idleness and debauch, — not so much sensuous as mental debauch.

They say that science and the arts have given much to humanity. That is quite true.

The church and the state have given much to humanity, but not because they have misused their power and because their servants have departed from the eternal obligation of labour for life, which is common to all men, but in spite of it.

Even so science and the arts have given much to humanity, not because the men of science and of art, under the form of the division of labour, live on the backs of the labouring class, but in spite of it. The Roman republic was not powerful because her citizens were able to lead a life of debauch, but because among her citizens there were virtuous men. The same is true of science and of art.

Science and art have given much to humanity, not because their servants formerly had occasionally a chance, and now always have a chance, to free themselves from labour, but because there have existed men of genius, who, without making use of this right, have promoted humanity.

The class of the learned and of the artists, which, on the basis of the false division of labour, makes demands on the exploitation of the labour of others, cannot cooperate with the success of true science and of true art, because the lie cannot produce any truth.

We have become so accustomed to those our pampered, fat, and enfeebled representatives of mental labour that it appears monstrous to us to see a savant or an artist plough or haul manure. It seems to us that everything will perish, and that all his wisdom will be shaken up on a cart, and that all those great artistic pictures, which he harbours in his breast, will become soiled in the manure ; but we have become so accustomed to this that it does not seem strange to us that our servant of science, that is, the servant and teacher of truth, in causing others to do for him what he can do himself, passes half his time in eating sweet food, smoking, chattering, liberal gossips, reading of newspapers and novels, and going to the theatres ; it does not appear strange to us to see our philosopher in the restaurant, in the theatre, at the ball, and we are not surprised to hear that the artists who delight and ennoble our souls have passed their lives in drunkenness, in playing cards, and with women, if not worse.

Science and art are beautiful things, and for the very reason that they are beautiful they ought not to be spoiled by adding to them debauch, that is, the liberation from man’s obligation by means of labour to serve his life and the lives of others.

Science and art have advanced humanity, yes ! but not because the men of science and of art, under the form of the division of labour, have in words and, what is more important, with their deeds taught others to make use of violence, and to exploit the poverty and sufferings of men for the purpose of freeing themselves from the very first and unquestionable human obligation of working with their hands in the general struggle of humanity with Nature.

XXXIV.

” But it is only the division of labour, the emancipation of the men of science and of art from the necessity of working for their food, that has made possible that progress of the sciences which we see in our time,” they say to this.

” If all were obliged to plough, there would not have been attained those enormous results which have been arrived at in our time ; there would not be that striking progress which has so increased man’s power over Nature ; there would not be those astronomical discoveries, which so startle the human mind and which have made navigation more secure, nor steamers, railways, wonderful bridges, tunnels, steam-engines, telegraphs, photographs, telephones, sewing - machines, phonographs, electricity, telescopes, spectroscopes, microscopes, chloroform, antiseptics, carbolic acid.”

I cannot count out everything of which our age is so proud.

Such a list and the raptures over oneself and over one’s exploits may be found in almost any newspaper and popular book. These raptures over oneself are so frequently repeated, we are so overrejoiced at ourselves, that we are seriously convinced with Jules Verne that science and art never made such progress as in our time.

Now all this wonderful progress we owe to the division of labour, so how can we help acknowledging it ?

Let us admit that the progress made in our century is indeed striking, wonderful, unusual ; let us admit that we are such peculiarly fortunate men as to live in an unusual time. But let us try and value this progress, not in the light of our self-contentment, but of the principle defended by this progress of the division of labour, that is, by that mental labour of the men of science for the benefit of the people, which is to redeem the emancipation from labour of the men of science and of art. 2111 this progress is very remarkable, but by some unfortunate accident, which is acknowledged by the men of science, this progress has so far not improved the condition of the labourer, but has rather made it worse.

If a labourer, instead of walking, can travel on the railway, the railway has, on the other hand, burned his forest, taken the grain away from under his nose, and brought him to the condition resembling slavery, — to that of the railway labourer.

If, thanks to steam engines and machines, a labourer can purchase wretched cottons, these engines and machines, on the other hand, have deprived him of earnings at home and have brought him to the state of complete slavery to the manufacturer.

If there are telegraphs, which he is not kept from using, but which his means do not permit him to make use of, every product of his, as soon as it rises in price, is bought up under his nose by the capitalists at a low price, thanks to the telegraph, before the labourer finds out about the demand for this commodity.

If there are telephones and telescopes, verses, novels, theatres, ballets, symphonies, operas, picture-galleries, and so forth, the life of the labourer has not improved from these, because, by the same unfortunate accident, these are not accessible to him.

Thus, in general, — and in this the men of science agree, — all these unusual inventions and productions of art have so far not in the least improved the life of the labourer, if they have not made it worse.

Thus, if to the question about the reality of the progress achieved by the sciences and the arts, we do not apply our rapture over ourselves, but the same standard on the basis of which the division of labour is defended, that is, the benefit conferred on the labouring people, we shall see that we have not yet any firm foundations for that self-contentment to which we so readily abandon ourselves.

A peasant will travel on the railway, a woman will buy cottons, in the hut there will be a lamp, and not a torch, and a peasant will light Iris pipe with a match, — that is convenient ; but by what right can I say that the railways and factories have benefited the people ?

If a peasant travels on the railway and buys a lamp, cottons, and matches, he does so because he cannot be prohibited from doing so ; but we all know that railways and factories were never built for the benefit of the masses, so what sense is there in adducing accidental comforts, which the labourer uses fortuitously, as a proof of the usefulness of these institutions for the people ?

We all know that if the engineers and capitalists, who built the railway or the factory, thought of the labouring man, they did so only in the sense of squeezing the last strength out of him. And, as we see, both in our country and in Europe, and in America, they have fully accomplished this.

In everything harmful there is something useful. After a conflagration we may warm ourselves at the fire and light our pipe with a coal; but what sense is there in saying that a conflagration is useful ?

Let us at least not deceive ourselves. We all know the motives by which roads and factories are built and coaloil and matches arc obtained.

An engineer builds a road for the government, for military purposes, or for the capitalists, for financial purposes. He makes machines for the manufacturer, for his own gain and for that of the capitalist. Everything which he makes or invents, he makes or invents for the purposes of the government, of the capitalist, of the rich. All his most cunning devices of engineering are directed outright either to the harm of the people, as in the case of guns, torpedoes, solitary cells, appliances for the monopolies, telegraphs, and so forth ; or to articles which fail not only to be useful, but even applicable, to the masses, such as the electric light, telephones, and all the endless improvements of comfort’; or, finally, to such objects as can corrupt the people and extort the last money, that is, the last labour, from them, such as, above all, whiskey, wine, beer, opium, tobacco, then cottons, kerchiefs, and all kinds of trifles.

But if it happens that the inventions of the men of science and the labours of the engineers now and then are useful to the people, as, for instance, the railway, cottons, iron pots, scythes, this proves only that in the world everything is connected and out of every harmful activity there may come an accidental benefit for those to whom this activity was harmful.

The men of science and of art could say that their activity is useful for the people only if the men of science and of art make it their purpose to serve the people as now they make it their purpose to serve the governments and the capitalists.

We could say this only if the men of science and of art made it their purpose to attend to the people’s wants, but there do not exist such.

All the learned people are busy with their priestly occupations, from which follow investigations of protoplasms, spectral analyses of stars, and so forth. But science has never thought of this, with what kind of an axe head and helve it is more advantageous to chop ; what kind of a saw does the best work; how it is better to prepare the dough for the bread, out of what flour, and how it is to be set ; how to make a fire, what stoves to put up, what food, what drink, what dishes to use, what mushrooms may be eaten, and what is the best way to prepare them. And yet all this is the business of science.

1 know, according to its definition, science must be useless, but this is an obvious and too bold an excuse. The business of science is to serve the people. We have invented telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, but what have we advanced in life, in the labour of the masses ? They have counted two millions of bugs ! But have they domesticated a single new animal since Biblical times, when all our animals were already domesticated ? The elk, the stag, the partridge, the quail, the grouse, are still wild. The botanists have found the cell, and the protoplasm in the cell, and something else in the protoplasm, and something else inside of that. These occupations will apparently not end for a long time, because apparently there can be no end to them, and so they will never have the time to busy themselves with what people need. And so again, since Egyptian and Jewish antiquity, when the wheat and lentils were already cultivated, up to our time not one plant has been added to the food of the people, unless it be the potato, which, however, was not acquired through science.

They have invented torpedoes, appliances for the monopolies and for privies, but the spinning-wheel, the weaver’s loom, the plough, the axe handle, the ilail, the rake, the sweep, the vat, — all these are precisely as they were in the time of Rurik. And if anything has been changed, it has not been changed by scientific men.

The same is true of art. We have raised a mass of men to the level of great writers, have analyzed these writers down to the minutest details, and have written mountains of criticism, and criticisms on the criticisms, and again criticisms on the criticisms of the criticisms, and have collected picture-galleries, and have studied all kinds of schools of art down to the finest points, and we have symphonies and operas such as give even us trouble to listen to. And what have we added to the popular epics, legends, fairy-tales, songs ? What pictures and what music have we given to the masses ? At Nikolskaya they make books and pictures for the people, and in Tula accordions, and in neither have we taken any part.

Most striking and obvious is the falseness of the direction of our science and our arts in those very branches which, one would think, from their very problems ought to be useful to the people, but which, in consequence of the false direction, present themselves as rather pernicious than useful.

An engineer, physician, teacher, artist, author, to judge from his calling, ought to serve the people, and what happens? With the present tendencies they can do nothing but harm to the people.

An engineer, a mechanician, has to work with a capital. Without a capital he is not good for anything. All his knowledge is such that in order to manifest it he needs capital and the exploitation of the labourer on a large scale, and, to say nothing of the fact that he has been taught to spend at least fifteen hundred or two thousand a year, and so cannot go to the country where nobody can give him any remuneration, he by his very occupation is no good for serving the people. He can by means of higher mathematics figure out the span of a bridge and the transmission of a motor, and so forth, but he is nonplussed in the presence of the simple demands of the people’s labour. How to improve a plough or a cart, how to make a brook fordable, — problems which exist in those conditions of life in which the labourer finds himself, — of all that he knows nothing and understands less than the very lowest peasant. Give him shops, all the working people he wants, order machines from abroad, and then he will fix everything. But he knows nothing, and can know nothing, about finding, under certain conditions of the labour of millions of people, the means for making this labour easier, and by his occupations, habits, and demands made on him by life he is no good for this work.

The physician is in a still worse condition. His whole imaginary science is so placed that he is able to cure only those who do nothing and are able to make use of the labours of others. He needs an endless number of costly appliances, of rooms, food, privy, in order that he may be able to act scientifically ; in addition to his salary he needs such expenses that, in order to cure a single patient, he has to starve to death a hundred of those who will bear these expenses. He has studied with celebrities in the capitals, who make a practice only of such patients as can be cured in clinics, or who, curing themselves, are able to buy the necessary machines for their cure, and even to go at once from the north to the south, or to such and such watering-places.

Their science is such that each county physician complains of not having the means for curing the labouring people, that they are so poor that it is impossible to place the patient in hygienic conditions, and, at the same time, this physician complains that there are no hospitals, that he cannot manage all the work, and that he needs more assistants, doctors, and surgical help. What conclusion do we come to ? To this, that the chief calamity of the masses, from which originate and spread their diseases, and remain uncured, is the insufficiency of the means for life.

And here science under the banner of the division of labour calls its champions to the aid of the masses. All the science has been adapted for the wealthy classes and puts the problem as to how to cure those people who can get everything for themselves, and send those who have nothing superfluous to be cured in the same way.

But the means are wanting, and so it is necessary to take them from the masses, who have ailments and become infected, but are not cured, for lack of means.

And the defenders of medicine for the people say that this business has so far been little developed.

It is evident that it has been little developed, because if, God forfend, it should be developed, and the people were shouldered with twenty instead of two doctors, midwives, and surgical assistants to each county, — there would soon be no persons to cure. The scientific cooperation, of which the defenders of the science speak, ought to be of a very different kind. The cooperation which ought to be has not yet begun. It will begin when the man of science, the engineer or the physician, shall not regard as legal that division, that is, seizure of other people’s labour, which now exists; when he shall not consider it his right to take from people, I do not say hundreds of thousands, but even a modest one thousand or five hundred roubles for his cooperation, and shall live among the labouring people in the same conditions as they, and then shall apply their knowledge to questions of mechanics, engineering, hygiene, and the curing of the labouring masses. But now the science, which grows fat at the expense of the labouring people, has entirely forgotten the conditions of the life of these people, ignores (as it expresses itself) these conditions, and most seriously feels offended because its supposed knowledge finds no application among the people.

The sphere of medicine, like that of engineering, still lies untouched. All the questions as to how best to divide the time of labour, how best to nourish oneself, how, in what manner, when to dress oneself and counteract the dampness and cold, how best to wash, nurse the children, swaddle them, and so forth, especially in the conditions in which the labouring people are, — all these questions have not yet been put.

The same is true of the activity of the scientific, the pedagogical teachers. Here science has put the matter in such a shape that according to science it is possible to teach rich people only, and the teachers, like the engineers and physicians, involuntarily cling to money, and with us more particularly to the government.

And this cannot be otherwise, because a model school (as a general rule, the more scientific the arrangement of the school, the more expensive it is), with adjustable benches, globes, and maps, and libraries, and methodics for teacher and pupils, is such that it demands the doubling of the taxes for each village. So science demands.

The masses need the children for work, and the more they need them, the poorer they are. The scientific defenders say : Pedagogy even now benefits the people, and when it is developed it will be better still. Yes, pedagogy will be developed, and, instead of twenty, there will be one hundred schools to each county, and all of them scientific, and the masses wall support these schools, — then they will grow poorer still and will need the work of their children even more than before.

“ What is to be done ? ” people say to this.

The government will build the schools and will make instruction compulsory, as in Europe ; but the money will again be taken from the people, and they will work harder than ever, and will have less leisure from work, and there will be no compulsory education. Again there is this one salvation, and this is, that the teacher should live in the conditions of the labourer and should teach for the remuneration which will voluntarily and gladly be given him.

Such is the false tendency of science, which deprives it of the possibility of fulfilling its obligation, which is, to serve the masses. Still more obvious is this false tendency of our intellectual classes in the case of the activity of art, which from its very purpose ought to be accessible to the masses.

Science may fall back on its silly excuse that science acts for science, and that, when it has been worked out by the learned, it will become accessible to the masses also ; but art — if it is art — must be accessible to all, especially to those in whose name it is produced. Our condition of art strikingly arraigns the workers of art for not wanting, nor knowing how, nor being able to be useful to the masses.

A painter, to prepare his great productions, must have a studio, which is to be large enough for an association of forty joiners or shoemakers to work in, who are freezing and choking to death in miserable purlieus; but that is not enough: he needs Nature, costumes, travels. The Academy of Arts has spent millions, collected from the people, for the encouragement of the arts, and the productions of this art hang in palaces and are incomprehensible and useless to the masses.

Musicians, to express their great ideas, have to bring together some two hundred men in white neckties or in costumes, and to spend hundreds of thousands in order to stage an opera. And the productions of this art cannot call forth among the people, even if they ever could make use of them, anything but perplexity and ennui.

Writers, composers, it would seem, are in no need of immediate surroundings, in studios, Nature, orchestras, and actors; but even here it appears that a writer, a composer, to say nothing of the comforts of his apartments, and of all the enjoyments of life, needs, for the preparation of his great productions, travel, palaces, cabinets, the enjoyment of the arts, the attendance at theatres, concerts, balls, and so forth. If he does not himself earn a competence, he gets a pension, that he may compose better. And again, these compositions, so much esteemed by us, remain rubbish for the people, and are absolutely useless to them.

What if, as the men of the sciences and arts wish, there will breed even more such purveyors of spiritual pabulum, and we shall have in each village to build a studio, introduce orchestras, and maintain a composer in those conditions which the men of the arts regard as indispensable for themselves ?

I assume that the labouring people will forego the pleasure of ever seeing a picture, hearing a symphony, or reading verses or novels, only not to be obliged to feed all these drones.

But why could not the men of the arts serve the people ? In every hut there are images and pictures ; every peasant, man or woman, sings ; many of them have musical instruments, and all tell stories and recite verses, while many read. How is it that the two things, which are made one for the other, like a key and a lock, have gone so far apart that there is not even a chance for bringing them together ?

Tell a painter without a studio, Nature, or costumes to paint pictures worth five kopeks each, and he will tell you that this means renouncing art, as he understands it. Tell a musician to play the balalayka, accordion, or guitar, and to teach the women to sing songs. Tell the poet to throw away his poems, his novels, his satires, and to compose song-books, stories, and fairy-tales which the unlettered may understand — and they will tell you that you are crazy. But is it less insanity for people, who, only in the name of serving as spiritual pabulum to those men who have brought them up, and feed and clothe them, have emancipated themselves from labour, so to forget their obligation as to become unaccustomed to prepare this food which is so useful to the masses, and to regard this very departure from their obligation as their special distinction ?

“ But so it is everywhere,” you are told.

It is irrational everywhere, and it will remain so as long as people, under the pretext of the division of labour and of the promise of serving as spiritual food for the masses, will only absorb the labour of the masses. There will be a ministration to the masses by means of the sciences and the arts only when the people who live among the masses and like the masses, without claiming any privileges, will offer them their scientific and artistic services, which to accept or reject will depend on the will of the masses.

XXXV.

To say that the activity of the sciences and arts has cooperated with the forward movement of humanity, comprehending by this activity what is now called by this name, is the same as to say that the clumsy, interfering plashing of the oars in a vessel which is going down the stream is cooperating with the motion of the vessel. It only interferes with it.

The so-called division of labour, that is, the seizure of other people’s labour, which in our day has become a condition of the activity of the men of science and of art, has been and still remains the chief cause of the slow forward movement of humanity. The proof of this is found in that confession of all men of science that the acquisitions of science and of the arts are inaccessible to the labouring masses, on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.

But the inequality of this distribution does not diminish proportionately with the progress of the sciences and arts, but only keeps increasing. No wonder that it is so, because this unequal distribution of wealth arises only from the theory of the division of labour, which is preached by the men of science and of art for their personal, selfish ends. Science defends the division of labour as an unchangeable law, sees that the distribution of wealth, which is based on the division of labour, is incorrect and pernicious, and asserts that its activity, which recognizes the division of labour, will make people happy. It turns out that one set of men make use of the labours of others ; but, if they will for a very long time and in still greater measure make use of the labours of others, this unequal distribution of wealth, that is, the exploitation of the labours of others, will come to an end.

Men are standing at an ever-increasing source of water, and are busy leading it aside from the thirsting people, and assert that it is they who are producing this water, and that very, very soon there will be enough of it to suffice for all. But this water, which has been flowing without interruption, and which supports all humanity, is not only not the consequence of the activity of those men who, standing at the source, are leading it aside, but it flows and spreads, in spite of the efforts of these men to arrest this flow.

There has always existed the true church in the sense of people who are united in the highest truth attainable at a certain period of humanity, and always it has been different from the church which called itself so, and there has always existed science and art, but not what called itself by that name.

To those who recognize themselves as representatives of science and of art of a certain period, it always seems that they have done, and, above all, will this very minute do, some remarkable miracles, and that outside of them there has never been any science or any art. Thus it seemed to the sophists, scholastics, alchemists, Cabalists, Talmudists, and to our scientific science, and to our art for art’s sake.

XXXVI.

” But science and art ! You deny science and art, that is, what humanity lives by.” They do not exactly offer this objection to me, but always use this method in order to reject my arguments, without analyzing them.

” lie denies science and art, — he wants to bring people back to that savage state, — so what use is there of listening to him or speaking with him ? “

But that is not true. I am not only far from denying science, that is, the rational human activity, and art,— the expression of this rational activity, but in the name of this rational activity and its expressions do I say what I do; only in order that humanity may have a chance to get out of that savage state into which it is rapidly falling, thanks to the false teaching of our time, do I speak as I do.

Science and art are as indispensable for men as food, and drink, and raiment, and even more indispensable than these; but they do not become such because we decide that what we call science and art is indispensable, but because it is really indispensable to men.

If they should prepare hay for the physical food of men, my conviction that hay is a food for men will not make the hay be a food for men. I cannot say : « Why do you not eat hay, since it is an indispensable food ? ” It may happen that what is offered by me is no food.

Precisely the same has happened with science and art. But we imagine that if to a Greek word we shall add the word ” logy ” and call it science, it will really be a science ; and if some abominable work, as the painting of nude women, shall be called by a Greek word, and we shall say that it is art, it will really be art. But no matter how much we say this, the thing with which we busy ourselves, counting bugs and investigating the chemical composition of the milky way, drawing nymphs and historical pictures, composing stories and symphonies, our thing will become neither science nor art so long as it is not gladly accepted by those people for whom it is being done. But so far it is not being accepted.

If only one class of men were permitted to produce food, and all the others were forbidden to do that, or were placed in an impossible position for the production of food, I imagine that the quality of the food would deteriorate. If people who had a monopoly for the production of food were Bussian peasants, there would exist no other food than black bread, kvas, potatoes, and onions, nothing but what they like and what pleases them. The same would happen with that highest activity of science and of art, if one caste appropriated to itself the monopoly, — but with this difference, that in physical food there cannot be any very great deviation from naturalness: though bread and onions are not very palatable food, still they are edible ; but in the spiritual food there can be the greatest deviations, and some people can for a long time exist on useless, or even harmful, poisonous spiritual food, and can slowly kill themselves with opium or alcohol, and offer the same food to the masses.

It is this that has happened with us. And it bas happened because the position of the men of science and of art is privileged, because science and art in our world are not the rational activity of all humanity without exception, which secretes its best forces in order to serve science and art, but the activity of a small circle of men having a monopoly of these occupations and calling themselves men of science and of art, and so having perverted the very concepts of science and of art, and having lost the meaning of their calling, and busy amusing and saving from torturing ennui their small circle of drones.

Ever since men have existed, they have always had science in its simplest and broadest sense. Science, in the sense of all the knowledge of humanity, has always been and always will be, and without it life is unthinkable : there is no need of attacking or of defending it. But the point is that the sphere of this knowledge is so varied, and there enter into it so many various branches of knowledge, — from the knowledge of how to mine iron to the knowledge about the motion of the luminaries, — that a man is lost in these various branches of knowledge, if he has no guiding thread by which he can decide which of all the branches of knowledge is most important and which least important for him.

And so the highest wisdom of men has always consisted in finding that guiding thread along which is to be located the knowledge of men : which is first, and which of less importance.

And this human knowledge, which guides all the other knowledge, has always been called science in the narrower sense. Such science has, until our own time, always existed in those human societies which have emerged from the original savage state.

Ever since humanity has existed, there have always, among all nations, appeared teachers who composed science in its narrower sense, the science as to what is most important for men to know. This science has always had for its object the knowledge of what the purpose, and so the true good, of each man and all men is. This science has served as a guiding thread in the definition of the meaning of all other knowledge and in its expression, — art.

Those branches of knowledge and those arts which have cooperated with and approached most the fundamental science about the purpose and good of all men have stood highest in public opinion, and vice versa.

Such was the science of Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Socrates, Christ, Mohammed, the science as it has been understood by all men, with the exception of the men of our circle of so-called cultured people.

Such a science has not only always occupied a leading place, but has been the one science from which the meaning of all others has been determined.

And this was not at all the case because, as the so-called learned men of our time think, the cheats, priests, and teachers of this science gave it such a significance, but because, indeed, as anybody may find out by his inner experience, without the science of that wherein lies the destiny and good of man there can be no estimation and no choice of the sciences and arts.

And so there cannot even be any study of the sciences, for there is an endless number of subjects for the sciences ; I underline the word ” endless,” because I mean it in its exact sense.

Without the knowledge of that wherein lies the destiny and the good of men, all the other sciences and arts become, as indeed they are with us, an idle and harmful plaything. Humanity has lived, and it has never lived without the science of that wherein is the destiny and the good of men. It is true that the science of the good of men seems to a superficial observer to be different with the Buddhists, Brahmins, Jews, Christians, Confucianists, Taoists (though it is enough for one to look more carefully at these teachings in order to see their identical essence), but wherever we know men who have come out of their savage state, we find this science, and suddenly it turns out that the men of our time have decided that this very science, which heretofore was a guide to all human knowledge, is in the way of everything.

People put up buildings, and one builder makes one calculation, another — another, and a third — a third. The calculations vary somewhat, but they are correct, so that each of them sees that if everything shall be done according to the calculation, the building will be built.

Such builders are Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Christ.

Suddenly people come and affirm that the main thing is not to have any calculation, but to build everything at random, trusting to the eyes. And this ” at random ” these people call a most exact science, just as the Pope is called most holy. People deny every science, the very essence of science, — the determination of that wherein lies the destiny and the good of men, — and this denial they call science. Ever since men have existed, there have bred among them great minds which, in the struggle with the demands of reason and of conscience, have asked themselves in what consists the destiny and the good not of themselves alone, but also of every man.

” What does the force which has produced me and which guides me want of me and of every other man ? And what must I do in order to satisfy the demands of the personal and of the common good, which are inherent in me ? “

They asked themselves : ” I am a whole and a part of something immeasurable, something infinite: what are my relations to similar parts, — to men, — and to the whole ? ”

And from the voice of conscience, and from reason, and from the consideration of what those who have lived before them and their contemporaries have told them, those who have given themselves these questions, these great teachers, deduce their teachings, which are simple, clear, comprehensible to all men, and always such as could be fulfilled.

Such men were of the first, the second, the third, and the ver)’ last magnitude. Of such people the world is full.

All living men put to themselves the question : ” How shall I harmonize my demands for the good of my personal life with my conscience and my reason, which demand the common good of men ? ” And from this common labour there are slowly, but uninterruptedly, worked out new forms of life, which are nearer to the demands of reason and of conscience.

Suddenly there appears a new caste of men, who say : “ All this is nonsense, and has to be given up.” Such is the deductive method of reasoning (no one has ever been able to comprehend wherein the difference is between the deductive and the inductive methods), such are the methods of the theological and the metaphysical periods. “Everything which men reveal through their inner experience and communicate to one another concerning the cognition of the law of their life ” (of the functional activity, as they say in their jargon), ” everything which the greatest minds of humanity have done on this path since the beginning of the world, — all that is nonsense and of no consequence.”

According to this new teaching it turns out like this : you are a cell of an organism, and the problem of your rational activity consists in determining your functional activity ; and in order to determine this functional activity of yours, you need only observe outside of yourself. The fact that you are a thinking, suffering, talking, comprehending cell, and that, therefore, you can ask another similar talking cell whether it suffers, rejoices, and feels like you, and thus verify your own experience ; that you are able to utilize that which suffering, reasoning, and talking cells who have lived before you have recorded ; that you have millions of cells which confirm your observations by their agreement with the cells which have recorded their observations ; that, above all, you yourself are living cells which by their immediate inner experience recognize the regularity or irregularity of their functional activities, — all that has no meaning, all that is a bad, a false method. The true, the scientific method is like this : if you want to know wherein consists your functional activity, that is, wherein is your destiny and your good, and the destiny and the good of all humanity and of all the world, you must first of all stop listening to the voice and to the demand of your conscience and of your reason, which make themselves known in you and in your like ; you must stop believing in all that the great teachers of humanity have said about their reason and their conscience, must consider all that nonsense, and begin anew. And in order to understand everything from the beginning, you must look through a microscope at the motion of the amoebas and the cells in rainworms, or, more comfortably still, you must believe in everything which men with the diploma of infallibility will tell you about these things. And looking at the motion of these amoebas and cells, or reading about what others have seen, you must ascribe to these cells their human feelings and calculations as to what they wish, whither they tend, what they reflect and calculate on, and what they are used to; and from these observations (in which every word is an error of thought or of expression) judge by analogy what you are, what your destiny is, and in what lies your good and that of other similar cells. In order to understand yourself you must study not only the rainworm, which you see, but also the microscopic beings, which you almost do not see, and the transformations from one being into another, which no man has ever seen, and you certainly will never see.

The same is true of art. Where there has been true science, art has always been an expression of the knowledge of man’s destiny and good. Ever since men have existed they have out of the whole activity of the expressions of every kind of knowledge extracted the chief expression, the knowledge of the destiny and the good, and the expression of this knowledge was art in its narrow sense. Ever since there have been men, there have been those who are particularly sensitive and responsive to the teaching about the good and the destiny of man, and who on harps and timbrels, in representations and in words, have expressed their human struggle with the deceptions which drew them away from their destiny, their sufferings in this struggle, their hopes in the triumph of goodness, their despairs on account of the triumph of evil, and their raptures at the consciousness of this approaching good.

Ever since there have been men, true art, the one which has been highly valued by men, has had no meaning except as an expression about the destiny and the good of man.

At all times, and down tp our day, art has served the teaching about life, what later was called religion, and only then is it what is so highly valued by men. But at the same time that the place of the science about the destiny and the good was occupied by the science about everything that might come to one’s mind, science lost its meaning and significance, and the true science was contemptuously called religion, and at the same time there disappeared art as an important human activity.

So long as there was a church, as a teaching about the destiny and the good, art served the church and was the true art ; but ever since art has left the church and begun to serve science, while science serves anything that may occur to it, art has lost its meaning and, in spite of the assertion of the rights, based on ancient memory, and of the insipid claim, which only proves the loss of its calling, that art serves art, it has become a trade which furnishes men with what is pleasing, and inevitably blends with the choreographic, culinary, tonsorial, and cosmetic arts, the producers of which call themselves artists with the same right as do the poets, painters, and musicians of our time.

You look back, and you see : in the course of thousands of years out of the number of billions of people are segregated dozens of men like Confucius, Buddha, Solon, Socrates, Solomon, Homer, Isaiah, David. Evidently they occur but rarely among men, although at that time they were not chosen from one caste only, but from among all men ; apparently these true scholars, artists, producers of spiritual food, are rare, and humanity has had good reason to value them so highly. Now it turns out that all these past great actors of science and of art are no longer of any use to us. Now the scientific and artistic actors may, according to the law of the division of labour, be produced by machine work, and we in one decade can produce more great men of science and of art than were born among all men since the creation of the world.

Now there is a guild of scholars and of artists, and they manufacture in an improved manner all that spiritual food which humanity needs.

And they have produced such a lot of it, that there is no need even of mentioning all the ancient and even all the more modern men of genius,— for all that was the activity of the theological and the metaphysical periods ; all that has to be wiped out ; the real rational activity began only fifty years ago. And in these fifty years we have manufactured such a lot of great men that there are more of them in one German university than there were before in the whole world ; and we have produced such a mass of sciences, — luckily they are easily produced (all you have to do is to add to a Greek appellation the word ” logy,” and to arrange matters according to given specifications, and the science is all fixed), — that one man not only cannot know them, but cannot even remember the names of all the existing sciences, — the names alone would form a stout dictionary, and they produce new sciences every day.

They have produced a lot of them, in the way in which a Finnish teacher taught the children of a proprietor to talk Finnish instead of French. They have taught us beautifully ; but the one trouble is that none but us understand a thing about it, and that the others consider all this to be useless bosh.

However, there is an explanation for all that: the people do not understand the whole usefulness of the scientific science, because they are under the influence of the theological period of knowledge, of that stupid period when the whole nation of the Jews, and of the Chinese, and of the Hindoos, and of the Greeks, understood everything which their great teachers told them.

But no matter what the cause of it may be, the point is that the sciences and the arts have always existed with humanity, and that, when they actually existed, they were necessary and comprehensible to all men.

We are doing things which we call sciences and arts, and it turns out that what we do we have no right to call sciences and arts.

XXXVII.

“ But you are only giving a different, more narrow definition of science and of art, which is not in conformity with science,” I am told, ” but this does not exclude them, for there is still left the scientific and the artistic activity of a Galileo, Bruno, Homer, Michelangelo, Beethoven, AVagner, and all the scholars and artists of lesser magnitudes, who have devoted all their lives to the service of science and of art.”

This they generally say in their attempt to establish the succession, which they in other cases deny, between the activity of the former scholars and artists and the present, and also in their attempt at forgetting that special, new principle of the division of labour on the basis of which science and the arts now occupy their privileged position.

In the first place, it is impossible to establish a succession between the present and the former representative men ; as the holy life of the first Christians has nothing in common with the life of the Popes, so the activity of a Galileo, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, has nothing in common with the activity of a Tyndal, a Hugo, a Wagner. As the holy fathers would have rejected any kinship with the Popes, so the ancient men of science would have rejected any kinship with the men of the present.

In the second place, thanks to the meaning which the sciences and arts now ascribe to themselves, we have a very clear standard, given by science itself, by means of which we are able to determine their correspondence or lack of correspondence, to their purpose ; and thus we are able, not boldly, but by the given standard, to determine whether the activity which calls itself science and art has any grounds, or not, to call itself by that name.

When the Egyptian or Greek priests produced their mysteries which no one understood, and said of these mysteries that in them lay all science and art, I was not able on the basis of a benefit conferred by them on the people to verify the reality of their science, because science, according to their assertion, was supernatural; but now we all have a very clear and simple standard, which excludes the supernatural : science and art promise to do the brain activity of humanity for the good of society or of all humanity. And so we have the right to call only such activity science and art as will have this aim and will attain it.

And so, no matter what the scholars and artists may call themselves, who invent the theory of criminal, political, and international rights, who invent new guns and explosives, who compose salacious operas and operettas, or just as salacious novels, we have no right to call all this activity an activity of science and of art, since this activity has not for its aim the good of societies or of humanity, but, on the contrary, is directed to the harm of men. All this is, consequently, neither science nor art. Similarly, no matter what the scholars may call themselves, who in the simplicity of their hearts are all their lives busy investigating microscopic animals and telescopic and spectral phenomena, or what the artists may call themselves, who, after a careful study of the monuments of antiquity, are busy preparing historical novels, pictures, symphonies, and pretty verses, — all these men, in spite of their zeal, cannot, according to the scientific definition itself, be called men of science and of art, in the first place, because their activity of science for the sake of science, and of art for the sake of art, has not the good for its aim ; and in the second place, because we do not see the consequences of this activity for the good of society and of humanity. But the fact that from their activity there sometimes accrues something useful and agreeable for certain people does by no means give us the right, again according to their own scientific definition, to regard them as men of science and of art.

Similarly, no matter what men may call themselves who invent applications of electricity to lighting, heating, and motion, or new chemical combinations, which produce dynamite or beautiful dyes ; or who play correctly Beethoven’s symphonies ; or who act, or paint beautiful portraits, genre pictures, landscapes ; or who write interesting novels, the aim of which is only to offer diversion to the rich in their ennui, — the activity of these men cannot be called science or art, because it is not directed, like the brain activity in the organism, toward the good of the whole, but is guided only by personal advantage, privileges, money, received for the invention and production of so-called art, and so can in no way be separated from any other selfish, personal activity which adds pleasure to life, such as are the activities of restaurant-keepers, and jockeys, and modistes, and prostitutes, and so forth. The activities of any of these do not fit in with the definition of science and of art, which on the basis of the division of labour promise to serve the good of all humanity or of society.

The definition of science and of art, as made by science, is quite correct, but unfortunately the activity of modem sciences and arts does not fit in with it. Some of them do outright what is harmful, others what is useless, and others again what is insignificant, and good only for the rich.

All of them may, indeed, be good men, but they do not fulfil what, according to their own definition, they undertook to do, and so they have as little right to regard themselves as men of science and of art as have the modern clergy who, by not fulfilling the obligations taken upon themselves, have lost the right to recognize themselves as carriers and teachers of divine truth.

And it is comprehensible why the men of modern science and art have not fulfilled, and cannot fulfil, their calling. They do not fulfil it, because of their obligations they have made rights.

The scientific and artistic activity, in its real meaning, is fruitful only when it knows no rights, but only obligations. It is only because it is always such,— because its property is to be self-sacrificing, — that humanity values it so highly.

If men are really called to serve others by means of spiritual labour, they will always suffer in fulfilling this ministration, because only in suffering, as in childbirth, is the spiritual world bom.

Self-renunciation and suffering will be the share of the thinker and the artist, because his aim is the good of men. Men are unhappy : they suffer, they perish. There is no time for waiting and taking things coolly.

The thinker and the artist will never sit on Olympian heights, as we are accustomed to think ; he will always, eternally, be agitated and disturbed; he might have solved and uttered that which would give the good to men and would free them from suffering, but he did not solve and utter this, and to-morrow it may be too late : he may be dead.

Not he will be a thinker and an artist who is educated in an establishment where they make a scholar and an artist (what they really make there is a miner of science and of art), and receives a diploma and a competency, but he who would be glad to refrain from thinking and expressing what is implanted in his soul, and yet is unable to refrain from doing that toward which he is drawn by two insuperable forces, — by his inner necessity and by the demands of men.

There is no such a thing as a smooth, easy-going, and self-satisfied thinker and artist.

The spiritual activity and its expression, which are indeed necessary for others, are man’s most grievous calling, his cross, as it is expressed in the Gospel. The only undoubted sign of the presence of the calling is self-renunciation, self-sacrifice for the purpose of manifesting the force which is implanted in man for the benefit of other men.

It is possible to teach how many bugs there are in the world, and to observe the spots in the sun, and to write novels or an opera, without experiencing any suffering ; but it is impossible without renunciation to teach people their good, which is all only in self-renunciation and serving others, and strongly to express this teaching.

There was a church so long as the teachers endured and suffered, but the moment they began to grow fat their teaching activity came to an end.

“ There were golden priests and wooden bowls, now the bowls have become of gold, and the priests are wooden,” say the people.

There was good reason why Christ died on the cross, and good reason why the sacrifice of suffering conquers everything.

But our men, and science and art, are made secure and have diplomas, and all the care they have is how to make themselves more secure still, that is, how to make impossible the ministration to men.

True science and true art have two undoubted signs, — the first, an inward sign, is this, that the servant of science and of art will carry out his calling not for his advantage, but with self-renunciation, and the second, an external one, is this, that its productions are comprehensible to all men whose good he has in view.

No matter in what men may take their purpose and good to lie, science will be the teaching of this purpose and good, and art — the expression of this teaching. The laws of Solon and of Confucius are science ; the teaching of Moses and of Christ are science; the buildings in Athens, David’s psalms, the masses, are art ; but the study of the bodies in the fourth dimension and of the tables of chemical combinations, and so forth, has never been and never will be science. The place of true science and of the arts is in modern times taken by theology and the juridical sciences ; the place of true art is taken by ecclesiastic and governmental ceremonies, in which all alike do not believe, and on which all alike fail to look seriously ; but that which with us is called science and art is the product of an idle mind and of idle feeling, having for its aim the tickling of just such idle minds and feelings, incomprehensible and meaningless for the masses, because it has not their good in view.

As far back as we know the life of men, we always and everywhere find the reigning teaching, which falsely calls itself science and which does not disclose the meaning of life to men, but obscures it. Thus it was with the Egyptians, with the Hindoos, with the Chinese, and partly with the Greeks (sophists), then with the mystics, gnostics, Cabalists ; in the Middle Ages with the theologians, scholastics, alchemists, and so on up to our time.

What a special piece of fortune it is for us to be living in such a particular time when that mental activity which calls itself science is not only not in error, but also, as we are assured, in an unusually flourishing state ! Is not this special piece of good fortune due to this, that man cannot and does not wish to see his monstrousness ? Why is there nothing left of the sciences of the theologians and Cabalists but words, while we are so fortunate ?

The signs are certainly the same : there is the same self-contentment and blind assurance that we, and nobody else, are on the right path, and that the real thing begins with us only. There is the same expectation that very, very shortly we shall discover something unusual, and the same chief sign which betrays our error, — our whole wisdom is left with us, and the masses do not understand, nor receive, nor need it. Our situation is very hard, but why should we not look straight at it ?

It is time to bethink and overhaul ourselves.

We are certainly nothing but scribes and Pharisees, who have seated ourselves on Moses’ seat, and who have taken the keys from the kingdom of heaven, and who ourselves do not enter and do not admit others. We, the priests of science and of art, are the most wretched deceivers, who have a great deal less right to our situation than the most cunning and corrupt of priests. We have not the slightest justification for our privileged condition : we have seized this place through rascality, and we hold it through deception.

The priests, the clergy, ours or the Catholic, no matter how corrupt they have been, have had a right to their position, — they have been saying that they teach men life and salvation. But we have undermined the clergy and have proved to people that it deceives them, and have taken its place; we do not teach life to men, and even recognize that there is no need of learning this ; we suck up the juices of the masses and for this we teach our children the same Talmud, — Greek and Latin grammar,— in order that they may be able to continue the same life of a parasite which we are leading.

We say that there used to be castes, but that there are none now. But what does this mean, that some people and their children work, while other people and their children do not work ? Take a Hindoo, who does not know our language, and show him the life of several generations in Europe and in Bussia, and he will recognize the same two chief, distinct castes of workers and rion-workers which he has in his own country. As in his country, the right not to work is given to us by a special sanctification which we call science and art, or, in general, education.

It is this education and all the perversion of the mind, which is connected with it, that has brought us to that remarkable madness in consequence of which we do not see what is so clear and unquestionable.

We devour the human lives of our brothers and consider ourselves Christian, humane, cultured, and perfectly righteous men.

XXXVIII.

So what is to be done ? What shall we do then ?

This question, which includes the recognition that our life is bad and irregular, and, at the same time, as it were, the assertion that it is impossible to change all this, I have heard on all sides, and so 1 have chosen this question for the title of this whole writing.

I have described my sufferings, my searchings, and my solutions of this question. I am the same kind of a man as all the rest, and if I in any way differ from the average man of our circle, I differ mainly in this, that I have more than the average man served the false teaching of the world and have been in collusion with it, have received more applause from the people of the reigning teaching, and so have more than others become corrupted and strayed from my path.

And so I think that the solution of the question which I have found for myself will also be good for all sincere people who put the same question to themselves. First of all, in reply to the question, ” What to do ? ” I answered myself : ” Not to lie to others, nor to oneself ; not to be afraid of the truth, no matter where it may take us.” We all know what it means to lie to people, and yet we never stop lying from morning until night: ” Not at home,” when I am at home ; ” Very glad,” when I am not at all glad ; ” Most respectfully,” when I do not at all respect ; ” I have no money,” when I have it, and so forth. We consider a lie to people, especially a lie of a certain kind, a bad thing, but we are not afraid of lying to ourselves ; and yet the worst, most direct, most deceptive lie to other people is nothing in its consequences in comparison with the lie to ourselves, on which we build our life.

It is this lie which we must not tell, in order that we may be able to answer the question, ” What to do ? “

How can I answer this question, when everything I do, my whole life, is based on a lie, and I carefully give out this lie to others and to myself as the truth ? Not to lie in this sense means not to be afraid of the truth, not to invent any subterfuges, and not to accept those invented by others for the purpose of concealing from ourselves the deductions of reason and of conscience ; not to be afraid of disagreeing from all those around us, and to remain all alone with reason and conscience ; not to be afraid of the proposition to which truth will lead us, being fully convinced that the proposition to which truth and conscience will lead’ us, no matter how strange it may be, cannot be worse than the one which is based on the lie. Not to lie in our condition of privileged people of the mental labour means not to be afraid of squaring up accounts. ” May be I am so much in arrears that I shall never balance my accounts ; ” but, no matter how much it may be, it is better than not to cast the accounts at all; no matter how far we may have strayed on the false path, it is better for us than to continue to walk on the false path. Lying to others is only inexpedient.

Every affair is more directly and more briefly solved by truth than by lies. Lying to others only complicates matters and delays the solution; but a lie to oneself, given out as a truth, ruins a man’s whole life.

If a man, having strayed on a false path, recognizes it as the true one, every step of his on his path removes him from his goal ; if a man, who for a long time walks on this false path, divines himself or is told that this is a false path, and is frightened at the idea of how far he has strayed to one side, and tries to assure himself that he will in some way come out on the road, he certainly never will. If a man is awed by truth and, seeing it, does not acknowledge it, accepts the lie as truth, he will never know what he has to do.

We, not only the rich, but also the privileged, the so-called cultured men, have strayed so far on the false path that we need great determination or very great suffering on the false path in order to regain our senses and recognize the lie by which we live.

I saw the lie of our life, thanks to those sufferings to which the false path brought me ; and having recognized the falseness of the path on which I was standing, I had the courage, at first only mentally, to go whither reason and conscience took me, without reflection as to where they would take me to. I was rewarded for this courage. All the complex, dissociated, confused, meaningless phenomena of life which surrounded me suddenly became clear to me, and my position amidst these phenomena, strange and oppressive to me before, suddenly became natural and light. And in this new position my activity was quite precisely defined : it was by no means the one which had presented itself to me before, but a new, much calmer, more lovable, and more joyous activity. What formerly frightened me now began to attract me.

And so I think that he who sincerely asks himself, ” What to do ? ” and, answering this question, does not lie to himself, but proceeds whither his reason will lead him, has already solved the question. If only he shall not lie to himself, he will find where, how, and what to do. The one thing that can keep him from finding a way out is the false high opinion which he has of his condition. So it was with me, and so another answer to the question, ” What to do ? ” resulting from the first, consisted for me in repenting in the full sense of the word, that is, in completely changing the valuation of my condition and of my activity ; in recognizing, instead of the usefulness and seriousness of my activity, its harm and triviality; in recognizing, instead of my education, my ignorance; in recognizing, instead of my goodness and morality, my immorality and cruelty ; in recognizing, instead of my exaltation, my baseness.

I say that, in addition to not lying to myself, I had to repent in particular because, although one thing results from another, the false conception of my high significance was so welded with me that so long as I did not sincerely repent, and did not renounce the false valuation which I had made of myself, I did not see the greater part of the lie which I was telling to myself. Only when I repented, that is, stopped looking upon myself as a special man, and considered myself as a man like anybody else, my path became clear to me.

Before that I had been unable to answer the question, “ What to do ? ” because I put the question itself incorrectly. So long as I did not repent, I put the question like this : ” What activity shall be chosen by me, a man in possession of the culture and of the talents which I have acquired ? How can I with this culture and these talents repay what I have been taking from the masses ? “

This question was incorrectly put, because it included the false representation that I was not just such a man, but a special kind of a man, called to serve the masses with those talents and that culture which I had acquired in a practice of forty years. I used to put the question to myself, but in reality answered it by determining in advance the kind of agreeable activity with which I was called to serve men. What I really asked myself was this : ” How can I, such a fine author, who have acquired so much knowledge and so many talents, use them for the benefit of men ? ” But the question ought to have been put as it stood for a learned rabbi who had finished his course in the Talmud and had studied the number of letters in all the sacred writings and all the intricacies

of his science. The question, as for the rabbi, so also for me ought to have stood as follows: What must I, who, through the misfortune of my conditions, have passed my best years of study in acquiring the French language, the playing of the piano, grammar, geography, juridical sciences, verses, novels, philosophical theories, and military exercises, instead of becoming accustomed to work, — what must I, who have passed the best years of my life in idle occupations which corrupt the soul, do, in spite of these unfortunate conditions of the past, in order to pay back to those people who have fed and clothed me and even now continue to feed and clothe me ? If the question had stood before me as it now stands before me, after I have repented, namely, what I, such a corrupt man, must do, the answer would have been easy : I must first of all try to earn an honest living, that is, to learn how not to live by sitting on the backs of others and, while learning it and having learned it, upon every occasion to be useful to people with my hands, and feet, and brain, and heart, and with all that to which the masses lay any claim.

And so I say that for a man of our circle it is not enough to refrain from lying to others and to himself : he must also repent, — scrape off the pride which is ingrained in us through our education, refinement, and talents, — and recognize himself not as a benefactor of the masses, a representative man who does not refuse to share his useful acquisitions with the masses, but as an absolutely guilty, spoilt, and useless man who desires to mend and not exactly to benefit the masses, but to stop offending and insulting them.

I frequently hear the questions of good young men who sympathize with the negative part of my writings and ask : « Well, so what must I do ? What must I do, having graduated from the university or from another institution, in order that I may be useful ? “

The young people ask this question, but in the depth of their hearts they have long ago decided that the education which they have received is their great superiority, and that they wish to serve the masses even by their superiority ; and so there is one thing which they certainly will not do, and that is, sincerely, honestly, and critically inspect that which they call their education, and ask themselves whether that which they call education represents good or bad qualities. If they do that, they will inevitably be led to the necessity of renouncing their education, and to the necessity of beginning to study anew, and that is the one necessary thing.

They are absolutely unable to solve the question as to what to do, because it is not put as it ought to be put.

The question ought to stand like this : “ How must I, a helpless, useless man, who, through the misfortune of my conditions, have wasted the best years of study in the acquisition of the scientific Talmud, which corrupts body and soul, correct this error and learn to serve people?” But it stands with them like this : “How can I, a man who has acquired so many fine sciences, be useful to men by means of these fine sciences ? ” And so a man will never answer the question, “ What to do ? ” until he stops lying to himself, and repents. And the repentance is not terrible, just as truth is not terrible, and it is just as joyous and as fruitful. One needs only to accept truth as a whole and repent in full, in order to comprehend that no one has, nor can have, any rights, privileges, and prerogatives in matters of life, and that there is no end and no limit to duties, and that man’s first unquestionable duty is to take part in the struggle with Nature for his own life and for that of other men.

It is this consciousness of man’s duty which constitutes the essence of the third answer to the question, ” What to do ? “

I tried not to lie to myself ; I tried to boil away what there was left of the false opinion as regards my education and talents, and to repent ; but a new difficulty arose on the path of the solution of the question, ” What to do ? ” There were so many things that it was necessary to have pointed out what it is that I ought to do. And the answer to this question was given to me by the sincere repentance of the evil in which I was living. “ What to do ? What indeed is to be done ? ” all ask, and I, too, asked myself so long as I, under the influence of the high opinion of my calling, did not see that it was my foremost and most unquestionable business to feed, clothe, warm myself, and tend on myself, and in the same things to serve others, because ever since the world has existed this has been the first and most unquestionable duty of every man.

In this one affair man receives, if he shares it, a full gratification of the bodily and the spiritual demands of his nature : to feed, clothe, guard oneself and one’s family is a gratification of a bodily demand, and to do the same for other people is a gratification of a spiritual demand.

Every other activity of man is lawful only when this foremost necessity is satisfied.

No matter in what a man may think his calling to lie, whether in governing people, or in defending his compatriots, or in celebrating divine services, or in teaching others, or in inventing means for the increase of the pleasures of life, or in discovering new laws of the universe, or in incarnating eternal truths in artistic forms,— a sensible man will always find his first and most unquestionable duty to lie in his participation in the struggle with Nature, for the purpose of supporting his own life and that of other men. This duty will always be the first, if for no other reason because people need their life most, and so, in order to defend and instruct men and make their lives most agreeable, it is necessary to preserve life itself, whereas my non-participation in the struggle, the absorption of other men’s labours, is a destruction of other men’s lives.

And so it is impossible and irrational to serve the lives of men by destroying them.

The duty of the struggle with Nature for the purpose of obtaining the means of subsistence will always be the first and most unquestionable of all duties, because it is a law of life, a departure from which draws after it an inevitable punishment, — the destruction of either the bodily or the rational life of man. If a man, living alone, frees himself from the duty of the struggle with Nature, he at once inflicts a punishment on himself in that his body perishes. But if a man frees himself from this duty, causing others to fulfil it, while he ruins their lives, he at once inflicts upon himself a punishment by destroying his rational life, that is, the life which has a rational meaning.

I was so corrupted by my past life, and this first and unquestionable law of God, or of Nature, has been so concealed in our society, that the execution of this law seemed strange, terrible, and even shameful to me, as though the execution of an eternal, unquestionable law, and not a departure from it, can be strange, terrible, and shameful. At first it appeared to me that for the performance of this matter there was needed some kind of an appliance, arrangement, cooperation of those who share my view, consent of family, life in the country ; then it appeared rather awkward for me to speak openly to people and to do such an extraordinary thing in our manner of life as manual labour, and I did not know how to go about it.

But I needed only to comprehend that it was not some exclusive activity, such as had to be thought out and arranged, but only a return from a false state, in which I was, to one that was natural, that it was only a correction of a lie in which I was living, — I needed only to become conscious of this, in order that all these difficulties should be removed.

It was never necessary to arrange, adapt, and await the consent of others, because, no matter in what condition I was, there were always men who fed, clothed, and kept warm not only themselves, but also me, and under all conditions I could do that for myself and for them, if I had enough time and strength for it.

Nor could I experience any false shame in my occupation with a matter which was unaccustomed and surprising to people, because, in not doing it, I experienced no longer any false, but real shame. When I arrived at the consciousness of this and at the practical deduction from it, I was fully rewarded for not having lost my courage in the presence of the deductions of reason and for having gone whither they led me.

When I arrived at this practical deduction, I was startled by the ease and simplicity of the solution of all those questions which before had seemed so difficult and so complicated.

To the question what to do there appeared a most indubitable answer : ” First of all what I myself need, — my samovdr, my stove, my water, my raiment, — everything which I could do myself.”

In reply to the question as to whether this would not seem strange to the people that did that, it appeared that the strangeness lasted only a week, after which time it would have been strange if I had returned to my former conditions.

In reply to the question whether it was necessary to organize this physical labour, by establishing a cooperation in the country on the land, it turned out that this was not necessary, that labour, if it has for its aim not the obtaining of the possibility of being idle and exploiting the labour of others, such as is the labour of those who acquire wealth, but the gratification of needs, naturally draws one from the city to the country, to the land, where this labour is most fruitful and most joyous.

There was no need of establishing any cooperative society, because a labouring man naturally joins the existing cooperation of working people.

To the question as to whether this labour would not absorb all my time and deprive me of the possibility of that mental activity which I love, to which I am used, and which, in moments of doubt, I consider not useless, I received a most unexpected answer. The energy of the mental activity was strengthened and evenly strengthened, freeing itself from everything superfluous, in proportion of the bodily tension.

It turned out that, by giving eight hours to physical labour, — that half of the day which before I had passed in grievous efforts at struggling with ennui, — I had still eight hours left, of which I, according to the conditions, needed only five for mental labour ; it turned out that if I, a very prolific writer, who for nearly forty years had done nothing but write, and who had written three hundred printed sheets [of sixteen pages each], had all these forty years done manual labour with all the working people, and had read and studied for five, hours each day, excluding winter evenings and holidays, and had written only on holidays at the rate of two pages a day (whereas I had written as much as a printed sheet a day), I should have written the same three hundred sheets in fourteen years.

What turned out was most astonishing, — it was a very simple calculation, which a boy of seven years may do, and which I had heretofore been unable to do. In a day there are twenty-four hours ; we sleep eight, so there are sixteen left. If a man of any mental activity should devote five hours each day to his activity, he would do

an enormous amount, so what becomes of the remaining eleven hours ?

It turned out that physical labour not only does not exclude the possibility of a mental activity, not only improves its quality, but improves the activity itself and encourages it.

As to the question whether this physical labour would not deprive me of many harmless pleasures which are proper to man, such as the enjoyments of the arts, the acquisition of knowledge, the communion with men, and in general the happiness of life, the very opposite turned out to be the case : the tenser the work was, the more it approached what is considered rough agricultural labour, the more enjoyments and knowledge did I acquire, and the closer and more amicable was my communion with men, and the more happiness of life did I obtain.

To the question (so frequently heard by me from not very sincere people) as to what result there may be from such an insignificant drop in the ocean, — the participation of my personal physical labour in the ocean of labour absorbed by me, — the same astonishing and unexpected answer was received.

It turned out that I needed only to make physical labour a habitual condition of my life, in order that the majority of my false and expensive habits and needs during my physical idleness should without the least effort on my part naturally fall away from me. To say nothing of my habit of changing day into night and vice versa, and not to mention the bed, the garments, the conventional cleanliness, which with the physical labour are simply impossible and embarrassing, the food, the need of the quality of the food, was completely changed. Instead of sweet, fat, refined, complicated, seasoned food, for which I had had a hankering before, I began to feel the need of the simplest kind of food, which I enjoyed most, such as cabbage soup, porridge, black bread, unsweetened tea.

Thus, not to speak of the simple example of those labouring men with whom I came into contact and who were contented with little, the needs themselves imperceptibly changed in consequence of the life of labour, so that my drop of physical labour, in proportion as I became accustomed to it and acquired the methods of work, became more perceptible ; in proportion as my labour became more fruitful, my demands of other people’s labour became less and less, and life naturally, without effort and without privations, approached that simple life of which I could not even have dreamed without fulfilling the law of labour. It turned out that my most expensive demands on life, namely, the demands of vanity and of diversion from ennui, were directly due to an idle life.

With physical labour there was no room for vanity, and there was no need of diversions, since my time was pleasantly occupied, and, after fatigue, a simple rest at the tea, over a book, in a conversation with my family, was incomparably more agreeable to me than the theatre, cards, a concert, grand society, — all of them things that cost a great deal.

As to the question whether this unaccustomed work would not destroy the health which is necessary in order to be able to serve men, it turned out that, in spite of the positive assertions of famous physicians that tense physical labour, especially in my years, may have deleterious results (in what way do they give us something better in Swedish gymnastics, massage, and so forth, — appliances which are to take the place of the natural conditions of man’s life ?), it turned out that the tenser the labour, the stronger, fresher, happier, and better did I feel myself. So it turned out to be indisputable that, just as all these cunning devices of the human mind, newspapers, theatres, concerts, visits, balls, cards, periodicals, novels, are nothing but a means for supporting man’s spiritual life outside its natural conditions of labour for others, so also all the hygienic and medical devices of the human mind for the appliances for food, drink, domicile, ventilation, heating, clothing, medicines, water, massage, gymnastics, electrical and all other kinds of cures, — that all these clever devices were nothing but means for supporting man’s bodily life which is exempted from all its natural conditions of labour, — that all this was nothing but an arrangement in a hermetically closed room, by means of chemical apparatus, for evaporating water, and supplying the plants with the best air for breathing, whereas it is enough to open a window and do that which is proper not only for man, but also for the animal, — to let out and discharge the absorption of food and surplus of energy by means of muscular labour.

The profound propositions of medicine and of hygiene for men of our circle are like what a mechanician might invent in order, by firing a badly working engine and stopping up all the valves, to keep the engine from bursting.

When I clearly comprehended all this, I felt funny. By a whole series of doubts and searchings and by a long train of thought I had arrived at the extraordinary truth that, if a man has eyes, he has them in order to look with them, and ears to hear, and legs to walk, and hands and a back to work with them, and that if a man shall not employ these members for what they were intended, he will fare badly.

I came to the conclusion that with us privileged people the same happened as with the stallions of my acquaintance. The clerk, who did not care for horses and did not know anything about them, having received his master’s order to take the best stallions to the horse mart, picked them out of the herd and put them into stalls; and he fed them and gave them to drink ; but, as he was anxious about the expensive horses, he could not make up his mind to leave them in anybody else’s charge, and so did not drive them or even let them out. The horses became stiff-jointed and worthless.

The same has happened with us, but with this difference, that it is impossible in any way to deceive the horses and that, not to let them out, they were kept in one spot by means of a halter, whereas we are kept in just such an unnatural and ruinous condition by means of temptations which have enmeshed us and hold us as if with chains. We have arranged our life contrary to the moral and the physical nature of man, and we strain all the forces of our mind in order to assure man that this is the true life. Everything which we call culture, our sciences and our arts, the improvements of the comforts of life, are attempts to deceive man’s moral, natural needs. Everything which we call hygiene and medicine is an attempt to deceive the natural physical demands of human nature. But these deceptions have their limits, and we have reached them.

If such is man’s real life, it is better not to live at all, says the reigning, most modern philosophy of Schopenhauer and of Hartmann. If such is life, it is better not to live, says the increasing number of suicides among the privileged classes. If such is life, it is better for the future generations not to live, says medicine, in collusion with science, and the devices invented by it for the destruction of female fertility.

In the Bible it says that, as man’s law, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread and in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.

Peasant Bondarév, who has written an article on this subject, has enlightened me as to the wisdom of this utterance. (In my whole life two Russian thinkers have had a great moral effect upon me and have made my world conception clear to me. These men are not Russian poets, scholars, preachers, but two even now living remarkable men, both of them peasants, Syutaev and Bondarév.)

But — nous avons changé tout ça, as the character in Molière said when he ranted about medicine and asserted that the liver was on the left side. Nous avons changé tout ça : men do not need to work in order to support themselves, — all that will be done by machines, — and women need not bear children. Science will teach us other means, and there are too many people as it is.

A tattered peasant makes the round of Krapivensk County. During the war he was a purchaser of grain with an official of the commissary department. While cultivating the acquaintance of the official, the peasant, as they say, lost his mind, his fixed idea being that, like any gentleman, he does not need to work, but can receive the maintenance due to him from his Majesty the emperor. This peasant now calls himself Ids Most Serene Military Prince Blokhin, purveyor of military stores of all conditions. He says of himself that he has gone through all the ranks and that, after becoming an emeritus military man, he would receive from his Majesty the emperor an open bank, garments, uniforms, horses, carriages, tea, peas, servants, and every other supply.

To the question whether he does not want to work a little, he always replies proudly: ” Much obliged, — all that will be attended to by the peasants.”

When you tell him that the peasants, too, will not wish to work, he answers : “ For the peasants this is not difficult in the performance.” (He generally speaks in high style and is fond of verbal nouns.)

” Now there is an invention of machines for the alleviation of the peasants,” he says. ” For them there is no embarrassment.”

When be is asked what he lives for, he replies : ” For the passing of the time.”

I always look at this man as into a mirror. I see myself and all our class of people in him. To end with a rank, in order to live for the passing of the time and receive an open bank, while the peasants’ for whom it is no embarrassment on account of the invention of machines, manage all these matters, — this is a complete formulation of the senseless faith of the people of our circle.

When we ask what it is we have to do, we do not ask anything, but only affirm, only not with such openness as the Most Serene Military Prince Blokhin, who has gone through all the ranks and has lost his reason, that we do not want to do anything.

He who comes to his senses cannot ask this, because on the one hand everything he uses has been made by men’s hands, and, on the other, the moment a healthy man wakes up and eats his breakfast, he has the need to work with his legs, and hands, and brain. In order to find work and to work, he must only not hold himself back ; only he who considers it a disgrace to work, like the lady who begs her guest not to trouble herself to open the door, but to wait until she calls a servant, — only he can put to himself the question what he is to do.

The question is not to invent some work to do, — a man will never succeed in doing all the work for himself and for others, — but to get rid of that criminal view of life that I eat and sleep for my pleasure, and to acquire that simple and true view, with which a labouring man grows up and lives, that a man is above everything else a machine which is charged by food, and that, therefore, to support himself, it is a shame, and hard, and impossible for him to eat and not to work; that to eat and not to work is an exceedingly perilous condition, something like a conflagration.

Let this consciousness exist, and there will be work, and the work will always be joyous and it will satisfy the spiritual and the physical demands. The matter presented itself to me as follows: the day of every man is by his meals themselves divided into four parts, or four ploughing periods, as the peasants say: (1) before breakfast, (2) from breakfast until dinner, (3) from dinner until supper, and (4) from supper until evening. Man’s activity, which draws him to itself, is divided into four kinds: (1) the activity of the muscular force, — the work of hands, feet, shoulder, — hard labour which makes one sweat; (2) the activity of the fingers and the wrist, — the activity of dexterity of workmanship ; (3) the activity of the mind and of the imagination; (4) the activity of communion with other men. Those benefits which man enjoys may also be divided into four parts. Every man makes use, in the first place, of the products of hard labour, — of the grain, cattle, buildings, wells, ponds, etc. ; in the second place, of the activity of artisan labour, — of garments, boots, utensils, etc. ; in the third place, of the products of mental activity, — of the sciences, of the arts, and, in the fourth place, of the institution of the communion with men, — of acquaintanceship, etc. And it appeared to me that it would be best so to rotate the occupations of the day as to bring into play all four human faculties, and to repeat all four kinds of products, of which one makes use, in such a way that the four ploughing periods may be devoted : the first — to hard labour, the second — to mental labour, the third — to artisan labour, and the fourth — to communion with men. It is well if one can arrange his labour in such a manner, but if that is impossible, one thing is important, and that is, to have the consciousness of a duty toward labour, a duty properly to employ every period.

It seemed to me that only then would there be destroyed that false division of labour which exists in our society, and would be established that just division of labour which does not impair man’s happiness.

For example, I had busied myself all my life with mental labour. I said to myself that I had so divided the labour that writing, that is, mental labour, was my special occupation, and all the other necessary occupations I left to others (or compelled others) to do. This apparently most convenient arrangement for mental labour, to say nothing of its injustice, was after all disadvantageous for mental labour.

My whole life, my food, my sleep, my distractions, I had arranged in view of these hours of special labour, and outside this labour I had done nothing. From this it followed, in the first place, that I had narrowed down my circle of observation and knowledge and frequently had no subject for study, and, having set myself the problem to describe the lives of men (the lives of men are the perpetual problem of every mental activity), I frequently felt my ignorance and was obliged to study and to ask about things which are known to every man who is not occupied with any special labour ; in the second place, it turned out that I sat down to write when I had no inner calling to write, and no one demanded of me my writing as a writing, that is, my thoughts, but only wanted my name for magazine purposes. I tried to squeeze out of me whatever I could: at times I did not squeeze out anything, and at others something bad, and I experienced dissatisfaction and pining. Thus frequently passed days and weeks when I ate, drank, slept, warmed myself, and did nothing, or did that which no one needed, that is, I committed the most unquestionable and most abominable crime, which is so rarely, hardly ever, committed by a man from the labouring masses. Now, when I came to recognize the necessity of physical, coarse, and artisan labour, something entirely different resulted from it : my time was occupied, no matter how modestly, yet beyond doubt usefully, and joyfully, and instructively for me. For this reason I tore myself away for my specialty from this unquestionably useful and joyous occupation only when I felt an inner need and saw directly expressed demands for my author labour ; and these demands conditioned a good quality, and so a usefulness and joyousness for my special labour.

Thus it turned out that my occupation with those physical labours which are indispensable for me, as for any other man, not only did not interfere with my special activity, but were also a necessary condition of usefulness, good quality, and joyousness of this activity.

A bird is so built that it must fly, walk, pick, reflect, and when it does all that, it is satisfied and happy, — then, to be more brief, it is a bird. The same is true of a man : only when he walks, turns, lifts, drags, works with his fingers, eyes, ears, tongue, brain, he is satisfied, he is a man.

A man who has come to recognize his labour calling will naturally strive for that change of labour which is proper for him for the satisfaction of his external and his internal needs, and will never change this order except when he feels in himself an insuperable calling for some exclusive work and there will present themselves other people’s demands for this labour.

The quality of labour is such that the gratification of all of man’s needs wants the same rotation of all kinds of labour, which makes work not a burden, but a joy. Only the false belief that work is a curse could have brought men to that emancipation from certain kinds of labour, that is, to the seizure of other men’s labour, which demands a forced occupation with a special labour of other men, which they call division of labour.

We have become so accustomed to our false conception about the arrangement of labour that it seems to us that it will be better for a shoemaker, a machinist, a writer, or a musician, if he shall exempt himself from labour which is proper for even’ man.

Where there will be no violence exerted against another man’s labour, and no false faith in the joyousness of idleness, not one man will, in order to busy himself with any special labour, free liiniself from physical work, which is necessary for the gratification of his needs, because the special occupation is no prerogative, but a sacrifice which a man brings to his infatuation and to his brothers.

A shoemaker in the country, who tears himself away from the joyful field labour and takes up his work in order to mend or make boots for bis neighbours, deprives himself of the ever joyful and useful labour in the field for others, only because he is fond of making boots and knows that no one can do this as well as he, and that people will be thankful to him for it. But he cannot even dream of a desire to deprive himself for life of the joyful rotation of labour. The same is true of an elder, a machinist, a writer, a scholar. To us, with our corrupted conceptions, it seems that if a master degrades his clerk by sending him back to the country, or if a minister is sent to an exile colony, that he has been punished, that some evil has been done to him. In reality, a benefit has been conferred to him, that is, his special, oppressive labour has been abandoned in favour of the joyful rotation of labour.

In natural society all this is quite different. I know a Commune where the people supported themselves. One member of this society was more educated than the rest, and he was required to read, so that he had to prepare himself in daytime, to be able to read in the evening. He did so joyfully, feeling that he was useful to others and was doing a good deed. But he was worn out by the exclusively mental labour, and his health grew worse. The members of the Commune pitied him and asked him to go to work with them in the field.

For people who look upon labour as the essence and joy of life, the background, the foundation of life will always be the struggle with nature, namely, agricultural, mechanical, and mental labour, and the establishment of communion among men.

The departure from one or many of these kinds of labour and the special work will exist only when the man of the special work, loving this work and knowing that he is doing it better than any one else, sacrifices his advantage for the gratification of demands directly made on him. Only with such a view of labour and of the resulting natural division of labour there is destroyed the curse which in our imagination is imposed upon labour, and every labour always becomes a joy, because a man will do an unquestionably useful and joyous, un oppressive work, or he will have the consciousness of sacrifice in the performance of a more difficult, exclusive work, but which is such as he does for the good of others.

But the division of labour is more advantageous. More advantageous for whom ?

It is more advantageous to make as many boots and cottons as possible. But who will make these boots and cottons ?

There are men who for generations have been making nothing but pin-heads. How can this be more advantageous for people ?

If the question is to make as many cottons and pins as possible, that is so ; but the question is in the people, in their good. Now the good of men is in life, and life is in work. How, then, can the necessity of an agonizing, oppressive work be more advantageous for men ?

If the question is only the advantage for some people without considering the good of all men, it is most advantageous for one set of men to eat others. They say that human flesh tastes good. What is most advantageous for all men — the one thing which 1 wish for myself — is the greatest good and the gratification of all needs, of body and soul, of conscience, of reason, which are implanted in me. Now I found in my case that for my good and for the gratification of these needs of mine I need only cure myself from that madness in which I had lived with that Krapivensk madman, and which consisted in this : that gentlemen are not supposed to work, and that others must attend to that and, without inventing anything, do only what is proper to man, while gratifying his needs. When I found this, I convinced myself that this labour for the gratification of one’s needs naturally divided itself into different kinds of labour, each of which has its charm and not only forms no burden, but also serves as a rest from another kind of labour.

In a coarse way (by no means insisting on the correctness of such a division) I divided this labour according to those demands which I make on life into four parts, to correspond to the four periods of work of which the day is composed, and I try to satisfy these demands.

So these are the answers which I found for myself in reply to the question what we shall do.

The first : not to lie to myself ; no matter how distant my path of life may be from that true path which reason opens to me, not to be afraid of the truth.

The second : to renounce the consciousness of my righteousness, my prerogatives, my privileges in comparison with other men, and to recognize myself guilty.

The third: to fulfil that eternal, indisputable law of man, — with the labour of my whole being to struggle with Nature for the purpose of supporting my own life and that of other men.

XXXIX.

I have finished, for I have said everything which concerned me, but I cannot refrain from the desire to tell also that which concerns everybody : to verify those deductions at which I have arrived by general considerations.

What I wish to talk about is why it seems to me that very many people of our circle must arrive at the same thing at which I have arrived, and also what will happen if even a few people will arrive at the same.

I think that many people will arrive at the same conclusions at which I have arrived, because if men of our circle, of our caste, will take a serious look at themselves, young people, who are in search of their personal happiness, will be terrified at the ever increasing inanity of their life, which clearly draws them to their perdition ; conscientious people will be terrified at the cruelty and the illegality of their life ; and timid people will be terrified at the perilousness of their life.

The misfortune of our life : no matter how much we, the rich, with the aid of science and of art, mend and support this our false life, this life with every year becomes weaker, and more morbid, and more painful ; with every year there is an increase in the number of suicides and in the refraining from childbirth ; with every year the new generations of men of this class become weaker and weaker ; with every year we feel the increasing gloom of this life.

It is obvious that on this road of the increase of the comforts and pleasures of life, of cures and artificial teeth, hair, breathing, massages, and so forth, there can be no salvation ; this truth has become such a truism that in the newspapers they print advertisements about stomachic powders for the rich under the title, “ Blessings for the poor,” where it says that only the poor have a good digestion, but that the rich need assistance, and with it these powders.

This cannot be mended by any amusements, comforts, powders, — this can be corrected only by a change of life.

The disagreement of our life with our conscience : no matter how much we may try to justify to ourselves our unfaithfulness to humanity, all our justifications scatter to the winds before that which is obvious : around us people die from work above their strength and from want ; we ruin the food, the garments, the labour of men, in order to find diversion and change. And so the conscience of a man of our circle, if there is but a small residue of it left in him, cannot fall asleep, and it poisons all those comforts and pleasures of life which are furnished to us by our suffering brothers who perish in labour.

Not only does every conscientious man feel this, he would be glad to forget it, but he cannot do so in our time, — the whole better part of science and of art, the one in which the meaning of its calling is left, reminds us constantly of our cruelty and of our illegal situation. The old, firm justifications are all destroyed ; the new, ephemeral justifications of progress of science for science’ sake, and of art for art’s sake, do not bear the light of simple common sense.

The conscience of men cannot be put at rest with new inventions, but only with a change of life, with which there will be no need and no cause for any justification.

The iwrilousness of our life : no matter how we try to conceal from ourselves the simple, most obvious danger of the exhaustion of the patience of those men whom we choke ; no matter how much we try to counteract this danger by all kinds of deceptions, acts of violence, and propitiations, this danger is growing with every day and with every hour, and has been threatening us for a long time, and even now it has matured so much that we with difliculty hold ourselves in our boat over the agitated sea, which is about to swamp us and angrily to swallow and devour us. The labouring revolution, with the terrors of destructions and murders, has not only been threatening us, but we have been living on it for thirty years, and so far we have with all kinds of cunning devices managed for a time to postpone its eruption. Such is the state of Europe; such is the state with us, and it is even worse with us, because it has no safety-valves. The classes which oppress the masses, except the Tsar, now have no justification in the eyes of the masses ; they all hold themselves in their position by nothing but violence, cunning, and opportunism, that is, by agility, but the hatred in the best representatives of the masses and the contempt for us among the best are growing with every hour.

Among our masses there has in the last three or four years come into general use a new, significant word ; this word, which I had never heard before, they now use opprobriously in the streets and define us as ” drones.”

The hatred and contempt of the oppressed masses are growing, and the physical and moral forces of the wealthy classes are weakening ; the deception, by means of which everything is holding itself, is being worn out, and the wealthy classes can no longer console themselves by anything in this mortal peril.

It is impossible to return to the old conditions ; it is impossible to renew the destroyed prestige : there is but one thing left to do for those who do not wish to change their lives, and that is, to hope that things will suffice for their life, and afterward let it be as it may.

Even so does the blind crowd of the wealthy classes do ; but the peril is growing all the time, and the terrible catastrophe is coming nearer.

Three causes show to the men of the wealthy classes the necessity for a change of their life : the need for a personal good for themselves and for their nearest friends, which is not satisfied on the path on which the rich are standing ; the necessity of satisfying the voice of conscience, the impossibility of which is obvious on the present path, and the menacing and ever growing danger of life, which is not removed by any external means ; all three causes taken together must lead the men of the wealthy classes to a change of their lives, to a change which would satisfy their good and also their consciences, and would remove the danger.

There is but one such a change : to stop cheating, to repent, and to recognize labour not as a curse, but as a joyous affair of life.

But what of it that I shall work ten, eight, or five hours at physical labour, which thousands of peasants will gladly do for the money which I have, I am asked.

The first thing and the simplest and most indubitable thing will be this, that you will be merrier, healthier, more cheerful, and better, and you will know what the real life is, from which you have been hiding yourself, or which has been concealed from you.

The second thing will be this, that if you have a conscience, it will not only not suffer, as it does now, looking at the work of men (the meaning of which we, who do not know it, always magnify or minimize), but you will all the time experience a joyous consciousness of the fact that with every day you more and more satisfy the demand of your conscience and get away from that terrible position of such an accumulation of evil in our life that there is no possibility of doing any good to people ; you will feel a joy at living freely with the possibility of the good ; you will knock a window, an opening of light, into the sphere of the moral world, which was hidden from you. What will happen will be this: instead of the eternal fear of retribution for your evil you will feel that you are saving others from this retribution, and, above all, that you are saving the oppressed from the grievous sensation of malice and of revenge.

” But it is ridiculous,” they say, ” for the men of our society, with the profound questions before us, — philosophical, scientific, political, artistic, ecclesiastical, social questions, — for us ministers, senators, academicians, professors, artists, singers, for us, one-fourth of whose time is so highly appreciated by men, to waste our time, — on what ? — on cleaning our boots, washing our shirts, digging, setting out potatoes, or feeding our chickens and our cows, and so forth, — on those things which are gladly done for us, not only by our janitor and our cook, but also by thousands of men who highly value our time.”

But why do we dress, wash, scratch ourselves (excuse the details), why do we hold our vessel, why do we walk ourselves, hand a chair to a lady and to guests, open and close doors, help people into a carriage, and do hundreds of similar things, which formerly slaves used to do for us ?

Because we consider this proper, because so demands human dignity, that is man’s duty, man’s obligation.

The same is true of physical labour.

Man’s dignity, his sacred duty and obligation, is to make use of the hands and feet given him for the purpose for which they are given to him, and to use the devoured food for work which is productive of this food, and not to let them become atrophied, not wash and clean them and use them only for the purpose of shoving food, drink, and cigarettes into the mouth.

Such is the significance which the occupation with physical labour has for each man in any society ; but in our society, where the deviation from this law of Nature has become the misfortune of the whole circle of men, the occupation with physical labour receives also another significance, — that of a sermon and of an activity which removes the terrible calamities which threaten humanity. To say that for a cultured man the occupation with physical labour is insignificant is the same as saying in the building of a temple : ” What importance can there be in placing one stone evenly in its place?”

Every great work is, indeed, done under conditions of imperceptibility, modesty, simplicity : it is impossible to plough, to build, to graze cattle, or even to think under an illumination, under roar of cannon, and in uniforms. The illumination, the roar of cannon, music, uniforms, cleanliness, splendour, with which we are accustomed to combine the idea of the importance of an occupation, on the contrary, always serve as signs that the matter is lacking importance.

Great, true acts are always simple and modest.

And such is the very great work which is before us, — the solution of those terrible contradictions in which we live.

The acts which solve these contradictions are these modest, imperceptible, apparently ridiculous acts : ministering to ourselves, physical labour for ourselves and, if possible, for others. They are incumbent on us, the rich, if we comprehend the misfortune, unscrupulousness, and danger of the situation, into which we have fallen.

What will come of it if I and two or three dozen men will not disdain work and will consider it necessary for our happiness, peace of mind, and security ? What will happen will be this: A dozen, two, three dozen men will, without coming into conflict with any one, without any governmental or revolutionary violence, solve for themselves the apparently insoluble question which is standing before the whole world, and will solve it in such a way that they will live better, that their consciences will become calmer, and that the evil of oppression will no longer be terrible to them ; other people will see that the good, for which they are searching everywhere, is here close to them, that the apparently insoluble contradictions of conscience and of the structure of the universe are solved in the easiest and most joyous manner possible, and that, instead of being afraid of men who surround them, it is necessary to come nearer to them and love them.

The apparently insoluble economic and social question is the question of Krylov’s box: it opens in a simple manner.

But it will not open itself so long as people will not simply do the first and most simple thing, — so long as they do not open it.

The apparently insoluble question is the ancient question of the exploitation of other people’s labour ; this question has in our day found its expression in property.

In our day property is the root of every evil, — of the sufferings of men who have it or who are deprived of it, and of bites of conscience of those who misuse it, and of the danger of conflicts between those who have an abundance of it and those who are deprived of it. Property is the root of evil, and at the same time it is that toward which all the activity of modern society is directed, that which guides the activity of our whole world.

Governments and states intrigue and fight for the possession of the banks of the Rhine, of land in Africa, in China, on the Balkan peninsula. Bankers, merchants, manufacturers, agriculturists, labour, devise, suffer, and cause others to suffer for the sake of possessions ; officials, artisans, struggle, deceive, oppress, suffer for the sake of possessions ; courts, the police, guard property ; hard labour, prisons, — all the terrors of so-called punishments, — are all on account of property.

Property is the root of all evil ; and the whole world is busy dividing and protecting property.

What, then, is property ?

People are accustomed to think that ownership is something which actually belongs to man. This is the reason why they have called it ownership. We say of a house and of a hand alike : “ My own hand,” and ” My own house.”

But this is obviously a delusion and a superstition.

We know, and if we do not know, we can easily see, that ownership is only a means for using the labour of others ; but the labour of others can in no way be my own. It even has nothing in common with the concept of ownership, which is very exact and precise. A man has always called, and always will call, his own what is subject to his will and is connected with his consciousness,— his body. The moment a man calls that his own which is not his body, but which he wishes should be subjected to his will, like his body, he makes a mistake and lays up disappointments and sufferings for himself and subjects himself to the necessity of making others suffer.

A man calls his wife, his children, his slaves, his chattels his property, but reality always shows him his mistake, and he is obliged to renounce this superstition or to suffer and cause others to suffer.

At the present time we, nominally rejecting the ownership of men, thanks to the money and the exaction of the money by the government, proclaim our property rights to money, that is, to the labour of others.

But as the property right to one’s wife, son, slave, or horse is a fiction, which is destroyed by reality and only causes him to suffer who believes in it, because my wife, my son, will never submit to my will, like my body, and my true property will still be in my body, so also the ownership of money will never be an ownership, but only a selfdeception and source of sufferings, while my property will still consist in my body, in that which always submits to my will and is connected with my consciousness.

It is only to us, who have become accustomed to call that which is not our body our property, that it can appear that such a wild superstition may be useful to us and remain without any harmful consequences to us ; but we need only reflect on the essence of the matter in order to see that this superstition, like any other, brings with it the most terrible consequences.

Let us take the simplest example.

I consider myself my own property and another man my property.

I must know how to prepare a dinner. If I did not have the superstition about the ownership of another man, I should have taught this art, like any other I may need, to my property, that is to my body ; but instead I teach it to my imaginary property, and the result is this, that my cook does not obey me, does not wish to please me, and even runs away from me, or dies, and I am left with the ungratifled, excited necessity of gratifying myself and with the lost habit of studying, and with the consciousness that I have lost as much time in my worries with this cook as would suflice for me to have learned the art myself. The same is true of the ownership of buildings, garments, utensils, land, and money. Every imaginary property evokes in me non-corresponding, not always gratifiable, needs, and deprives me of the possibility of acquiring for my true and unquestionable property, for my body, that knowledge, that skill, those habits, those perfections, which I could have acquired.

The result is always this, that I have vainly lost my strength for myself, for my true property, and sometimes even my life without a residue for what never has been, and never could be, my property.

I provide myself with what I imagine to be my own library, my own picture-gallery, my own apartments, my own garments, obtain my own money with which to buy what I need, and the end of it is that, while busying myself with this imaginary property as though it were real, I completely lose the consciousness of the distinction between that which is my real property, over which I actually can work, which can serve me, and which will always remain in my power, and that which is not, and cannot be, my property, no matter how I may call it, and which cannot be the subject of my activity.

Words have always a clear meaning so long as we do not intentionally give them a false significance.

What does property mean ? It means that which is given and belongs to me exclusively, that which I can always employ in any manner I may wish, which no one can ever take away from me, which remains mine to the end of my life, and that which I must use, increase, improve.

Such a subject of ownership for each man is only he himself.

And yet it is in this very sense that the imaginary ownership of men is taken, the one in the name of which (to do the impossible, — to make this imaginary property real) all the terrible evil in the world takes place, — the wars and executions, and courts, and prisons, and luxury, and debauch, and murder, and the ruin of men.

What, then, will happen if a dozen men will plough, chop wood, make boots, not from necessity, but from the consciousness that a man must work and that the more he works the better it will be for him ? What will happen will be this, that a dozen men, or even one man, will, both in cognition and in fact, show men that that terrible evil from which they suffer is not a law of fate, the will of God, or some historical necessity, but a superstition, which, far from being strong and terrible, is weak and insignifi-Η Ι1Δ1 OIIÆLiLj Γ; 1 ΙΙΙΛλΊ

cant, and which one must stop believing in, as in idols, in order to be freed from it and to destroy it, like a frail cobweb.

Men who will begin to work in order to fulfil the joyous law of life, that is, who labour for the fulfilment of the law of work, will free themselves from the superstition of personal ownership, which is pregnant with calamities ; and all the institutions of the world, which exist for the support of this putative property outside of one’s body, will appear to them not only useless, but even embarrassing ; and it will become clear to all that all these institutions are not indispensable, but injurious, imaginary, and false conditions of life.

For a man who regards labour not as a curse, but as a joy, the property outside of his body, that is, the right or the possibility of using the labour of others, will be not only useless, but even embarrassing.

If I am fond and in the habit of preparing my own dinner, the fact that another man will do this for me will deprive me of my customary occupation and will not satisfy me so much as I used to satisfy myself ; besides, the acquisition of imaginary property will be useless for such a man : a man who regards labour as life itself fills his life with it, and so is less and less in the need of the labour of others, that is, in property for the occupation of his idle time, for the pleasures and adornment of his life.

If a man’s life is filled with labour, he needs no rooms, no furniture, no varied beautiful garments ; he needs less of expensive food, no means for transportation, no distractions.

But above all else, a man who regards work as the business and joy of his life will not seek any alleviation of his labour which can be given to him through the work of others.

A man who regards life as work will have for his o

aim, in proportion as he acquires skill, agility, and endurance, more and more work, which fills his life more and more.

For such a man, who assumes the meaning of his life to lie in labour, and not in its results, not in the acquisition of property, that is, in the labour of others, there cannot even be any question about instruments of labour.

Though such a man will always choose the most productive instruments of labour, he will get the same satisfaction from work even if he works with the least productive tools.

If there is a steam plough, he will plough with it ; if there is none, he will plough with a horse plough ; and if he has not that, he will use a wooden plough ; and if not that, he will dig with a spade, and under all conditions will he equally attain his aim, which is to pass his life in work useful to men, and so he will derive from it his full satisfaction.

The condition of such a man, both from external and internal conditions, will be happier than his who puts his life in the acquisition of property..

From external conditions such a man will never be in want, because men, seeing his desire to work, as in the water-power to which a mill is attached, will always try to make his labour most productive, and, to have it as productive as possible, they will make his material existence secure, which they do not do for men who strive after possessions. But the security of material conditions is all a man needs.

From internal conditions such a man will always be happier than he who seeks possessions, because the latter will never obtain what he is striving after, while the first will always get it in accordance with his strength : the feeble, the old, the dying, as the proverb says, with a crowbar in their hands, will receive full satisfaction and the love and sympathy of men.

So that is what will happen if a few crazy, odd people will plough, make boots, and so forth, instead of smoking cigarettes, playing vint, and travelling everywhere, taking with them their ennui during the ten hours of the day which every mental worker has free !

What will happen will be this, that these crazy people will show in fact that the imaginary property, which is the cause of suffering and making others suffer, is unnecessary for happiness and embarrassing, and that it is only a superstition, — that ownership, true ownership, is vested only in one’s head, hands, and feet, and that, in order actually to exploit tins property to good advantage and with joy, it is necessary to reject the false conception of property outside of one’s body, on which we waste the best forces of our life. What will happen will be this, that these men will show that only when man stops believing in the imaginary property he properly works his real property, his ability, his body, so that they will give him returns a hundredfold and happiness of which we have no conception, and he will be such a useful, strong, and good man that, no matter where he may be thrown, he will always alight on his feet, will everywhere always be a brother to all, and will be known and needed and dear to all. And people, looking at one, at a dozen such crazy men, will comprehend what they must all do in order to untie that terrible knot into which they have been drawn by the superstition of ownership, in order to free themselves from the unfortunate position from which they all groan in one voice, not knowing a way out from it.

But what will one man do in a crowd which docs not agree with him ?

There is no reflection which more obviously shows the unrighteousness of those who employ it.

The tow-men tow a boat against the stream. Is it possible there will be found such a stupid tow-man who will refuse to do his pulling, because he is not able by himself to tow the boat up the river ?

He who in addition to his rights of an animal life, such as to eat and to sleep, recognizes any human duty, knows full well wherein this duty consists, as well as the towman knows, who shoulders the tow-rope. The tow-man knows very well that all he has to do is to pull the rope and walk in a well-trod direction. He will be looking for something to do and how to do it, only when he has thrown off his rope. And what is true of the tow-men and of all other men who do a common work is also true of the work of all humanity ; each man must not take off the tow-rope, but must pull at it in the direction indicated by the master and opposite to the current. For this the same intellect has been given to men that the direction might be always one and the same.

This direction is given so obviously, so indubitably, in the whole life of all men about us, and in the conscience of every individual man, and in the whole expression of men’s wisdom, that only he who does not want to work can say that he does not see it.

So what will come of it ?

This, that one or two men will pull ; looking at them, a third man will join them, and so the best men will join them until the matter will advance and go as though pushing and inviting those who do not understand what is being done and for what purpose.

The men who consciously work for the fulfilment of the law of God will at first be joined by men who semi-consciously, taking things half on faith, recognize the same thing; then they will be joined by a large number of men who recognize the same through their faith in the representative men, and, finally, the majority of men will recognize the same, and then all men will stop ruining themselves and will find happiness. That will be (and it will be very soon) when the men of our circle, and after them the vast majority of the labourers, will not consider it a shame to clean privies, and yet not a shame to fill them and let people, their brothers, clean them ; a shame to call on people in their personal boots, and yet not a shame to pass in galoshes by men who have no footgear ; a shame not to know French or the latest news, and not a shame to eat bread and yet not to know how to set it ; a shame not to have a starched shirt and clean dresses, and not a shame to wear clean garments, in order to point out their idleness ; a shame to have dirty hands, and not a shame not to have callous hands.

All that will happen when public opinion will demand it. But public opinion will demand it when in the minds of men will be destroyed the offences which concealed the truth from them. Within my memory great changes have taken place in this sense. And these changes have taken place only because public opinion changed. Within my memory it was considered a shame for rich people not to drive out with four horses and two lackeys, and not to have a lackey or chambermaid to dress and wash them and hold the vessel for them, and so forth ; and now it has suddenly become a shame not to dress oneself and to drive out with lackeys. AU these changes were produced by public opinion.

Can we not clearly see the changes which are being wrought in public opinion ? It was enough for the offence which justified the serf right to be destroyed twenty-five years ago, in order that public opinion should change in regard to what is praiseworthy and what shameful, and for life to become changed. The offence which justifies the power of money over men need be destroyed, and public opinion will change as to what is praiseworthy and what disgraceful, and life will change with it.

But the destruction of the offence of the justification of the money power and change of public opinion in this respect are rapidly taking place. This offence is transparent now, and barely veils the truth. We need but take a close look in order to see clearly that change of public opinion which not only must take place, but which has already taken place, though it is still unconscious and has not been given a name. Let an ever so little educated man of our time reflect on what results from those views of the world which he professes, in order that he may convince himself that that valuation of what is good and what bad, what praiseworthy and what disgraceful, by which he is guided in life from inertia, directly contradicts his whole world conception.

A man of our time need but for a minute, renouncing his life which goes on from inertia, look at it from one side and subject it to the valuation which flows from his whole world conception, in order to become frightened at that determination of his whole life which results from his world conception.

Let us take as an example a young man (in young men the energy of life is stronger and self-consciousness more hazy) from the rich classes, professing any views whatever. Every good young man considers it a shame not to help an old man, a child, a woman ; he considers it a shame in a common affair to subject to danger the life or health of another man, and himself to avoid it. Everybody considers it a shame and monstrous to do what Schuyler tells the Kirgizes do in time of a storm, to send the women, both young and old, out into the storm to hold the corners of the tent, while they themselves remain sitting in the tent and drinking kumys ; everybody considers it a shame to compel a feeble man to work for him; a still greater shame during a danger, on a burning ship for example, for the strongest to push aside the weaker and, leaving them in danger, to be the first to climb into a life-saving boat, and so forth. All this they consider shameful and they will never do that in certain exclusive conditions; but in every-day life just such acts and even much worse acts are hidden from them by the offence, and they continue to do them.

They need but stop and think, in order that they may see and be horrified.

The young man puts on a fresh shirt every day. Who washes it at the river ? A woman, no matter in what position she may be, who is old enough to be the young man’s grandmother or mother, and who often is sick. What does this young man himself call him who, from mere wantonness to change his shirt, which is clean as it is, sends it to be washed by a woman who is old enough to be his mother ?

The young man keeps horses for the sake of foppishness, and they are trained in at the risk of his life by a man who is old enough to be his father or grandfather, while the young man mounts them only when all danger is past. What will this young man call him who, getting himself out of the way, puts another man in a dangerous position and makes use of this risk for his own pleasure ?

But the whole life of the wealthy classes is composed of a series of such acts. Unenduringly hard work of old men, children, and women, and acts performed by others at the peril of their lives, not that we may be able to work, but for our lust, fill our whole life. A fisherman is drowned while catching fish for us ; laundresses catch colds and die ; blacksmiths grow blind ; factory hands get sick and are ruined by the machinery ; woodchoppers are crushed by trees; thatchers fall down from roofs and are killed ; seamstresses become consumptive. All real work is done with the loss and peril of life. It is impossible to conceal and not see this. There is one salvation in this situation, one way out from it, and this is, for a man of our time, in accordance with his own conception of the world, not to call himself a rascal and a coward, who shoulders the labour and the peril of life upon others,— to take from people only what is necessary for life and for himself to bear the real labour with the loss and peril of his life.

The time will soon come, and it is already at hand, when it will be a disgrace and a shame to eat not only a dinner of five courses, served by lackeys, but also one that is not cooked by the hosts themselves ; when it will be a shame to drive fast horses and even in a hack, so long as one has legs ; in week-days to put on garments, shoes, and gloves in which it is impossible to work ; to play on a piano costing twelve hundred roubles, or even fifty roubles, when others, strangers, are working for me ; to feed milk and white bread to the dogs, when there are people who have no bread and no milk ; to burn lamps and candles at which people do not work, to make fires in stoves, in which they do not cook food, when there are people who have no illumination and no fuel. We are inevitably and rapidly marching to such a view. We are already standing on the borderland of this new life, and the establishment of this new view of life is a matter of public opinion. The public opinion which confirms such a view on life is being rapidly worked out.

Women make public opinion, and women are in our time particularly strong.

CHAPTER XL.

As it says in the Bible, man is given the law of labour, and woman the law of childbirth ; although we, according to our science, avons changé toïit ça, the law has remained as unchanged for man and for woman as the liver is in its old place, and a departure from it is as much as ever punished by inevitable death.

The only difference is this, that for man, for all in general, the departure from the law is punished by death in such a near future that it may be called the present, while for woman the departure from the law is punished in a more remote future. The common departure from the law by men destroys men at once ; the departure of all women destroys the men of the next generation, but the departure of some men and women does not destroy the human race, but deprives only those who have departed of man’s rational nature.

Men’s departure from the law began long ago in those classes which could exert violence on others and, spreading all the time, has lasted down to our own time and in our time has reached a point of madness, of an ideal which consists in the departure from the law, an ideal expressed by Prince Bldkhin and shared by Renan and all the cultured world, — that machines will do the work, and men will be enjoying bundles of nerves.

There has hardly existed any women’s departure from the law. It found its expression in prostitution and in the frequent crimes of the killing of the foptus. The women of the circle of wealthy men fulfilled their law, when the men did not fulfil theirs, and so the women became stronger and continue to rule, and must rule, the men who have departed from the law, and, therefore, have lost their reason.

They generally say that woman (the Parisian woman, generally the childless woman) has become so fascinating, by making use of all the means of civilization, that she has by means of this fascination taken possession of man. That is not only untrue, but the very opposite is the fact. It is not the childless woman who has taken possession of the man, but the mother who has fulfilled her law, while man did not fulfil his.

But the woman who becomes artificially childless and fascinates man with her shoulders and looks is not the woman who rules man, but a woman debauched by man, who has descended to the level of the debauched man, a woman who, like him, has departed from the law, and so, like him, loses every meaning of life.

From this mistake results that remarkable stupidity which is called women’s rights.

The formula of these women’s rights is like this : ” Oh, you man,” says the woman, “ have departed from your law of real work, and you want us to bear the brunt of the real work. Yes, if that is so, we shall know how like you to do that semblance of work which you do in banks, ministries, universities, academies, studies, and we want, like you, under the form of the division of labour, to make use of the labour of others and live gratifying our whims only.”

This they say, and they show in fact that they know as well, if not better, than the men how to do this semblance of work.

The so-called woman question arose, and could have arisen only among men who have departed from the law of true work.

We need only to return to it, and this question will not exist.

Having her own, unquestionable, inevitable work, woman can never demand the superfluous, false work of the men of the rich classes. Not one woman of a real workman will demand the right to participate in his labour, whether in the mines or in the field. She could demand a participation in the imaginary labour alone of the men of wealthy classes.

The woman of our circle has been stronger than man, and even now is stronger, not by her fascination, not by her agility to do the same Pharisaical semblance of work as men, but because she has not come out from under the law, because she has, at the peril of her life, with the tension of her uttermost strength, borne that real, true labour from which the man of the wealthy classes has emancipated himself.

But within my memory there began a woman’s departure from the law, that is, her fall, and within my memory it has been growing more and more.

Having lost the law, woman has come to believe that her strength lies in the fascination of her charms, or in the agility of the Pharisaical semblance of mental labour.

Children interfere with either. And so, with the aid of science (science is always prepared for everything abominable), it has happened within my memory that among the wealthy classes there have appeared dozens of means for the destruction of the fœtus, and instruments for the destruction of childbirth have become a usual appurtenance of the toilet ; and so the women-mothers of the wealthy classes, who had held the power in their hands, are letting it out in order not to fall behind the street-walkers and to become like them.

The evil has become widely disseminated, and with every day spreads farther and farther, and soon it will embrace all the women of the wealthy classes, and then they will be equal with the men, and with them will lose the rational meaning of life, and then there will no longer be any return for that class. But there is still time.

However, there are still more women than men who fulfil their law, and so there still are among them rational beings, and so the possibility of salvation is still in the hands of a few women of our circle.

Oh, if these women comprehended their significance and their strength, and used it in the work of saving their husbands, brothers, and children, in saving all men !

Women, mothers, of the wealthy classes ! The salvation of the men of our class from the evils they suffer from is only in your hands ! Not the women who are busy with their waists, bustles, hair-dressing, and fascination for men, and against their will, by oversight, in despair bring forth children and turn them over to wet-nurses, nor those who attend all kinds of lectures and talk of psychomotor centres and differentiation, and also try to free themselves from bearing children, in order not to have any obstacle in their dulling of sensibilities, which they call development, but those in whose hands, more than in those of anybody else, lies the salvation of the men of our class from the calamities which are overwhelming them. You, women and mothers, who consciously submit to the law of God, you alone in our unfortunate, monstrous circle, which has lost the human semblance, know the whole real meaning of life according to God’s will. You alone can by your example show to men that happiness of life in the submission to the will of God, of which they deprive themselves. You alone know those raptures and joys which take hold of your whole being, and that bliss which is predetermined for man who does not depart from the law of God. You know the happiness of love for your husbands, a happiness which does not come to an end, nor break off, like all others, but forms the beginning of a new happiness of love for the babe. You alone know, when you are simple and submissive to the will of God, not that playful, parade work in uniforms and illuminated halls, which the men of your circle call work, but that true work which God has intended for men, and you know the true rewards for it and the bliss which it gives.

You know this, when after the joys of love you with agitation, fear, and hope wait for that agonizing state of pregnancy, which will make you sick for nine months, and will bring you to the brink of death and to intolerable sufferings and pains ; you know the conditions of true labour, when with joy you await the approach and intensification of the most terrible agonies, after which there comes bliss which is known to you alone.

You know this, when immediately after these pains you without rest, without interruption, pass over to another series of labour and of sufferings, to nursing, when you at once reject and submit to your duty, to your feeling, the strongest human necessity, that of sleep (which, according to the proverb, is dearer than father and mother), and for months and years at a time do not sleep through a single night, and frequently stay awake whole nights and with benumbed arms walk about and rock your sick babe, who is tearing your heart asunder.

And when you do all this, unapproved and unseen by any one, expecting no praise and no reward from any one, when you do this not as an ex; doit, but as the servant of the gospel parable who comes back from the field, thinking that you have but done what is right, you know what is the false parade work for people and what the real work for the fulfilment of God’s will, the indications of winch you feel in your heart.

You know that, if you are a real mother, it is not enough that no one has seen your labour and has praised you for it, and all have merely found that that was the way it ought to have been, but that those for whom you have laboured will not only fail to thank you, but also frequently torment and reproach you, — and with the next baby you do the same again : again you suffer, again you endure the unseen, terrible labour, and again you do not await any reward from any one, and feel the same satisfaction.

In your hands, if you are such a woman, must be the power over men, and in your hands is salvation. With every day your number is diminishing: some are busy fascinating men and becoming street-walkers ; others are busy competing with men in their false, trifling affairs ; others again, even before becoming untrue to their calling, in their consciousness already renounce it : they perform all the exploits of the woman as mother, but they do so by accident, with murmurs, with envy toward the free women who do not bear children, and they deprive themselves of the only reward for them, — of the inner consciousness of the fulfilment of God’s will, — and, instead of satisfaction, suffer from that which forms their happiness.

We are enmeshed in our false life, we the men of our circle, we have all of us, to a person, so lost the meaning of life that there is no distinction between us. Having rolled the whole burden, the whole danger of life, on the necks of others, we are unable to call ourselves by our real name, which befits people who cause others to perish in our place for the purpose of earning a living, —- scoundrels, cowards.

But among women there still exists a distinction. There are women who are human beings, women who represent the highest manifestation of man, and women who are whores. This distinction will be made by future generations, and we cannot help making it ourselves.

Every woman, no matter how she may be dressed, what she may call herself, or how refined she may be, is a whore if she does not abstain from sexual intercourse, and yet abstains from childbirth.

And no matter how fallen a woman may be, if she consciously abandons herself to bearing children, she performs the best, the highest act of life, in that she is doing God’s will, and she has no one above her.

If you are such, you will not say after two, nor after twenty children, that it is enough to bear children, just as a labourer of fifty years will not say that it is enough for him to work, so long as he continues to eat and sleep, and his muscles demand for work ; if you are such, you will not throw your care of nursing and tending on the children on another mother, just as a labourer will not permit a stranger to finish his work which he has begun and has almost finished, because into this work you place your whole life, and so your life is fuller and happier in proportion as your work is greater.

When you are such, — and there are such, luckily for men, — the same law of the fulfilment of God’s will, by which you are guided in your life, will be applied by you to the life of your husband, and your children, and your near relatives.

If you are such a woman and know from your own case that only a self-sacrificing, invisible, unrewarded labour at the peril of life and to the last limits of tension, for the lives of others, is that calling of man which gives him satisfaction and strength, then you will make the same demands on others, encourage your husband to the same work, measure and esteem the worth of men by the same work, and prepare your children to do the same work.

Only that mother who looks upon childbirth as a disagreeable incident, and upon her pleasures of love, comforts of life, of culture, of society as upon the meaning of life, will bring up her children to have as much pleasure as possible and to enjoy them as much as possible, and will feed them on sweet things, will dress and artificially amuse them, and will teach them, not what would make them capable of self-sacrificing man’s and woman’s work, which is connected with peril of life and the uttermost tension, but what will free them from this labour, —everything which will give them diplomas and the possibility to keep away from work. Only such a woman, who has lost the meaning of life, will sympathize with that deceptive, false male labour which enables her husband, who has freed himself from human duties, to enjoy with her the labours of others. Only such a woman will choose the same kind of a husband for her daughter and will value people not for what they are in themselves, but for what is connected with them, for their position, money, and knowledge how to make use of the labours of others.

But a real mother, who in fact knows the will of God, will prepare her children to do this will also. For such a mother it will be a suffering to see her overfed, pampered, dressed-up baby, because all this, she knows, makes harder the fulfilment of God’s will, as it is known to her.

Such a mother will not teach her children what will give them the possibility of the offence of freeing themselves from labour, but what will help them to bear the work of life. She will not have to ask what to teach them, for what to prepare them: she knows what the calling of men consists in, and so she knows what to teach her children and for what to prepare them. Such a woman will not only refrain from encouraging her husband in his deceptive, false work, which has for its aim nothing but the exploitation of the labour of others, but will also look with disgust and horror upon such an activity, which serves as a double offence for her children. Such a woman will not choose a husband for her daughter on account of the whiteness of his hands and refinement of his manners, but, knowing full well what work and what deception are, will, beginning with her husband, always and at all times respect and appreciate in men and demand of them true work with loss and peril, and will despise that false, parade work, which has for its aim the freeing of oneself from true work.

Let not the woman, who, renouncing woman’s calling, wants to enjoy her rights, say that such a view of life is impossible for a mother, that a mother is too closely connected by love with her children to be able to refuse them sweetmeats, amusements, dresses, not to be afraid for her unprovided children, if her husband has no fortune or no secure position, and not to be afraid for the fate of the marriageable daughters and sons, if they have received no education.

All this is an untruth, a most glaring untruth !

The true mother will never say that. You cannot refrain from the desire to give your children candy, and toys, and taking them to the circus? But you do not give them spurge-laurel, do not allow them to get into a boat by themselves, and do not take them to a café chantant. Why can you refrain yourself there, and cannot do so here ?

Because you are telling an untruth.

You say that you love your children so much that you are afraid for their lives, that you are afraid of hunger and cold, and so value highly the security which is furnished you by your husband’s position, which you recognize as irregular.

You are so much afraid of those future accidents and calamities for your children, which are still far removed and doubtful, that you encourage your husband in what you do not recognize the justice of ; but what are you doing now in the present conditions of your life to save your children from the unfortunate accidents of your present life ?

Do you pass a large part of the day with your children ? You do well if you give them one-tenth of your time.

The remaining time they are in the hands of hired strangers who are frequently taken from the street, or in institutions, abandoned to the perils of physical and moral infections.

Your children eat and receive nourishment. Who prepares the dinner, and out of what is it prepared ? As a rule you do not know. By whom are moral concepts instilled in them ? You do not know this, either. So do not say that you are suffering evil for the good of your children, — that is untrue. You are doing wrong, because you love it.

A true mother, who sees in childbirth and the bringing up of her children her self-sacrificing calling of life and fulfilment of God’s will, will not say so.

She will not say so, because she knows that it is not her business to make of her children what she or the reigning tendency may wish, that the children, that is, the future generations, are the greatest and holiest thing which is given men to see in reality, and that her ministration with her whole being to this holiness is her life.

She knows herself, being constantly between life and death, and living a barely glimmering life, that life and death are not her business, that her business is to minister to life, and so she will not seek any distant paths of this ministration, but will only keep from departing from those that are near.

Such a mother will herself bear children and nurse them, will above all else herself feed her children and prepare food for them, and sew, and wash, and teach her children, and sleep and talk with them, because in this she assumes her work of life to consist. She knows that the security of any life is in work and in the ability to do it, and so will not seek for her children’s security in her husband’s money, and in the diplomas of her children,

but will educate in them the same self-sacrificing fulfilment of God’s will which she knows in herself, — the ability to endure labour with the loss and the peril of life. Such a mother will not ask others what she has to do ; she will know everything and will not be afraid of anything, and she will always be calm, because she will know that she has fulfilled everything which she is called to do.

If there can be any doubt for a man and for a childless woman as to the path on which is to be the fulfilment of God’s will, for a mother this path is firmly and clearly defined, and if she has humbly fulfilled it in the simplicity of her soul, she stands on the highest point of perfection which a human being can reach, and becomes for all men that complete sample of the fulfilment of God’s will, toward which all men strive at all times.

Only a mother can before her death calmly say to Him who has sent her into the world, and to Him whom she has served by bringing forth and educating her children, whom she loves more than herself, after she has done her appointed task in serving Him: “To-day dost Thou release Thy slave.” But this is that highest perfection toward which, as toward the highest good, all men strive.

It is such women, who have fulfilled their woman’s calling, that rule the ruling men and serve as a guiding star to men ; such women establish public opinion and prepare new generations of men ; and so these women have in their hands the highest power, the power of saving people from the existing and menacing evils of our time.

Yes, women and mothers, in your hands, more than in any other, is the salvation of the world.

February 14, 1886.